Susanna here. Today I’m going to tell you a love story. Not the most conventional of love stories, but it does have a meet-cute, and it happens in Manhattan, and I promise it ends happily.
A couple of weeks before I was due to go down to New York for the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference, I opened my morning paper to find an article by AP journalist Katherine Roth focused (rather wittily) on the “Typewriter’s Return”.
“At the few remaining typewriter repair shops in the country,” she wrote, “business is booming as a younger generation discovers the joy of the feel and sound of the typewriter—and older generations admit they never fell out of love with it.”
Because I had half a cup of coffee left to finish after reading the article, I searched out their website and spent the next half hour happily watching videos like this one:
At this point, my practical brain reasserted itself by reminding me just how excited I’d been when I’d first been able to give up the manual typewriter on which I’d learned to type in exchange for a sleek electric office model, and then how wonderful it had been when the office where I’d worked had given me a machine that used a typing ball in place of the basket-style keys, and THEN how amazing it had been when they’d brought in the self-correcting typewriters (even though I’d still had to use all those differently-coloured correcting fluids when I was typing up carbon copy forms in the office). From there it had been a huge leap forward to those typewriters that had the little window where you could see and correct a line of text before it printed, and then we’d moved on from those to word processors, and computers, and…
I did not need a typewriter.
Still, that weekend at the cottage I kept looking at my writing desk and thinking that it might not be a foolish thing to have a little typewriter up there, in case the power should go off. Because after all, if my computer stopped working, a typewriter would at least let me keep up with the speed of my thoughts…
When I suggested this to my friend Susan, who was visiting me at the cottage that weekend, she gave me the sort of a knowing look only a friend who has known you for most of your life can give you, when they know that you don’t really need a typewriter. She was intrigued, though, by my mention of the Gramercy Typewriter Co., because as it turned out Susan and her husband had a typewriter themselves that had no ribbon. Maybe, she suggested, when I was in New York, I could drop into that shop and see if they might have a ribbon that would fit her old machine?
That, dear readers, is what I call “enabling”. Or “matchmaking”. Whichever.
One week on, and I was finally in Manhattan with an hour to spare, and sitting in the conference hotel bar with Susie Benton— of the senior editors at Sourcebooks, my American publishers—telling her all about my typewriter fixation and my quest to buy a ribbon for my friend, and Susie agreed that this was an entirely understandable fixation, and she joined me on my quest. We hailed a cab.
The Gramercy Typewriter Co. is a small, tidy store on a sidestreet. There was a pink machine in the window that was gorgeous but not for sale, and others inside of all shapes, makes, and colours. They also had typewriter ribbons, which of course was what I’d come to buy.
The sales clerk, Cassie, found me the ribbons I needed, and we set them on the counter…and then I decided it couldn’t possibly hurt to just TRY a typewriter. You know, see what one felt like. Even though I didn’t need one.
The first one that caught my eye—and the one I would have bought if I’d been choosing from photos online—was a robin’s egg blue one with a slight metallic texture that would perfectly coordinate with everything in my cottage. But when Cassie took it down to let me try it, everything felt wrong. It didn’t “fit” my hands.
I think I tried another one, or two. I don’t remember. But I do remember seeing, in a glass case, a small typewriter that looked much too old-fashioned for my needs.
He wasn’t brightly-coloured. He was plain. But when I had a chance to type a line on him, it felt as if his keys had been made just for my fingers.
Cassie could see I liked him, but she thought I might prefer the one next to him in the glass case—a typewriter of the same model and year (a 1929 Royal P) but in a snazzier racing-car red finish, and with its original case. It had been something of a sticking point with a few people, she told me, that “my” typewriter didn’t have a case.
Which made me think, Hold on a minute—do you mean this little typewriter of mine has been REJECTED? That people have come in and tried him out and thought of buying him and changed their minds because he didn’t have a case? Because, if you know me at all, you’ll know this means I’ll only love him more, and want to rescue him and take him home.
So, that’s exactly what I did.Cassie very carefully wrapped my caseless new companion up in bubblewrap and put him in a tote bag, and Susie and I took him in a taxi back uptown to the conference hotel, and a couple of days later he flew with me home to Canada, after giving the security screener at LaGuardia a memorable moment (she’d been silently watching all the briefcases and handbags go through her scanner, and all of a sudden she burst out, “A typewriter?!”).
But I didn’t take him to the cottage. I felt he might get too lonely up there during the week with no one for company. So now he sits on my desk with my various other tools and treasures.
I have christened him Nevil, in honour of Nevil Shute, one of my most favourite writers.
I did not need a typewriter. But Nevil needed me. And who knows what I’ll write, with his help.