Laptops and Sprouts : Writers Still Wax Creative in Cafe Settings, but Their Note Pads Are Relics of the Past

It’s been almost a month since the Mark Fuhrman tapes were first excerpted in the Simpson courtroom, but something about Laura Hart McKinny, his interrogator, still itches at the back of my skull. I mean Fuhrman, sure--he makes even Pat Buchanan supporters feel like that police chief in the Dirty Harry movies who suspends Clint Eastwood from the force. The female homicide cop at my favorite downtown lunch counter shudders whenever somebody mentions Fuhrman’s name. “He’s a good cop,” she’ll say when pressed, “but he’s an incredible creep.” That’s probably the nicest thing I’ve heard anybody say about the guy.

Something about it all bothers me, and it’s not just that almost everyone I know flashes that funny two-handed, two-finger hand sign whenever a news reader refers to McKinny as a “screenwriter.” The signal, implied quotation marks, are meant to separate her from screenwriters who have written something that actually made it to the screen. It’s probably not her sobs or even the look of pain that creeps over McKinny’s face every time the camera pans her way--that same look Sally Struthers gets on those commercials she does for vocational institutes.

McKinny met Fuhrman when she was writing on a laptop in a Westwood hippie cafe, a vestige of the ‘60s that survived well into the ‘80s. It is difficult to imagine a guy like Fuhrman frequenting a mung-bean palace, even if he happened to be in the mood for an avocado sandwich with soy bacon and alfalfa sprouts. (As I recall, Alice’s menu included sections labeled “Munchies” and “Booze!”.) And if Fuhrman did show up there once in a while, perhaps indulging a thing for women in Indian-print dresses, you’d think he’d have figured out that sprout eaters aren’t turned on by vulgarity-laced racist screeds violent enough to make a Grand Kleagle blush. But then maybe he’s as clever as Johnny Cochran makes him out to be. He approached a strange woman with a laptop, and she ended up writing a movie about his life.

This brings us to the essential question about McKinny: What kind of person brings her laptop to a cafe? Would Simone de Beauvoir have dragged a Compaq to Cafe Flore? Has some goateed equivalent of Hemingway already left his Toshiba on a bus, his breakthrough novel on the hard drive and no back-up floppy to be found? Would Fuhrman have approached McKinny if she had been jotting her thoughts into a Hello Kitty note pad?

Actually, writing in a cafe can be pleasant, with just enough going on to dispel the essential loneliness of the act, the warm hum of caffeine masquerading itself as creative energy flowing through your pen. I’m writing this in a cafe right now, as a matter of fact. The shiny spot on the paper was caused by the third-best croissant I’ve ever tasted. And that cappuccino stain--let’s just say that if I’d been using a laptop at the moment, the display would have shorted into a shower of ampersands. But there’s something about a laptop in a cafe that can summon up every Luddite fantasy a person has ever had.

Sure, there are lots of laptops in lots of cafes in Los Angeles: sleek Powerbooks stuffed with screenplays, and old Radio Shack jobbies vibrating with poetry. Laptops are as common in some Westside cafes as they are on airplanes. They’re the perfect accessory for dudes as interested in having the world know that they’re writers as they are in getting words down on the screen.

Unlike Fuhrman, I have never approached a laptop user. I’ve always been afraid that someone compelled to word-process in a coffeehouse might be the kind of person who tells you she’s really excited about Windows 95 because of its improved multitasking capability. And the multitasking she has in mind involves shuttling back and forth between an inventory of her Laura Nyro LPs and the game of computer solitaire that’s taken up most of her spare time since the year she dropped out of grad school.

And come to think of it, I haven’t eaten an alfalfa sprout in years.