Xerographer

     I worked in a public library in the 1980s.  For about a year, nearly every day, a fellow named Mike, about thirty years old, would come in, use the copy machine and come to the circulation desk, handing over a dime (it wasn't a coin-operated machine).
     "One big copy," he'd say, and leave.
     He said the same three words every time.  I got used to it, but now it seems strange, because when I contemplate what seem to me to be mechanical actions performed by humans, I wonder if there's a robotic wish inside people's minds.  The life of a machine is predictable until it finds a way to malfunction.  A car crapping out on you is usually a surprise, especially in temporal terms.
     "Why now?" we ask the inanimate object.
     Had Mike ever not said, "One big copy," would I have been twisted suddenly into a groove of speculation?
     What's wrong with Mike?  He handed me the dime, as usual, but the words, so unnecessary, make me uneasy in their lack of expression.
     One thing I never wondered about, although I do now, was what he was copying.  Was it work-related?  I gathered that he had a job somewhere nearby, and had to make a copy of some memo or other office-related document.  If so, he worked in a place that had no copy machine, a peculiar lack for any business in the 1980s.  Maybe Mike worked for himself?
     A clue came by when he once checked out a book and produced his library card.  On the screen I saw and recognized his last name.  I knew my first high school girlfriend had married a fellow with the same two names as my one-copy-a-day customer.  I knew they had children together.  This man, who possessed the quick energy and also the physique of the young Michael J. Fox, knew the same woman I had known several years before.  Our tongues had Frenched the same tongue.
     How often do we encounter people who know people we knew, and were close to?  Is it always a good idea to reveal a connection?  In this case, I said nothing about her to Mike.  His intimacy, his family connection, his marriage to this woman, who gave me my first kiss, were less interesting to me than his predictable use of the library's copy machine.
     I imagine Mike one day leaving behind the page copied under the document cover.  I go to it and examine the sheet, because by then, he's done this routine hundreds of times.  I'm unable to quell my curiosity.  I lift the sheet, turn it over, turn it over again, and find that it's blank.  If this were a movie, that's how I'd end it.

                                                                                Vic Neptune