Free All Is Vanity by Christina Schwarz Page A

softened by hundreds of hands, collapsing sideways on their shelves.
    It was cool and fairly quiet. One of its beigy-yellowy tables was completely unoccupied. It seemed unlikely that any of the people poking at the computers or standing dazed in front of bookshelves,absently rocking strollers, would think me pretentious and/or pathetic if I sat down and uncapped my Mont Blanc. Which I did.
    It was three-twenty. Two pages, I decided, would be a decent beginning. I would not leave my seat until I’d written two pages. Unless I had to go to the bathroom. Or get a drink. No, I would be fine without a drink. Two pages, bathroom breaks only. Double spaced.
    I opened my notebook. Two pages, I saw with relief, would be nothing, given the material I’d jotted down on my last day of painting.
    “Robert Martin ate a breakfast of grapefruit, egg, bacon, and English muffin. He needed to be prepared for what lay ahead.”
    I was drawn to this scene. The bright kitchen, the deliberate chewing as Robert Martin, brown hair neatly parted and combed, moved from item to item, getting it all in, under his belt, loading himself as if he were a weapon. For what? What lay ahead?
    I felt hungry myself. Should I run over to Gray’s Papaya for a hot dog?
    At the next table, a man in a shrunken white T-shirt—an undershirt, really—was pushing a ballpoint steadily across a notebook page. He was bent so low that his cheek was nearly pressed against the paper. Suddenly, he sat up, turned the page with an ostentatious rustle—obviously meant to show that
he
was getting some writing done—and then bent again to his work. He was the type who might very well be repeating, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
    His industry irritated me. “Shh,” I said. I frowned in his direction. He glanced up for the briefest of moments and shot a puzzled look around the room. When his gaze lighted on me, he smiledvery slightly, very quickly, and then bent to the page again, his pen racing as if alive and highly caffeinated.
    I bent to my own page, lowering my own cheek somewhat. I would pursue Robert Martin. I would generate two pages of close observation in poetic prose, revealing through a detailed study of his every mundane motion the character of this man. Then I would have him. And once I had him, I would know what to do with him.
    “Robert Martin”—I would check the significance of this name later in my baby name book, but I would not pause now—“selected the last egg”—I crossed that out—“the last extralarge grade A egg from its cardboard nest and positioned it carefully four inches above the edge of the prewarmed skillet.” This showed he was a deliberate man, not spontaneous. “He paused for an instant, and then, sure and quick as lightning, snapped the egg down upon the iron. A perfect crack.” I crossed that last sentence out. I could do more with it. “He could achieve a perfect crack almost every time now, but it had taken some practice. The proper height at which to begin the stroke and the degree of force had been easy enough, but it had taken him quite a while to realize that to be exactly centered, the crack must actually fall”—would a crack “fall”?—“slightly closer to the fat, rounded end of the egg; there had to be extra length on the pointed end to make up for its narrowness. Once he had discovered this crucial element of position, Robert had rarely been dissatisfied with his fried egg.” Robert’s logic confused me here—how could the way an eggshell was cracked affect the fried egg itself?—but I pressed on. “While the egg was frying, he nestled the empty carton”—I liked that, “nestling” the cardboard nest. Or was it overdone?—“onto a stack of others under the sink. Every few months he delivered these to his mother in Filmore, who fashioned them into tiny hats and Christmas trees and sold them atcraft fairs.” And was, I hoped to God, a more interesting character than her son.
    With