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Luca grabbed the book. He’d been too distracted yesterday to actually notice Artair’s surname.
But Sandy was right. Artair Osmond. From parts unknown and destination unfilled.
Fictional newsprint flashed before Luca’s eyes, full of words like mayhem, shock and carnage. “If you’re about to tell me that I just met an escaped serial killer, so help me God?—”
“No, nothing like that. He’s just known in these parts. It’s not a huge surprise he turned up there.”
Luca flicked the pages. Artair’s name wasn’t anywhere else in the book. “He’s visited other towers?”
“Yeah. Trust me. Everyone in the system knows him.” There was a strange and rather long pause from the other end. “He didn’t say anything, did he?”
“Like what?”
“Like where he was going?”
“I don’t know. North? Maybe he wants to help with the defense against Canada?”
“So he didn’t hang around or set up camp or anything?”
“What? No!” said Luca, a little too defensively, suddenly realizing that Artair didn’t appear to have any camping gear on him—no tent or sleeping bag or mattress. “Why are you being so weird about this?”
“Me?” laughed Sandy. “Let’s take stock, rookie. A hiker came to check in at your tower, and you didn’t think to ask any question about where they might be going next?”
Luca stared at the shocking lack of detail in the book. “In my defense, it’s been ages since I saw a cute guy.”
“Luca, it’s the second day of summer.”
“I know what I said.”
THREE
Smoking Hot
The typewriter glared menacingly, the sun flaring over silver levers and bronze keys. It was the most wicked object that Luca had ever seen, industrial and villainous and intimidatingly stylish all at once—like Al Capone cruising slow in his bulletproof Cadillac.
Underwood Champion Portable, read the insignia over the... back rolling bit? Where the paper fed in? Whatever the hell that part was called.
Even in 1938—the date stamped in the age-yellowed manual—portable must have been more aspiration than application. The damn thing weighed a ton, and there was no chance he’d be removing it from the tower. But that hadn’t stopped him spending an hour fiddling with screws and adjusting levers and rummaging through boxes under the desk, full of old ink ribbons and antique paper so beautiful that he could’ve spent all day thumbing the fibrous, ivory surface.
And now, he was finally ready to begin.
Luca shuddered at the first key press. The impact was like he’d trodden on a shotgun shell—less a click onto the paper than a punch with a spring-loaded fist.
“Oh, mama!” he said at the authority that came with each keystroke.
This was exactly what he needed.
He’d been in the tower for almost two weeks now and hadn’t written a damn word. Yes, he’d brought a stack of writing pads with him, way more practical than some beautiful relic from the Second World War. But a week of wandering the solitary woods in his free afternoons, scribbling notes onto those cheap yellow sheets, had produced nothing but a dozen chewed pencils and a teetering pile in the overflowing wastepaper basket.
Writer’s block was an unusual experience for Luca. Typically, he loved an empty sheet. Where other writers saw a painful journey, Luca usually saw the potential to weave people onto the page.
And that was the main reason that Luca loved to write—the people. Because how could you reduce someone to a few hundred words of newsprint. How could you sketch the lines of their face with text. How could you show their body without pictures? How could you illuminate their subtle individuality with just a few paragraphs?
The truth was that you couldn’t.
But you could still try.
And the best way to try was to care. To find someone—a stranger just moments earlier—and listen as though no person had ever told a story like this before. To find the small among the big and the enormous among the tiny. To detail how the experiences affected their life. Their family. Their happiness and freedom and joy.
