American Fractal

Microcassette

56 Microcassette At first it was just a gift, the batteries not included, but wrapped neatly in a smaller box, a matching bow with the same generous loop of silver, its paper the same gaudy green. Try it out, she told him, and so he did. Is this the way I sound? he said. Is this the way I sound? it told him, and then he chuckled and learned the way he chuckled. He found that tapes were cheap and began taping everything. On his way to work he taped the car radio, the transmission shifting gears. At lunch it was the cafeteria, he taped the commotion and spent each afternoon untangling conversations from the squeaking chairs, the clattering trays. Sometimes he recorded his wife in bed in secret, and he hid those tapes in the garage. But what he loved most was his own voice, not the sound itself, but the newness of it, the mystery of a stranger knowing every last detail. The red light flickered for days, which broke perfectly into 90-minute intervals he labeled with a ballpoint pen. Soon 57 he realized that it wasn’t one voice in there, in his chest, but a whole colony of tones and inflections ready to rise up and serve its purpose. What a noble thing, he told the microphone, this army of voices always prepared. Words to his wife in public were different in the bedroom. Around men there was strength in Hello. Maybe he mumbled more than he’d like, and he wasn’t proud of the bar voice, but singing-inthe -shower voice often brought a tear to his eye. (His father voice grunted at the show of emotion.) How easily we slough the shell of our character, he said in the poet’s voice, lifting an invisible glass of sweet champagne—as if it were something to toast. ...