The window fan was a machine that moved hot air from inside the apartment to outside the apartment where there was already hot air. The fan did not cool anything. The fan redistributed heat. The fan was a politician of appliances. The fan promised relief and delivered motion and the motion felt like relief if you did not think about it too hard.

The fan had three speeds. Low was a hum that disappeared into the background after ten minutes. Medium was a drone that covered the sound of the street. High was a roar that covered the sound of everything including the fan itself. High was the setting you used when the argument came through the wall or the siren came through the window or the temperature came through the ceiling. High was the setting that said I do not want to hear the world right now and the world said I do not care what you want and the fan said I will stand between you.

The fan lived in the window from June to September. The fan was seasonal the way birds are seasonal except the fan did not migrate. The fan sat in a box in the closet from October to May and the box collected dust and the dust was a calendar. The thickness of the dust on the box told you how many months until the fan came out again. In January the dust was thick and the summer was far. In May the dust was being wiped off and the summer was close. The fan emerged from the closet the first night the apartment was too hot to sleep and the fan was always too late because the apartment had been too hot to sleep for a week before anybody admitted it.

The fan blades collected a film of grease and dust that was a record of every meal cooked in that apartment since June. The grease from the bacon in July. The dust from the open window in August. The pollen from the tree on the sidewalk in September. The fan blade was a diary written in grime and nobody read it. The landlord never cleaned the fan. The tenant never cleaned the fan. The fan cleaned itself in the sense that the fan blew the grime into the air and the grime settled on every surface in the apartment and the surfaces were the pages the diary ended up on.

I played guitar in my apartment with the fan on high and the fan changed the sound of the guitar. The fan added a vibrato that was not mine. The fan was a collaborator I had not invited. The air from the fan moved the strings and the strings moved the air and the air and the strings had a conversation that I was part of but did not control. The fan was the only musician I ever played with who had no ego and no talent and no intention and still changed the song.