The Engine Room Typewriter

The typewriter sat on a workbench under the one working bulb in the engine room of the old naval ship. Luca wiped his hands on his rag and looked at it the way he looked at it every night. Sixty-three years old himself, thirty of those spent as a merchant seaman, and he had never fixed a machine this stubborn.

The 'E' key was gone. Had been gone since the museum bought the thing at an estate sale in 2019. He had checked the box, the drawers, the floorboards. Nothing. So every letter he typed came out missing its e's. "Sea" became "sa."

"Engine" became "ngin." He wrote letters anyway, on museum letterhead, letters nobody read, and mailed them to nobody in particular.

A typewriter with no E. Luca thought that was about right for a man who had lost things at sea. You type the word and the word comes back hollow. That was his private metaphor, and he kept it private, because a janitor who talks about metaphors gets looked at funny.

He was sixty-three, never married, knee shot from a cargo accident in 2011 that ended his sailing young. The museum job paid rent. The engine room paid in quiet. Good trade, most nights.

Tonight was not most nights. Tonight he had a speed-dating event to get to.

***

The event was at a VFW hall two blocks from the pier. Singles over fifty. Luca had signed up because his sister Diana kept calling and asking why he was alone, and one night he got tired of the answer.

He sat at table seven with a paper cup of punch. The women rotated every six minutes. One talked about her cats. One talked about her knee, which was worse than his. One, at the fifth rotation, sat down and said, "Okay, you look like someone who fixes things. My coffee maker is possessed."

She was fifty-eight, dark hair going gray at the temples, reading glasses pushed up on her head. Name tag said MARIA, KXFM.

"Radio," Luca said. "You're the late night one."

"You listen?"

"My radio in the engine room only gets your station and one station that plays polka."

"So you listen." She smiled. "I'm Maria. And before you ask, yes, it's a real job, and no, I don't take calls about your ex-wife on air."

"I don't have an ex-wife."

"Lucky you." The bell rang. She stood. "Nice to meet you, table seven."

Then the rotation chaos happened. Everyone shuffled, purses and phones and car keys got picked up, and by the time Luca was in the parking lot he had reached into his jacket and pulled out a phone that was not his. Pink case. Cracked screen protector. Some kind of unicorn sticker on the back, which was a choice for a woman of fifty-eight, and he respected it.

His own phone, the old flip one, was gone.

***

Maria got home to her apartment overlooking the pier, opened her purse, and found a flip phone with a photo of a typewriter as its wallpaper. An old Underwood, sitting on a workbench, missing a key in the top row. She stared at it. She had been on fourteen app dates this year and not one man had a flip phone with a typewriter as his wallpaper.

She checked the contact list. One number. Labeled DIANA.

"Nope," Maria said out loud, and did not call his sister.

Instead she walked to the gas station on the corner, dug coins out of her purse, and used the payphone that nobody had gotten around to removing. The flip phone rang three times.

"Hello?" said a man's voice, cautious, like the phone itself might be a trap.

"Hi. This is Maria. From table seven. The radio one. You have my phone."

There was a pause. "Ah. Yes. I have your phone. You have mine, I am guessing."

"Flip phone. Typewriter wallpaper."

"That's mine."

"It's a nice typewriter," Maria said. "Missing a key."

"The E," Luca said. "Long story."

"Look, I need my phone tonight. I host the show at eleven. All my notes, my call screener contacts, everything, it's on that phone."

"Ah. This is bad, then."

"It's bad. Where are you?"

"I go back to the ship. The museum. I work nights there. Engine room. You know the old naval ship at the pier?"

"I can see its hull from my booth, Luca. I literally look at it every night while I talk to strangers about their love lives."

"Then come. Ten o'clock. The pier gate, ask for me."

"Ask for who?"

A pause. "Luca. Luca Moretti. Janitor."

"Okay, Luca the janitor. Ten o'clock. Don't lose my phone in the engine room."

"I would not lose your phone in the ocean, which is worse."

She hung up and stood at the payphone a second, and realized she was almost looking forward to it. That hadn't happened in a while.

***

The museum gate guard waved her through at ten. Maria walked the pier in her flats, show bag over her shoulder, and found the gangway up to the ship. A hand-lettered sign with an arrow pointed her down a ladder.

The engine room was huge and dark and smelled like old metal and machine oil. One bulb burned way in the back. She followed the sound of someone humming to herself, an old Italian song, off key.

"Luca?"

"Back here," came the voice. "Careful. The floor is open."

"The floor is what?"

She took three more steps and her foot went into nothing. The floor panel was out, a square hole where a dropped screw had rolled, Luca on his knees beside it with a flashlight and one arm actually down inside the hole, and Maria went over the edge of the panel and landed directly on top of him with a noise like two crates of dishes.

"Ow," Luca said, from underneath her.

"Ow," Maria agreed. "I warned myself and then I ignored it."

"You are fine. I am fine. The screw is still lost." He got the flashlight wedged under one arm and started the awkward business of untangling. Her bag had gone flying. Her knee was over his thigh. His hand was somewhere it had no business being, on her hip, gripping, and he moved it fast and said, "Sorry. That was for balance."

"Balance. Sure." She got a foot under herself and he hauled her up, and then he stood, and then they were both standing in the dark engine room, breathing hard, dust on her blouse and grease on his hands.

Then she saw it. On the workbench, under the bulb, with her pink phone sitting right on top of it like a paperweight.

The typewriter. From his wallpaper. In real life.

And next to it, a stack of letters on museum letterhead. She picked up the top one before he could stop her, which he did try to do, hand out, saying "Ah, those are not, those are nothing," but she was already reading.

"'Dear Maria,'" she read aloud, putting the missing E's back in as she went. "'I heard a woman on the radio tonight say that loneliness is a habit. I think she is wrong. I think it is a ship you keep paying for even after it sinks. Sa. S-a. My typewriter has no E, so you will have to imagine the letter where it belongs. I imagine a lot of things where they belong.'"

She looked up at him. "You wrote this."

"Put it down."

"You called the show. Three weeks ago. Anonymous caller, the one who talked about the sinking ship for two minutes and then hung up before I could ask his name. That was you."

Luca took his cap off and put it back on. "The screen was bad. I got nervous."

"You made me cry in the booth, you know. Good crying. I played that call back three times after the show." She held up the letter. "And then you wrote me this and never sent it."

"There was no address. Radio people do not give out addresses."

"You could have called back."