Free Only in the Movies by William Bell Page A

something, isn’t it? Everything has to be
somewhere
.”
    Tap, tap, tap
. My fingers flew. I glanced up at the clock. I might just get the last scene done on time.
    “I mean, it stands to reason.”
    Tap, tap
.
    “Funny expression, that. ‘Stands to reason.’”
    I kept my eyes on the screen, which was slowly filling up with type, each boring sentence taking me toward my goal.
    “See, the story I’ve written on my word processor is real, right? It must be—I can read it on the screen, show it to someone. It has places and characters and events and so on. Once you’ve read it, you remember it. You can talk about it. Ergo, it
must
have a certain kind of reality. So I’m wondering, if I delete it—I mean really erase it so it’s not recoverable—where does it go? How could something that wasthere suddenly be
not
there? How could something real suddenly be
not
real?”
    Tap, tap, tap
. I had no intention of asking her what “ergo” meant. Vanni turned in her chair to make sure Mrs. Cleaver was still occupied. She turned back.
    “Didjever wonder—”
    “No, Vanni,” I said. “I don’t wonder about the things you wonder about. Most of the time I don’t even understand them.” I cursed under my breath. She had hooked me again.
    Vanni allowed a few moments to pass before she spoke again. “Imagine where our civilization would be today if every member of the human race, throughout recorded history—and unrecorded history, for that matter—possessed your relentless, aggressive curiosity. You’re such a plodder.”
    I was nearing my final paragraph, where my hero, an eighty-year-old arthritic janitor from Congo, would reveal the name of the murderer who had cut the throats (from right to left, proving he was left-handed) of every registered delegate at the Ohio automobile insurance brokers’ convention—all 125 of them.
    “How’s the story coming?” Vanni asked, peering at my screen and feigning interest.
    She’s really desperate now, I thought. A direct question from Vanni in one of her philosophical moods was almost unheard of.
    “Look, old pal, old buddy, leave me alone. I don’t have the time.”
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw her link her fingers behind her head and lean back even farther. It drove the librarian, Ms. Kahn, nuts if you “used two legs” of the chair instead of four.
    “Ah, well, time,” Vanni remarked casually in her world-weary way. “What
is
time? I mean, people act as if it’s a thing, an object in the universe, like this chair Ms. Kahn thinks I’m ruining. But really, the only thing time has in common with an article of furniture is that both are human inventions.”
    Tucking her thick hair behind her ear in a futile gesture—it sprang free immediately—she looked over at me.
    “THE END!” I typed, then banged the Save key triumphantly. “Done!” I crowed. “In spite of the distractions of a certain”—I jabbed a function key, sending the story to the printer—“bothersome female philosopher—or philosophess.”
    “Didja spell-check it?” Vanni asked casually.
    “Ah, shoot.”
    “Not too late. You have”—Vanni consulted her watch, apparently having decided that time
did
exist—“six minutes.”
    I frantically launched the spell checker and blasted through the story. It seemed like every second word had been misspelled.
    “Oh, well, I got all the
and
’s and
but
’s and
the
’s right,” I muttered, saving the changes. As the printer churned out the last page, the buzzer sounded to end the period.
    Vanni took off for her next class, and I carried my masterpiece of detective fiction to Mrs. Cleaver, who was gathering papers from her desk and shoving them into a huge leather briefcase. I handed my story to her and she smiled.
    Cleaver, I was convinced, didn’t have a mean bone in her very short, very thin body. Always cheerful and encouraging, she gave you the impression that she liked everything you wrote, which, in a weird way, made you want