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He lay his erection on
Sanyo's warm copyboard glass, lowered the lid and was lovingly
enveloped in a generous cushion of polypropylene latex foam. He
made time for Sanyo, answering all her questions:
"Number of Copies?"
"2000"
"Contrast? "
"Medium"
"Magnification?"
"100%"
"Letter/Legal?"
"Legal"
"Collate?"
"Yes."
"Auto Staple?"
"Yes." Oh God, yes.
Her copy button went from red to green.
Jim carefully slid open Sanyo's control panel door and passed
his  hand
over it until he felt the warm glow of the copy button beneath
his fingertips. The button's heat sensor registered the subtle
rise in ambient temperature and set the paper rollers in motion
before Jim's finger even made contact with the button — as
if the copier had been awaiting his touch. Sanyo began to rumble
and throb.
The hot copy lamp passed back and forth
along the shaft of his penis. The photocopies fluttered one by
one along the hairs of his thighs as they collated. Struggling
to maintain control, Jim played with Sanyo's settings: he tweaked
the machine up to full contrast, cranked the magnification to
300 percent and flipped Sanyo's paper orientation to vertical.
The copy lamp burned more intensely and passed faster and faster
along his fully tumescent member. With the ejection of each photocopy,
Jim could hear Sanyo's self-lubricating motor squirt oil over
her paper pick-off fingers.
A red indicator light on Sanyo's top
panel blinked, "Toner Low." Their time together had been precious,
the Sanyo seemed to be saying, but like all things, it had its
bounds.
This was all the encouragement Jim needed.
He tightened his grip, thrust his pelvis hard against panel C
and reached orgasm, ejaculating across Sanyo's glass. And just
at the right time, too, for all at once Sanyo's engine powered
down and the copier lay still. She had run out of paper. Twelve
hundred and fifty-six copies, perfectly collated, and not a single
paper jam. What a machine.
The next day, something was unquestionably
amiss with the Sanyo. The copies were coming out poorly centered
and splotchy.
Frank, the repairman, didn't wait for
an introduction. He yanked Sanyo's panel A open and, brandishing
a mini-Maglite, boldly thrust his head inside. Jesus Christ! Jim
thought, He's feeling her up right here in the store! What does
he know of Sanyo? Does he come to work every morning, five-thirty,
sometimes five o'clock, after only an hour or two of sleep, simply
to be the first one to turn her on? Jim exhaled slowly. This man
was a specialist, he reassured himself, a surgeon of sorts. The
relationship between him and the Sanyo was purely professional.
Frank must see hundreds of similar photocopiers each day. No matter
what Frank did, Jim had to keep in mind, Sanyo was just a machine
to him — and nothing more.
Frank pulled a small handcrafted leather
tool pouch from his duffel bag and put on a pair of rubber gloves.
Jim was comforted — no direct contact would occur. "Remember,"
Frank said, waving a cotton swab for emphasis, "Never, ever touch
the machine drum." It all seemed proper enough: adding toner,
checking belts, rotating rollers. But then Frank pulled a brush
from his case, stroked it lightly against his tongue, spun the
hairs between thumb and forefinger and began painting Sanyo's
insides. Jim's chest was burning. Did Sanyo like that? Did she
like it when he puffed compressed air on her Corona insulator
block? When he sucked up loose toner with his vacuum nozzle? When
he lubricated her scanner shaft? Who wouldn't? An educated man's
touch like that?
"I found your problem." The repairman
emerged and held out his screwdriver, its blade covered with a
mucilaginous residue. Jim blushed and turned away. "You got some
kind of a buildup here on your charge wire assembly that's preventing
the toner from binding to the paper." He stuck his head back in
the machine. "It's possible you got a crack in the fuser oil tank
that's leaking and mixing with the lubricant. But don't hold me
to that." Frank stood and put his hands in his pockets in a gesture
of surrender, a film of grease and sweat covering his forehead.
"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to take this into the shop," he said.
The word hit Jim like a bullet. Who could
say how long Sanyo would be gone? And what if they decided it
would be easier just to replace her with another machine?
"We'll run some tests. The boys in the
shop'll find out what's troubling her."
Frank hunkered slowly back down to his
knees,  opened
panel C3 and was again lost within the machine. There was no way
around it. If Jim wanted to give the man a fair shot at fixing
Sanyo, he would simply have to tell him exactly what it was that
was keeping her from operating properly.
"Frank?"
"Yeah." He pulled a red handkerchief
from his rear pocket and re-emerged, wiping his nose. Jim knelt
down and said softly, "I have something to confess, Frank."
"Yes, Jim?"
"I was working late last night. Very
late."
"I see."
"Big copy job. I had that Sanyo humming.
Twelve-hundred fifty-six copies. Maybe it was too much for her
to handle at one time, but the copies, they were coming out so
clean — well centered, great contrast."
"Talk to me."
"So I was . . . I was lonely, you know."
"Of course you were. Nobody in the store.
You can tell me." |
