Facsimile

My boyfriend’s reasons for bringing home the fax machine were unclear. The insurance office where he worked was a curiosity of anachronism; Sergei and his colleagues wore wide collared shirts and polyester pants and saved their work on floppy disks. Their office was located in a former Masonic temple, and everything above the second floor was condemned. I was convinced it was a front for criminal activity.

My bad taste in men was unrelenting. Sergei always had spare cash and was hot-tempered, but in a buffoonish way, like the tertiary comic relief in a mafia movie. We met at a pontoon-themed dive bar while I waited for an online date who never turned up. In the floating fiberglass booth Sergei told me he had political aspirations; he wanted to be a senator. He was as senatorial as Incitatus. I saw this immediately and yet I gave him my number.

My bad taste in men was unrelenting. Sergei always had spare cash and was hot-tempered, but in a buffoonish way, like the tertiary comic relief in a mafia movie.

On our first date I went home with him, and the next morning he told me he didn’t like girls who were too easy. Every day after that he told me something he found lacking: how thoroughly I cleared my plate, how I looked in shorts, how I thought I was hot shit because I liked to read books he hadn’t heard of, how my eyes were too far apart. His nitpicking was hypnotic; there was something comforting about a person who thought I could only improve myself. It was like that expression about having children—the days were long but the years were short—and three years with Sergei passed like nothing. Unlike a child, he had made no significant developmental gains.

I knew he was having an affair with one of his coworkers at the insurance office. I had never met her, which was strange, because I went to his office all the time, hoping to sort out at least one of the mysteries of that place. But she only existed as a waft of perfume on his suits, a powdery rose that felt too elderly to be threatening. When I asked Sergei about the scent he held me against the wall with one hand and pushed his nose into my breastbone until I was sure we were both broken. Then one day that smell was gone, and a week later, he brought home the fax machine.

“It might come in handy,” he said as he put it beneath the desk in my home office. We didn’t even have a landline. My home office was a converted walk-in closet, and the fax machine took up a disproportionate amount of floor space. I used it as a foot rest until Sergei caught me and called me disrespectful. “What if you broke it?” he said.

One afternoon, as I re-heated some coffee in the kitchen, I heard the fax machine ring. A soft, pulsing emanation, like a moan. I went into my office but the fax machine was still as ever, a sullen monolith. When I told Sergei about it later that day, he said I was imagining things.

One afternoon, as I re-heated some coffee in the kitchen, I heard the fax machine ring. A soft, pulsing emanation, like a moan. I went into my office but the fax machine was still as ever, a sullen monolith. When I told Sergei about it later that day, he said I was imagining things.

But the machine continued to come alive when he was at work. It made a throat clearing sound, and a whirring, like it was going to send a transmission. Then nothing. The next day it made the whirring noise again, and there was something more confident about its timbre. It sounded as though it was getting ready to grab from the paper tray. I squatted next to the machine, awaiting its product, but nothing more happened.

I didn’t tell Sergei about these developments. I didn’t want to be accused of anything else, and it felt like a confidence he needed to be outside of. On impulse, I rested my cheek against the machine, and was surprised at its pliant softness. It had an unexpected smell, not like plastic and machinery, but something earthy and floral, like a garden.

On impulse, I rested my cheek against the machine, and was surprised at its pliant softness. It had an unexpected smell, not like plastic and machinery, but something earthy and floral, like a garden.

I cleared off a spot on my desk for the machine. I took out the rubbing alcohol and gently wiped its face and receiver, used a toothpick to remove the debris lodged in the spaces around its buttons. I put a fresh ream of paper in the tray. I called the phone company for a quote on a landline.

Sergei grew suspicious of my attachment to the machine. “Maybe I should bring it back to the office,” he said. He unplugged it despite my protests, and I thought I heard the machine inhale sharply. I tried to appear lighthearted, so he wouldn’t see how serious I was about keeping the machine. I went to playfully grab it back, but he was too strong for me, the forearms gripping the machine as hard as revolvers.

I followed Sergei to the front door and watched him walk outside with the fax machine. I could go into his office building when he wasn’t there, find where he had stashed it. I could take it and leave everything else behind. I regretted my previous attitude toward the machine: it was clear that whatever happened to her could also happen to me. There was a crashing sound outside followed by a terrible silence.

She was on the sidewalk, her beautiful face shattered. I saw one piece of paper sticking out from her tray. This gesture gripped me. She was trying to give me what I wanted, even as she was being destroyed. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, her blocky form surprisingly light, as if all the substance had gone out of her. Sergei was saying something behind me, but I couldn’t hear any of it.

He had destroyed her, and would destroy me, if I gave him the chance. I suppose I always knew this, but it took seeing her broken body to understand that I didn’t want this for myself. I opened my car door and put her in the backseat, buckled her in. We might still get out of this together.