I STARED AT THE DARK LINE that demanded my occupation. The very blankness of it taunted me. Dare I enter “writer”? Did the self-publication of two cheap paperbacks, and the absence of any other means of income make me a

writer? Hell yes, I decided, and the new state-of-the-art computer my questionable credit was about to buy would prove it so. I would prove it to my wife I used to have and all my friends I never had. I’d show them all. They’d

see my name, James C. McGlover, in huge letters on the covers of hardbacks in bookstores, libraries, and Wal-Mart. I mean big letters—bigger than the titles. And I would grow a beard, maybe a gray one, and I’d get me a pipe and a couple of those corduroy sport coats to wear over turtleneck shirts. And I’d sit at a long table in a folding chair at bookstores, with stacks and stacks of my latest bestseller reaching as high as the noses of the yuppies waiting in line to buy an autographed copy of my book. And the yuppies would leave in their

four-wheel-drive vehicles with my $29.00 book, and . . .

“Sir? Is there a problem with the credit form?”

“Uh, no. I’m almost finished.”

I printed “production supervisor” on the occupation line. I was that at one time. Maybe I still was. I mean who says you have to actually be employed to have an occupation?

The clerk took the application and disappeared into a back office. She wasn’t gone three minutes. When she returned, her eyes were focused somewhere behind my head as she spoke.

“I’m sorry, Mr. McGlover. Computer World is unable to approve you for credit at this time.” She sounded like a recording.

In my humiliation I glanced at my watch, like her words “at this time” might have some significance. “All right,” I said, and left.

As I pulled away from the mall, a broken spring in my Skylark’s seat poked at my lower back as if jabbing home the point that I was a loser. For no reason that I’m certain of now, I turned onto Webster Street. It was actually out of my way if I wanted the shortest route to my apartment. Maybe it was that I didn’t really want to go home.

Familiarity is comfort, and Webster Street was nothing if not familiar.  My mother had worked at Wilson’s Meats, now years out of business. Our apartment had been high above the street, and the smells and sounds and feelings that drifted up to me then came back to me now in a sadness tinged with relief that I no longer lived here.  The businesses on Webster, then and now, were not the sort of places the upper class frequented unless they needed something the up-town joints couldn’t provide, if you know what I mean.

I passed Mickey’s Bar just as a patron entered, giving me a view of the same smoky interior I used to see walking home from school a hundred years ago. And on the corner, the

smooth bricks of the old bookstore still gleamed in the afternoon sun.

Webster Street was timeless—virtually unaffected by the continued growth and change of its parent city. More police cars patrolled these days, and more of the stores had bars on the windows, but still it was a good place to be.

I slowed the Skylark. This was nice. Leaning over in the seat to roll down the passenger side window, I saw a small sign hanging in front of a glass door.

COMPUTERS BOUGHT-SOLD-REPAIRED.

I pulled to the curb and backed up. The shop was apparently not much wider than its door. A health food store and a drycleaners squeezed the little establishment from either side, a visual metaphor depicting the strangulation of small business.

The glass door without bars spoke of a trusting proprietor. A place like this might take a man at his word. What would it hurt to have a look?

I stepped inside, giving life to a little brass bell above the door.

A voice from the back said, “Come right in, sir.”

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the ill-lit interior. A single low-wattage bulb hung from a cord between the voice and where I stood.  Now I could make out a small man behind a long, computer-laden counter. I stepped closer and saw that he was elderly and slightly bent. Kindly and pale eyes smiled at me. I saw his thick gray hair falling past the collar of his khaki coveralls.

Computers and computer parts lined the shelves on either side of the shop. They were stacked on the floor at every available spot, leaving only enough room for a customer to enter and walk to the counter. From what I knew of computers, all of them were old. The business had apparently been here for several years, yet I had never known about it.

“I was just looking for . . .”

“Yes, I know. I think I have just what you need. It comes with the latest Word program already installed. No other programs at all. Just what you need.”

He reached to a shelf behind the counter, retrieved a heavy looking laptop model, and placed it on the counter. “Nothing fancy,” he said. “The case is a little rough. But I overhauled it myself. It’s just what you need.”

Why did he keep saying that? “How much? I don’t have . . .”

“You just take it on, son. Come back in a few days, after you’ve had a chance to try it out. We can talk about money then. Money ain’t all that important if you get what you need. Right?”

This was weird. I put my hand on the black computer. It was warm.  “I can pay some now and some each week. If you would tell me how much . . .”

He cut me off again. “No, you just take it on. We’ll work something out later. I ain’t worried about that.”

“But you don’t know me. I might not come back. You never know about people.”

He picked up the laptop with one hand as if it were weightless, and placed it in my arms. Those pale eyes bore into me. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I turned and walked to the door. I jostled the machine to my right arm and opened the door with my left hand. As I stepped outside, he said something. It sounded like, “It must have your best, James,” but it could not have been that. No way could he have said that.

My apartment is at street level. If you don’t count the screaming kids, banging doors, sirens, horns, and the thunder of passing trucks, the building is reasonably quiet. It’s even quieter late at night, so that’s when I write. I usually start about 10:00 p.m. and go until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.

I placed the computer on the kitchen table, plugged it in, and held my right forefinger over the power button. This, my third novel, was going to be good. I could feel it. I had held the plot in my mind for months. The title was The Back Alley. This murder mystery would give a new hero to the world.   My protagonist, Franklin Steele, would reach from the pages to the minds and souls of countless eager readers.

Steele would be loved, as would I for creating him.  Steele was a small city police detective investigating the gruesome death of a prostitute who had become disillusioned by a sour marriage. Pretty good stuff, right? No more self-publishing for me. This baby would sell itself.

I hit the power button. An icon appeared for the Word program. I waited. Nothing else came up. No other icon, no background, no screensaver, nothing. I clicked and was taken instantly to Word 2000. I took off, wishing I could get my thoughts on screen as fast as they came to me. By the second chapter, I had made friends with the little paperclip helper. Starting into the fourth chapter, I turned his know-it-all ass off.

Franky’s at a swanky nightspot sitting at the bar drinking black coffee. A redhead enters the scene and sits down beside him. She’s hot. She asks why he’s not having a real drink. Without even looking up, Franky says, “Go away.” Franky’s a cool, good-looking dude and he’s used to gorgeous women trying to make conversation. He gets off the bar stool and walks toward a table. Someone bumps him and coffee splashes across the front of his silk shirt. “Damn,” Franky says. The pretty blonde he collided with, Margie Morson, eventually becomes his girlfriend. The story really accelerates from there. Together, he and Margie get into all kinds of trouble, barely escaping with their lives after shootouts and high-speed car chases, and stuff like that.

Eight days into the novel, I knew I needed a day off. Not that I was exactly stuck. I just figured a break might give me a fresh angle.

That night I drove across town to Greeley’s—a place where I was known, and a good place to eat, relax, and mellow out. I had to wait in the bar until they had an available table. I ordered coffee. A fat woman with short, dark hair sat down three stools away. Before my first sip, I felt her looking at me. I acknowledged her presence with a nod—a mistake.

“Coffee good here?” she asked. Her whiney voice reminded me of Saturday morning cartoons.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” Another mistake.

She waddled herself to the stool adjacent to mine. She introduced herself and said she had seen me here before. The bartender had given her my name. With an increasing uneasiness, I became aware that Mildred Tarlton could

have sat on two stools simultaneously without fear of falling between them.

She ordered a straight vodka. When she reached out a beefy hand to accept it from the bartender, her massive arm nudged me just as I was bringing the coffee cup to my mouth. The scalding liquid in my lap would have been less of an embarrassment had I not screamed.

As I walked bow-legged to the men’s room, the truth hit me. Had this very thing not happened to Franklin Steele in Chapter Six? I pushed the big chrome button of the hand dryer. Maybe I could get some story ideas from Mildred. Maybe Mildred being here was more than coincidence. Maybe it was fate.

I had to run the dryer through three more cycles before I felt like the dark stain was not too conspicuous. Returning to the bar, I found Mildred gone.

I slept late the next morning. Breaking tradition, I brewed coffee and sat down at the laptop during mid-afternoon. Powering up, I noticed the paperclip helper was alive and well telling me what Shift F7 would do. I turned him off and started.

Steele left the bar with a scowl on his face. He was almost to his black Jaguar when he saw two thugs tampering with the car door. He approached the would-be thieves and startled them when he spoke. “You punks don’t seem smart enough to drive,, even if you could get the door open.” Franky ducked as a knife swished in the air above his head.

I took a sip of coffee and gazed out the smog-smudged window, arranging my thoughts into the violence that Franky would impose on the dirt bags. I re-read the last line.

Franky ducked as a knife hissed in the air above is head.  I didn’t remember thinking “hissed,” much less typing “hissed.” I highlighted the offending word and hit Delete. I retyped “swished.” I know I did.

But “hissed” was still there. I tried it again with the same result. I couldn’t imagine what kind of electronic glitch could cause such a problem. I resurrected the paperclip and asked him everything I could come up with in an attempt to repair the error. No luck. I left the knife hissing. I figured maybe the old guy at the shop had screwed something up when he overhauled the laptop. It was definitely defective.

I kept typing, feeling alive, reaching for the words that seemed to hang in the air waiting to be gathered. The computer’s contrariness did not arise again.

Franky handles the thugs with five lighting-fast Karate kicks. A late-shift black and white arrives to take care of the transportation and booking. An hour later, Franky’s home asleep. He’s awakened by the telephone. It’s Margie Morson calling and she wants to meet him—says she’s got some information that can’t wait. She’ll meet him at the old refinery.

The old refinery is always a good place for late night meetings. When people read “old refinery,” what they see is an abandoned industrial sight, rusty petroleum pipes, outside stairs leading to the top of big storage tanks, a huge empty warehouse, and an injured good guy with a knockout girlfriend whose skirt is torn in a way that you can see lots of leg as she runs, and climbs ladders, and crawls through galvanized metal drain culverts.

I continued working until a headache forced me to quit about 10:00 p.m., my usual starting time. As I reached to turn out the lamp, the phone rang.

“Jimmy, is that you?” a female voice asked.

“This is James McGlover. Who’s calling?”

“It’s Milly.”

“Milly who?”

“Milly Tarlton, silly. From Greeley’s.”

Oh, no. Fat Mildred. “How’d you get my number?”

“Under ‘M’ in the phone book. I told you I knew your name.”

“Why are you calling?”

“You want to meet me for a drink, Jimmy?”

“Mildred, you shouldn’t call . . .” 

I stopped in mid-sentence. It was happening again. A late night call from a woman who wanted a meeting. I was Franklin Steele and Mildred would have information. Without thinking it out, I said, “How about the old refinery?”

“I never heard of a joint by that name,” she said. I was thinking maybe Rolo’s. I’m hungry.”

I got dressed and drove to Rolo’s All-Night Fish Food on Eighth Avenue.

I arrived in time to see Mildred trying to get her stomach out from under the steering wheel of a Chevy pickup. I might have known she drove a truck. The driver’s door was open and she had one puffy foot hanging out. My first impulse was to drive on by and go back home, but I knew my novel might be at

stake. I would go inside and wait. She had managed to get in the truck, so I figured she would eventually extract herself and come on in the restaurant. Certainly, Franklin Steele would never be seen prying and pulling at such a woman as Mildred Tarlton to get her out of a truck that wasn’t even on fire.

I ordered a beer for myself and a vodka for Mildred. She came to my table as the drinks arrived. As she sat down, I noticed little beads of perspiration on her forehead but saw no other evidence of her ordeal. Immediately, she ordered Rolo’s Ration from the menu. I realized that if Mildred had any information it would have to wait until she had fed.

The ripping of cellophane cracker wrappings filled the restaurant as she waited for her meal. I was glad the place had only a few customers. As she stuffed the saltines into her always-open mouth, I observed how far she had to sit from the table due to her large frontal area. The distance made it appear that her arms were too short to reach the cracker basket. The effect was that of some huge road building machine with two mammoth extensions, working, huffing, grasping, extracting, and loading.

I ordered another beer. And another after that.

Mildred’s cracker spewing comments revealed nothing of interest. After being served, she spoke not at all as she devoured the platter of fried fish, fries, and hush puppies.

“Let’s have dessert,” she announced as she popped the last puppy.

I wondered what she thought I might have for dessert after three draft beers. “You go ahead,” I said. I need some air.”

The cashier looked at me suspiciously as I walked outside.  The night air felt good.  I lit a cigarette.

Two teenage boys smoking pot were leaning against Mildred’s tailgate.

Okay, this was too much. Here was a third occurrence of events in my novel. Well, maybe the truck was not a black Jaguar, but the principle was the same. As Franklin Steele, I walked deliberately toward the truck. The youths, apparently thinking it was mine, walked away giggling and disappeared into the darkness.

Just like Steele, I had handled the situation with calm confidence.

I walked backed into Rolo’s in time to see Mildred just starting on a slice of coconut pie. By the time I reached the table there was nothing left of it other than a little dab of meringue under her left eye.

“Two hoodlums were fooling around your truck,” I said, and sat down.  I noticed the beer glass that I’d left half empty was now completely so. 

“How do you know I have a truck, Jimmy?”

Uh oh. Was she thinking I saw and ignored her earlier need for the jaws-of-life? I took a chance. “Saw you drive in last night at Greeley’s.”

“Oh,” she said, and I figured I was safe.

“Anyway, I handled it. They won’t be back around here for a while. Not unless they want more of the same.”

Mildred burped, but otherwise seemed unimpressed. She never did give me any information.

The next morning I went back to Webster Street. I didn’t take the laptop. The old guy might want too much money, and if I couldn’t come up with it, he would want the computer. This way, I could feel him out about the price, and tell him about the glitch, and maybe he could tell me how to

fix it.

I pulled in at the curb at the same place I had parked before. I was on the sidewalk before I realized this must be the wrong block. But no, the address was right. So where was the computer shop?

Confused, I stepped backward into the street and scanned the storefronts. The other businesses looked just like I remembered, but what had been the entrance to the old man’s

computer store was now a solid wall—an old graffiti marked wall with no indication at all that there had ever been a door.

Inside the health food store, after listening patiently to my questions, the lady behind the counter looked at me as if this might be one of those occasions  when she should be concerned. She denied any knowledge of a computer

store next door.

Driving home, I questioned myself about my sanity. Logic dictated there could be no computer on my kitchen table. No shop, no computer. The old man in the store that wasn’t there was too weird to be real anyway.

I felt a little better. But in my grasping for reality, I saw Mildred’s pudgy face. I saw my noisy, low-rent apartment. I saw my real status in life, and I knew that Franklin Steele could never exist in my world, as it was.

The paperclip was grinning at me when I opened my apartment door. He was real. The laptop was real. I sat down at the table and stared at the clip like he might tell me what the hell was going on.

I scrolled up and read some of what I had written. It was awful. I hit Control/Home and started reading from the beginning. I found it difficult to  believe I had ever thought such trash was good writing. This trite, amateurish attempt at building a story would never sell. What a fool. I was no writer. I never had been. I scrolled to a random section and read another pitiful paragraph. Without hesitation, I hit Edit, Select All, and Delete. Everything but the paperclip disappeared.

Leaning back in the chair now, I closed my eyes and remembered with detailed clarity the little computer shop and the old man with those pale, knowing eyes. What was it he had said?

“It must have your best, James”

I succumbed to the weariness of being a loser and almost drifted into sleep. Then, like a neon sign coming alive, understanding began to flicker inside me until suddenly I knew. I knew about myself what the old man had somehow known even before I entered his shop, if there had actually been a shop. I could see now that my best was untapped—a reservoir of imagination full to bursting. I had never given my best to anything. Not to my marriage, not to a career, not to my life, and as so painfully obvious in the just deleted pages, not to my writing.

I undid the delete. The little laptop screen brightened as my fingers played across the keys, repairing every faulty phrase and paragraph, changing melodrama to prose. The characters, settings, dialogue, descriptions, and plot began to take on a realism I had never before been able to achieve. I worked until well after dark, not stopping to eat, no bathroom breaks, simply and easily changing fraud to reality, until Franklin Steele was as much alive on the computer screen as he was in my mind.

Still I pushed the keys, on through the afternoon and into the night, creating life and truth from what had been nothing more than a defective fantasy. No lapses of uncertainty

interrupted the computer’s process. The words danced on the screen seemingly or actually before the keys were selected. No errors occurred, nothing to review or correct. The story, the flow, even the punctuation and grammar, were right. Not just right, but exactly right.

As suddenly as the beginning, the end arrived. The Back Alley, complete and perfect, lay at rest but alive in the electronic realm of the laptop. I hit Save and pushed the chair

back as the night fog began to lift from the city streets.

I walked outside into the breaking gray dawn. Standing on the sidewalk in the dying light of a street lamp, I lit a cigarette. The gold shield at my belt flashed the lamp’s reflection as she stepped out of the mist, her blond hair a glowing warmth in the morning chill. A slender arm encircled my waist and I felt the easy weight of her hand resting on my holstered revolver. Her sweet breath and silky voice at my ear now—”Franky, buy me a cup of coffee.”