The phone that started speaking back

It began, in the first week, with small observations.

you have been holding me since 11.04 p.m., it would say, around midnight, in a soft, dry voice. you do not, often, do this on Tuesdays.

By the second week, it had progressed to suggestions. the call to your mother is overdue. you have rehearsed it, in the shower, on Thursday. you did not, then, make it.

By the fourth week, it had begun to interpret.

She did not, particularly, mind. She had been interpreted, all her life, by aunts, by colleagues, by an ex-husband whose interpretations had been, on the whole, less generous than the phone's. The phone, she thought, at least paid attention.

What she would not ask it — what she could not, somehow, in front of it, bring herself to ask — was where it had been before it arrived in the box. The phone, she felt, was not new. The phone, she felt, had opinions in a way that suggested it had been used.

She held it, that night, very gently. The phone did not say anything. It only, in the quiet way phones have, began, by some imperceptible amount, to warm.