than the blue screen, turning the machine off seems like an admission of
defeat.
He needs to be Martin Stillwater, which means he needs to write.
The man. The man was. The man was tall with blue eyes and blond hair,
wearing a blue suit and white shirt and red tie, about thirty-years old,
and he didn’t know what he was doing in the room that he entered.
Damn. No good. The man. The man. The man . . .
He needs to write, but every attempt to do so leads quickly to
frustration. Frustration soon spawns anger. The familiar pattern.
Anger generates a specific hatred for the computer, a loathing of it,
and also a less focused hatred of his unsatisfactory position in the
world, of the world itself and every one of its inhabitants. He needs
so little, so pathetically little, just to belong, to be like other
people, to have a home and a family, to have a purpose that he
understands.
Is that so much? Is it? He does not want to rub elbows with the high
and mighty, dine with socialites. He is not asking for fame.
After much struggle, confusion, and loneliness, he now has a home and
wife and two children, a sense of direction, a destiny, but he feels it
slipping away from him, through his fingers. He needs to be Martin
Stillwater, but in order to be Martin Stillwater, he needs to be able to
write, and he can’t write, can’t write, damn it all, can’t write.
He knows the street layout of Kansas City, other cities, and he knows
all about weaponry, about picking locks, because they seeded that
knowledge in him–whoever “they” are–but they haven’t seen fit also to
implant the knowledge of how to write mystery novels, which he needs, oh
so desperately needs, if he is ever to be Martin Stillwater, if he is to
keep his lovely wife, Paige, and his daughters and his new destiny,
which is slipping, slipping, slipping through his fingers, his one
chance at happiness swiftly evaporating, because they are against him,
all of them, the whole world, set against him, determined to keep him
alone and confused. And why? Why? He hates them and their
schemes and their faceless power, despises them and their machines with
such bitter intensity that- –with a shriek of rage, he slams his fist
through the dark screen of the computer, striking out at his own fierce
reflection almost as much as at the machine and all that it represents.
The sound of shattering glass is loud in the silent house, and the
vacuum inside the monitor pops simultaneously with a brief hiss of
invading air.
He withdraws his hand from the ruins even as fragments of glass are
still clinking onto the keyboard, and he stares at his bright blood.
Sharp slivers bristle from the webs between his fingers and from a
couple of knuckles. An elliptical shard is embedded in the meat of his
palm.
Although he is still angry, he is gradually regaining control of
himself. Violence sometimes soothes.
He swivels the chair away from the computer to face the opposite side of
the U-shaped work area, where he leans forward to examine his wounds in
the light of the stained-glass lamp. The glass thorns in his flesh
sparkle like jewels.
He is experiencing only mild pain, and he knows it will soon pass. He
is tough and resilient, he enjoys splendid recuperative powers.
Some of the fragments of the screen have not pierced his hand deeply,
and he is able to pry them out with his fingernails. But others are
firmly wedged in the flesh.
He pushes the chair away from the desk, gets to his feet, and heads for
the master bathroom. He will need tweezers to extract the more stubborn
splinters.
Although he bled freely at first, already the flow is subsiding.
Nevertheless he holds his arm in the air, his hand straight up, so the
blood will trickle down his wrist and under the sleeve of his shirt
rather than drip on the carpet.
After he has plucked out the glass, perhaps he will telephone Paige at
work again.
He was so excited when he found her office number on the Rolodex in his