Down at Dale's 24 Copy Corner, it was the same old, same old with me working the night shift, listening to Ling Lee babble about her old Hindi lover, and me being loveless.  The only thing different was this security system.  The owner ordered it, and some guys showed up, and plugged it in.  It was a late model, and a piece of junk.  Each time a copier heard the music interpreted by a series of clicks, she had to run over, and change the tape in the video camera.

"How's this supposed to protect us?" Ling Lee asked.

"It records what's going on, like at the big stores.  It's based on the same model.  Just make sure you change the tape," he warned.  He wasn't the friendly sort, just the average, let-me-get-the-job-done kind of person.  When he finished, he grabbed his toolbox, and handed it over to his assistant, who checked over the tools, and eyed Ling Lee a few times.

When their van pulled away, Ling Lee stared straight into the camera, and shouted, "That little assistant was too good looking.  I could use some assisting myself."  Then, she clicked her tongue like the security system, and touched her curly hair, in a sexy kind of way.  I rolled my eyes and filled empty paper bins.

Now all our conversations, if they weren't in a whisper, and our movements, if we weren't taking down our drawers in the toilet, were recorded.  Whatever I said about Raul or anything else, someone would know.  It worried me.  I tried to whisper to Ling Lee, or pull her arm, so she had to lean into me, but it was useless.  She kept telling me to talk louder, stop tugging on her, and reading lips wasn't her talent.

"Tell me about your mother and Raul.  Do you miss them?" Ling Lee asked, when the only two customer were two high glue sniffing students trying to copy their hands and faces on the color copier.

"I do miss her, and I don't about him.  Raul isn't the kind of feeling I can point my finger too," I answered, scanning over the newspaper's weather forecast.  Chicago was a degree warmer than Joliet.  Raul loved sunny days.  He said he loved to see my sunny face.  He loved the rain, too.  It meant we'd go to a matinee without my mother who hated to ruined her hair.

"'Night, y'all.  Take it easy," Ling Lee said, when the kids slapped down their money on the copier machine.

Click.  Click.  Click went the security system.

"Why you always moody about Raul?  The difference is how you make out in the end.  And you are making out all right.  You get me?" Ling Lee said, like I was a big fish she was a reeling in.

Ling Lee was a nosy woman, and a steamed up, big talker who could spot trouble for everyone else but herself.  She knew men, but not in spurts.  Ali's daddy had squeezed though Ling Lee's life, leaving her memories of a blue stone ring.  When it came down to it, she was a lost in flickers of candlelight on those creased pages of her Chinese paperbacks.  But, she was generous with me.  How she talked the words were sweet as a summer melon, that I never took it for anything more than, whittling away the time.

"Aren't ya gonna change the tape?" I asked.

A customer came in.  The bells over the door rang.  Twinkle.  Twing, Twang.  Ling Lee went over to the cash register and straightens out her apron.  When she came back from showing him how to use the regular copy machine, I remember thinking, how the hell do you explain Raul?  It wasn't like I like it.  No one ever does the first time.  But then it kept happening.  At first, I was too scared to tell my mother.  Then, after awhile, it didn't exactly feel that bad, and I was too scared not to say no.  I just didn't know what I felt or what those feeling made me.

The man wanted to make thirty copies first in black and white, then in color.  When he got frustrated the first time there was a paper jam, Ling Lee fixed it then sat down.  Neither one of us changed the tape.

I scanned over the Help Wanted ads.  Maybe something better was in there.  I gotta move up, and leave the carbon copies behind, I tried to convince myself, even though, my eyes wandered toward the out of city limits section.  I remember at an ad looking for an office worker in a dentist office.

See, that's kind of how I was before, trying to make a clean break but at the same time teetering back to my old life, like lopsided toy top.  Then, I didn't really see things in splits, even though, Raul was the first one to split me up.

"You mind bringin' some nicer paper.  This is crap," Ling Lee's customer called over his shoulder.  When Ling Lee didn't jump up, he called out again.

His voice was strange.  He seemed to be saving up everything in him.  All his anger, and nuttiness, and disappointment he flung out at Ling Lee, for having crap paper.

Ling Lee rolled her eyes as if to say you ass in is in Dal's Copy Corner not some place that cares.

"I'll go.  You get the tape.  They're gonna have our asses if you don't," I whispered.

"I'm gonna just after this, " Ling Lee said, touching her pocket where she kept her extra long cigarettes.

"Here you go," I said, putting the A4, linen white paper next to his other copies.

The customer turned his head and stared.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked, real smooth, like a sneaky alley cat.  I noticed right away, how clean-cut he tried to be with his striped tie and yellow shirt.  Still, his voice threw me off.  Then, I noticed his eyebrows.  I looked at his doughy hands, his dirty fingernails.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I stammered.

Ling Lee made a move over with a B4 linen white paper in her hand.  Her mouth twitched.  She gave him the once over, trying to figure out what was going on.

If I close my eyes, I can see his yellow teeth with brown edges at the incisors, and the way his lips moved, how his voice escaped out of his throat like helium in a balloon.

"Hey, won't you like to try B4 size?  It will make the image bigger and on bigger paper.  This here someone you know, Miss Swanee?" she cooed.

"No, Ling Lee."

"Yeah.  You wanna know something?" he asked, drilling his eyes into me.

"I'm not interested," I whispered, and turned to walk away.

Then, so quick, his arm shot out and grabbed my wrist, and jerked me down.  The smell little of onion and ground meat dug into my skin.  And that's when I saw it.  The black butt of it inside his pocket.  I caught a glimpse of his mouth.  It was wedged open in a wide 'O' like his lips were caught on barbwire.  I saw Ling Lee crouch down and shuffled backwards toward the phone.

I tried to twist my arm away but I fell into him and then, somehow, it shot off.  And no body moved.  Then it went off again, and again, until I heard a ringing in my ear so loud, I thought I was trapped in a car horn.

I stood listening to that ringing fade into Ling Lee whimpering until, there was nothing, except the click, click, click of the security tape.

I don't know why it happened, like it did.

My lawyers said it was the missing security tape.  The other side said it was the missing money.  It's like running into a brick wall.  My body was stopped, stone stopped but, my mind kept sprinting along, my ghost feet pounding the pavement.

It was just too fast.  In a snap, it vanished.  Now, there is nothing else but, this tiny room, this orange suit, and these tin plates, that yelling woman.