A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

“I thought I heard the sound of a typewriter as I was walking down the corridor.”

“Who referred you to me?”

“No one. I’m in a spot where I need cash, and I’m going to sell this typewriter to somebody before I leave the building.”

“For cash?”

“For cash.”

She shook her head and said, “Lots of people in this building use typewriters, but mighty few of them have the kind of cash that you would want.”

I said, “Would it be too much to ask you to try out this typewriter? I might make a trade, taking your machine, giving you this one and taking some cash to boot.”

“How much to boot?”

“I’d have to see your machine first.”

She looked at her wrist watch. “Come in,” she said.

The apartment was a two-room affair with a partial division screening off the kitchenette. A portable typewriter sat on a rather battered card table with a folding chair in front of it. There were pages of manuscript on the card table and the apartment gave evidences of having been well lived in. It wasn’t exactly sloppy, but it wasn’t neat.

“You’re living here alone?” I asked.

Her eyes suddenly became suspicious. “That’s neither here nor there. Let’s look at your portable,” she said, picking her portable up off the card table and setting it on a chair.

I opened my portable and put it on the card table.

She put some paper in and tried it out. She had the hunt-and-peck system, but she was good at it.

“What do you write?” I asked. “Novels, articles, short stories?”

“Anything,” she said. “I am Annaemae Clinton.”

I looked around a bit. There were writers’ magazines and a book containing a list of markets. There was a pile of envelopes on a shelf which I surmised contained rejected stories which had been returned from the editors.

She swiftly picked up the pages of manuscript that were on the card table, took them over to the chair which held the typewriter and put them face down on top of the typewriter.

“This is a pretty good machine,” she said.

“It’s in perfect condition.”

“What kind of a trade?” she asked.

“I’d want to take a look at your machine.”

She went over to the chair, picked up the manuscript pages from on top of the typewriter, moved them over to a bookcase, brought the typewriter over, shoved my machine out of the way and put her typewriter down on the card table. Then she rather grudgingly handed me a sheet of paper.

The typewriter was an ancient affair which ran like a threshing machine and the type was pretty much out of fine. In addition to which the typefaces were dirty. The e and the a gave pretty poor impressions.

“Well?” she asked.

I said. “I’ll take your typewriter, give you mine, and take forty dollars in cash.”

She thought it over for a while, then said, “Let me try your machine again.”

She did more typing this time. I could see she wanted it.

“Twenty-five dollars,” she said.

“Forty,” I told her. “This machine is like new.”

“Thirty.”

“Make it thirty-five and it’s a deal.”

“You’re a hard man to do business with.”

“I need the money, but I’ve got a good typewriter here. Your machine needs lots of work done on it.”

“I know that.”

She was silent for a while, then said, “Would you take fifteen dollars down and twenty dollars in two weeks?”

I shook my head. “I need money.”

She sighed reluctantly. “I can’t cut the mustard,” she said.

“All right,” I told her. “I’ll try next door. Who’s your neighbor in Apartment Sixty-two B?”

“There isn’t any.”

“Not rented?”

“It was, but she moved out, a woman by the name of Beaver, Nanncie Beaver. She spelled her first name N-a-n-n-c-i-e.”

“A writer?”

“I guess so. She used to do a lot of clacking on the typewriter. I didn’t ever see her by-line on anything.”

“Sociable?”

“Not particularly — but a nice sort. She moved all at once. I didn’t know anything about it until yesterday when she moved out.”

“Boyfriends?”

“I wouldn’t know. We live our own lives up here. There’s a couple in Sixty B, name of Austin. I don’t know what they do. I think he has a job somewhere. I don’t know if she writes. I never hear a typewriter over there. I think she’s some sort of an artist. They keep very much to themselves. When you come right down to it, that’s the way people live in this section.”

She thought for a moment and then added, “And — it’s, the only way to live.”

“Did Miss. Beaver give you any hint she was moving out?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t know anything about it until she started moving out cardboard boxes and suitcases.”

“Transfer man?”

“Taxicab,” she said. “She made some with the driver to help her.”

“That’s strange about the cardboard boxes and the suitcases,” I said.

“Well, she had cardboard cartons. There must have been a half a dozen of them that were sealed with tape and had stationery pasted on the side. She took those first and then in about thirty minutes came back and got the suitcases.”

“Taxi driver helped her all the time?”

“Yes.”

“A Yellow Cab?”

“Yes, at least I think so.”

“Same taxi driver?”

“I wouldn’t know. Heavens! Why are you so interested in Nanncie Beaver?”

“I’m darned if I know,” I told her, “but I’m a great one to try and put two and two together and understand people. I regard everyone as a potential story. What you have told me just arouses my curiosity.”

“Well, she’s gone. You can’t sell her a typewriter now.”

“You don’t think she’ll be back?”

She shook her head. “Tell me, what’s the best deal you’ll make on a trade?”

I looked at her typewriter again. “I can’t offer you very much encouragement. This is in bad shape. It needs cleaning, oiling, a general overhaul.”

“I know. I keep putting things off, and when you’re freelancing on articles and things, you don’t have much money. I can’t get along without the machine — and I don’t have much money — so I’ can’t afford to put it in the shop. Some of my checks I get for stories are for less than five dollars... the cheaper magazines, you know.”

“Tough luck,” I said. “Perhaps if your manuscripts looked — well, more professional, you could make better deals.”

“That’s what I was thinking. That’s why I wanted to see what kind of a trade you’d make — but I can’t go without eats, and rent is due in two weeks.”

“I can’t better the proposition I’ve made you,” I said.

“You don’t feel you could take fifteen dollars down and then come back in two weeks and get twenty dollars. I’ve had a story accepted. I’ll have the twenty for sure.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t do it. Who else is in the building that you know that might be interested in typewriters?”

“No one,” she said. “There are only four apartments on this floor. The fourth apartment is rented by some kind of a business woman. She’s up and off to work every morning. I don’t know anything about the people on the upper floor.”

I put my typewriter back in its case.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll try the building next door. Do you know anything about it?”

She shook her head. “We don’t pay much attention to our neighbors,” she said. “We have our friends and that’s that. I sure would like to have that typewriter.”

“I wish I could afford to sell it on the basis of the offer you’ve made, but I have my own living to think of.”