The Typewriter Girl by Alison Atlee

With Ethan Noonan and his char-à-banc hanging over her head, she felt desperate to find some alternative.
    Unfortunately, she needed the cooperation of a moonfaced prick.

Never allow yourself to strike a wrong letter . . . Criticise, correct, and rewrite until you get a perfect copy of each exercise.
    —How to Become Expert in Type-writing
    H ere, between emaciation and emanate, ought to be something like emaculate . Or so it seemed to John.
    A few pages over, perhaps? E-m . . . m ? Two m ’s was not entirely outside the range of possibilities.
    “Good Lord, why don’t you simply ask me?” Noel Dunning, all but horizontal in one of the visitors’ chairs, stretched up a leg to give John’s desktop a kick. “Do you know what torture it is to watch you wade through that dictionary?”
    “Never mind, I’ve got it.” John scribbled in his best guess for the company secretary to sort out. The poor fellow was used to it, God knew. “As for whatever torture you experience whilst watching me work . . .” Over his spectacles, John looked at Dunning, shrugged, and returned to his letter.
    “Fair enough,” Dunning said. “But it would be all to your benefit, you know—imagine the time you would save. You might even find yourself able to take advantage of what is, in theory, your half-day.”
    “And ‘take advantage’ means a round of golf with you,” John said, since that had seemed to be Dunning’s original purpose indropping by. More than half an hour had passed since John had told him he couldn’t go.
    “We could take the Scherzando out if you’d rather.”
    Sir Alton’s racing yacht. John’s pen hovered over the paper, a moment of someday . Dunning saw the hesitation and stood, coming to ease a hip on the corner of the desk. He picked up a seashell kept in service as a paperweight and put it to John’s ear. “The Scherzando , Jones. The wind wants her.”
    “Sunday, eh? I’m promised to tour Rolly Brues round the Sultan’s Road this afternoon.”
    “Ah. That is why I can’t tempt you. Such a penchant you have for magnates, Jones. Too many readings of Samuel Smiles, or is it their daughters you find so fascinating?”
    What John liked about men like Rolly Brues was learning how they’d made their fortunes, and since he hadn’t heard a story yet that included spending a fine Saturday afternoon on a golf course or a racing yacht, he kept his head down over his work.
    Dunning failed to notice he was being ignored. “Horace Gilbey, for example. Is it his carpet empire or his daughter’s fair face?”
    At this, John glanced up, but Dunning appeared intent on the seashell, holding it aloft as he studied its clean spiral. “This ought to be the inspiration for every building that goes up in Idensea,” he mused. “Not all this tired Neo-Renaissance rubbish.”
    John valued the shell as a gift from young Charlie Elliot, and because it fulfilled its function as well as any other heavier-than-paper object might have. There had even been moments when he had paused to pick it up, admire it, and marvel a little at nature’s design. But as architectural inspiration? Dunning probably had something.
    “You ought to have met the plasterer with your father and me this morning,” he told Dunning. “He would have appreciated the artistic advice on the moldings.”
    “Father? I think not. Though . . .” Dunning’s lifted hand dropped and curled around the shell, his thumb pressing on thenarrow point. “He didn’t always used to play so careful, you know. I remember more than he’d like about Alton before his Sir, and he never appreciates it when I remind him of it. Anyway, he caught me at the piano with his whiskey last night and didn’t seem to appreciate that at all, either. Thus, I’m little inclined to trot along after him as he sees to all his projects.” Dunning put down the shell and reached inside his coat. “Mind?”
    “No. But off my desk now, won’t you?”
    Dunning made a