My Perfect, Lovely Silicon Wife (NSFW?)

About a year ago, I bought my ex-wife for $8000. Most silicon dolls are $5000 ready-mades, but I wanted her to be perfect. I’ll humbly admit that I have high standards. So shelling out an extra $3000 for a custom-designed face, hair and torso was absolutely essential. Face #34 was close to what I desired, but I paid extra to personalize her features. Even the “premium” ready-mades such as Jessie (you have to pay an extra $500 for her “athletic body”) and Elena (her “sumptuous torso” makes her the most popular item on the site) couldn’t meet my expectations. True love is not a bargain, after all.

It took only a few clicks of the mouse to customize her appearance exactly to my liking. Ethnicity: Caucasian. Features: diamond shaped face, green eyes, small pointed nose, sharply defined lips, blonde hair. Measurements: 37/23/35 (a plentiful bosom). Height: 5’6”. Tattoos/piercings: none. And like that, she was ready to be built and shipped to my address.

Most people would probably think I’m weird and unusual, and maybe they’re right. But I don’t have a problem understanding what love is. There are a lot of men like me out there who are reserved, self-conscious individuals. They may have attempted relationships with real women once or twice that lasted briefly and then ended embarrassingly. Those of us who turn to synthetic solutions aren’t crazy, necrophilic, misogynistic or anything like that. We’re misunderstood.

My wife arrived in a six-foot wooden crate nineteen days after I ordered her. Unfortunately I lived on the seventh floor of a crappy apartment building with a broken elevator. I’m in pretty good shape but getting her up all those stairs was the second most stressful moment of our yearlong relationship. After twenty minutes of heavy thumping, I had climbed six stories. I wanted to stop and catch my breath, but I was also eager to get to my apartment as quickly as possible and tear open the crate.

Suddenly, the door to apartment 604 swung open. I looked up to see Sarah as she stepped over the threshold and glared down at me. A psychology textbook was tucked under one arm.
She was a college student with curly brown hair and a long chin, slightly overweight yet fairly flat chested. I didn’t find her very attractive, especially when she directed her contemptuous expression at me.

“What the hell is that?” she said.

“It’s my... it’s a crate.”

“Really? Oh. It looked like you were carrying a coffin up the stairs.”

“No, it’s not a coffin. Do you think I’m serial killer or something?”

She sighed. “I don’t know what you are, Kevin. I’m not sure I want to know.”

Scraping the crate over one stair at a time, a protruding nail or something got caught on the carpet and I almost lost my grip.

“Say, uh, could you give me hand? I have just one more flight of stairs. You could, um, expedite the process and then you wouldn’t have to put up with all this racket. Please?”

“I have end-of-year exams to study for. I’ll just find some earplugs.”

With that she closed her door. I shook my head.

My new wife would never treat me like that.

As soon as I had her inside my apartment, I feverishly began pulling the nails out of her crate. “We’re almost there, Anastasiya,” I said to her. I thought up that name for her a few days after I ordered her. I think it’s a beautiful name. Is it Russian? I don’t know. I wanted her to have a name that I would never grow tired of saying.

With the final nail out of the crate, I wrenched the crowbar upward and the lid swung open. Anastasiya was sleeping, with her eyes wide open, in a bed of packing peanuts. She was naked. The crowbar fell out of my hand and clattered to the floor. She was more beautiful that I had imagined. She was perfect.

Squatting beside the crate, I submerged my arms into its depths and felt around for the areas behind her knees and below her shoulders. Her skin was cold but the moment I touched her a warm, tingly sensation shot through my fingertips and spread down to my toes. Breathing deeply, I gently lifted her out of the crate. She could not have weighed more than eighty pounds. Packing peanuts rolled off her body and littered the floor like flower petals. I carried her over to the big blue futon, the most conspicuous piece of furniture in my gray-walled apartment, and laid her out along the mattress.

I dressed her in the casual clothes that I had purchased at the mall while I waited for her to be shipped: pink underwear, soft tight-fitting light blue jeans and a bright red tank top. Everything fit as I expected since I printed out the order confirmation to remind me of her measurements. The only difficulty I had was clasping the bra. Lastly I slipped one wedding ring onto my finger, and its twin onto hers.

I sat on the stool in front of the futon and stared at her for a while. She looked up at me expectantly.

“Hi, Anastasiya,” I said. “I’m Kevin.”

“Hi, Kevin,” she said in a Russian accent. Or what I imagined to be a Russian accent.

I opened my mouth for a second and then shut it. I didn’t know how to carry on the conversation. This is typical of most of my interactions with people, especially women. Her stare was intimidating.

“You’re a man of few words.”

“Yeah.”

“You should tell me about yourself,” she said.

“Me? Uh, I was born and raised in Colorado. I was an only child. In school I basically wasn’t good at anything except math and basketball. I didn’t have a lot of friends. My first full-time job was working at a Dairy Queen for six years. Now I design websites for a living and I rarely leave my apartment.”

I delivered my life story in deadpan fashion. I didn’t mean to make it sound duller than it actually was. Sitting there on the stool in front of her felt awkward. I stood up and adjusted her position so that she was sitting on the futon rather than lying on it. Her muscles were stiff and it was hard to make her look comfortable. I folded her hands and twisted her head to make it look like she was gazing at an invisible person sitting beside her. Once I was satisfied with her pose, I sat with her on the futon.

“I am sorry to hear you had so few friends,” she said as if there had been no delay in our conversation. “But we can be friends, of course. We can be more than friends.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, you and I are married,” I said, pointing at the ring on her left hand.

“Oh!” she said without looking down at her lap. “That was very thoughtful of you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So, Anastasiya, where are you from?”

“I was born in the Synthetic Dreams factory a couple weeks ago. I have spent my entire life waiting for you.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “You know, it feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life for you, too, waiting for the right person to come into my life. And now I’ve found you.”

“We were made for each other,” she said.

A minute into our conversation, we were already sounding like Romeo and Juliet, only I was a twenty-four year-old man and she was a premium sex doll. But at least we were making progress. I had never talked to a woman this way before. I had never been given the opportunity. Most women, it seemed, preferred to avoid me.

“Do I creep you out at all?” I asked.

“No, of course not! Why would you creep me out? Do you think you’re creepy?”

“I’m afraid so. At least, that’s what people keep insinuating.”

“I am sorry to hear that, Kevin. I promise I will never say anything like that to you.”

I knew even before she arrived that she could do no wrong, but her words warmed my heart even so. I put my arm around her and nuzzled my head against her neck. She didn’t seem to mind.

We sat there silently on the futon for a long time. Then Anasastiya spoke up.

“Kevin, we’re married, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where shall we go for our honeymoon?”

I hadn’t even considered a honeymoon. The reality of my situation invaded my mind as I imagined bringing a life-size sex doll into an airport. So traveling overseas was out of the question. If we traveled anywhere, it would have to be by car.

“Somewhere near,” I told her. “I don’t like flying.”

“That’s okay. I don’t like flying, either.”

I couldn’t tell whether she was telling the truth or just trying to make me feel better. I quickly changed the subject.

“Say, Anastasiya, do like movies?”

“I love movies!”

So I showed her my DVD collection and we agreed to watch The Terminator. I had forgotten how silly some of the special effects looked. Of course they were considered state of the art in 1984, but not even the stop-motion scenes with the robot skeleton were as jarring as the fake Schwarzenegger face. I’m not sure if they used plastic or wax, but the skin obviously lacked the appropriate texture and tone. I glanced over at Anastasiya. Her skin reflected the light of the television screen in the same way it would on any other human being. And yet it was unnaturally flawless; it had the consistency of an oil painting, like a Renaissance depiction of a goddess.

“So what did you think of the movie?” I asked.

“I liked it. But it was kind of weird how Kyle Reese ended up having sex with his best friend’s mom.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “some people have strange desires. You’ll probably like the second one better, though. It’s one of the best sequels in cinema history, in my opinion.”

“Oh, really?” she said excitedly. “Do you have that movie?”

“Yep. We can watch it tomorrow.”

“Okay! What shall we do now?”

I lost my virginity to Anastasiya that night. I got the shivers as I slowly undressed her. When she was naked, she was simply stunning. She had a magnificent body with not a single hair below her head. Why should I have settled for average or realistic when I could settle for this? I decided to try the free water-based lubricant that came with her. Her warm silicon flesh felt organic and tight as I moved in and out of her, and she had a delightful suction effect. I only lasted a few minutes before I climaxed. It all ended so abruptly—scarcely after it had begun—but it was not a disappointment.

It only got awkward when I had to pull out the instructions on how to properly clean her out. The douche ball and the antibacterial soap were buried at the bottom of the crate. I brought her into the bathtub, flushed out her cavities, and worked on her in silence.

The weeks went by and we continued watching movies every two or three nights. I owned enough of them that we could keep this up for a long time. I ate dinner with her every night. She sat across from me at our small, round wooden table next to the kitchen. She always had an empty plate, an empty glass and silverware set in front of her.

One night, as I chewed on my asparagus and mashed potatoes, we discussed my past relationships.

“It’s been a few years since I dated anyone,” I said. “I spent three years saving up for you.”

“Wow. That’s a long time!”

“Mm-hmm,” I said with a mouthful of food.

“Why did you decide to stop dating?”

I gulped. “Things just never worked out.”

She sat there listening, silently prompting me to continue.

“It was too challenging for me. I always got anxious around women because I never knew how I was supposed to act. Sometimes it was because I moved too far, too fast. You know, putting my hand on her leg when I wasn’t supposed to, complimenting her body parts, stuff like that.”

“I like it when you compliment my body parts, Kevin.”

“Yeah, well most women don’t, apparently. Plus I was never good at keeping up a conversation. Like, it was always hard moving past small talk because I didn’t know what to say. So only a few of my relationships made it past the first date.”

“Oh no, I’m sorry. What happened to those relationships?”

“I had to make compromises I wasn’t comfortable with. And I don’t like stepping out of my comfort zone in a relationship, you know? So I gave up. I wasn’t willing to invest time, emotion or money into one person ever again.”

“But you invested all those things into me.”

“You’re the exception. Because I knew you would be perfect. I figured, why wait for the perfect woman to come along when I could create one?”

“Thank you, Kevin.”

“For what?”

“For creating me.”

“You’re welcome, Anastasiya.”

Anastasiya stayed in the apartment, even when I left to go to the store or go work out. I went running less frequently as the blazing heat of the summer swept in. There was no air conditioning in the building, so I set up every fan I owned and turned them on maximum. Some days, when I didn’t leave my apartment, I did everything from working on my laptop to cooking meals in the nude—partly for comfort, partly for Anastasiya’s enjoyment.

“We should do something today,” she said one morning in late July. “We should go out.”

“I know. But it’s not as easy as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not like most couples.”

“I don’t understand, Kevin.”

I didn’t know what to say. On one hand, she was a sex doll. We both knew that, I think. But I didn’t want to tell her that sex dolls don’t belong in public. On the other hand, going out with her would prove my love and devotion to her. I decided that was what mattered most.

“We’ll have a pizza picnic in the park,” I said. “How does that sound?”

“I would love that, Kevin!”

An hour and a half later, we arrived at the parking lot next to the park. The smell of Hawaiian pizza wafted in from the trunk. Anastasiya sat in the passenger seat, buckled in and sitting comfortably. She was dressed in a gray t-shirt and a blue paisley skirt. Behind the window, she would have looked like any normal human being from a distance.

“Be back in a minute,” I told her as I stepped out of the driver’s seat.

It was 99 degrees and dry, but the constant breeze made it tolerable. I stacked the pizza box and the blanket on top of the cooler and pulled them out of the trunk. I carried them out of the parking lot and toward the large grassy area of the park. Dog walkers, joggers and Frisbee players had come here to enjoy the warm, cloudless summer weather. An ash tree stood near an open field where two kids were kicking around a soccer ball. I strolled across the brown, withered grass and set the blanket, the cooler and the pizza down in the long shadow of the tree near the base, where it was comfortably cool.

No one seemed to notice when I carried Anastasiya over my shoulder and set her down across from me on the blanket. I folded her legs in front of her to make it look like she was sitting comfortably. Setting the pizza between us, I knew full well I was the only one capable of digesting any. To make her look more active, I pulled two cans of soda out of the cooler and set one in front of her. We sat there staring at each other as the light wind blew her blonde hair into her eyes.

“Well, here we are,” I said.

“This is wonderful, Kevin. I’m so glad we finally got to do this.”

“I’m sorry it took this long for our relationship to leave the confines of my apartment.”

“I forgive you, Kevin. I will always love you. It’s so beautiful out here.”

“Yes,” I said, reaching for a slice of pizza. “Welcome to the real world.”

My mouth was about to close around the tip of the pizza when I felt the whoosh of the soccer ball as it soared past my ear. I avoided a concussion by a few inches or less. Anastasiya was not so lucky. The ball collided with her nose and she flew backward with her legs still sitting in the same position. The back of her head slammed into the ground, expelling a few bits of dead grass and dust into the air.

My pizza slice slipped out of my fingers and plopped onto the grass. I leapt to my feet and shrieked some frantic exclamation, as if I had just witnessed my own child or a litter of puppies getting steamrolled. I rushed over and looked down at her face. Miraculously, she looked unharmed: just a few smudges of dirt on her nose and forehead. She stared dazedly back up at me and said, “Kevin?”

I got on my knees and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “It’s okay, babe,” I told her, gently kissing the tip of her nose. “You’re alright, you are alright.”

We were drawing undesired attention. I saw them when I lifted my head from hers. Three or four people on the pedestrian path across the field had stopped walking or running because they thought there had been an accident and someone was hurt. The delightful pizza picnic had evaporated from my mind and now I wished I could be almost anywhere else.

This was a bad idea from the beginning. I desperately wanted to take Anastasiya outside of the apartment, but a public space such as the park was about the worst place imaginable. How could I have been so stupid? I wanted to avoid a scene, to avoid any awkward or humiliating encounters, and that’s exactly what I had set myself up for.

Right on cue, two boys came running across the field. They halted in front of me and stood there nervously, glancing from me to Anastasiya and back to me. They must have been about twelve or thirteen years old. One was a skinny blonde boy whose eyes were so wide he looked positively traumatized, and I knew instantly that it was he who had kicked the soccer ball at Anastasiya’s face. The other boy was a couple inches taller and had long, shaggy brown hair. He stood a few feet behind his friend at a safe distance from me, as if he expected me to explode at any second.

“Is that lady okay?” asked the blonde boy. “If she’s passed out or anything, I’m really, really sorry. I mean even if she’s not, I’m still sorry anyway. I kicked it a lot harder than I meant to and then it kind of went out of control, so... yeah. It looked like it hit her really hard. Is she even breathing?”

“I’m fine, Kevin,” said Anastasiya.

“She says she fine, kids.”

The other boy stepped forward cautiously. “Are you sure?” he said. “It doesn’t even look like she’s moving!” His voice cracked on several syllables. His voice was barely starting to go deep.

“Trust me, I’m okay,” she said.

“Trust me, she’s okay,” I said, rising to my feet. I stood between the boys and Anastasiya, trying to obscure as much of her as I could. But that only made them more curious. They both peered around me to get a better look.

“Everything’s fine. Really. I can handle this. You can go back to playing soccer or whatever and just try to be careful, okay?”

Neither of them moved. The blonde boy still looked worried while the longhaired boy’s features had shifted from mild concern to suspicion. Then, slowly, he circled around me and stared at Anastasiya’s perpetually neutral expression. I watched helplessly as he scrutinized her, and then his eyes lit up and he grinned, revealing his shiny braces.

“Oh shit. Wow,” he said. He turned and sneered at me with the most unbearable satisfaction creeping onto his face. I felt like a second-grader compared to him.

Meanwhile the blonde boy stared at Anastasiya, totally confused by what he was looking at. The longhaired boy had already figured it out, and he now he wanted to torment me.

“Are you, like, dating a blow-up doll?” he said, still smiling wickedly.

I would not allow myself to be intimidated by a twelve-year old. More importantly, I would not allow him to insult Anastasiya.

“She’s not a blow-up doll,” I retorted. “She’s...”

“I’m your wife, Kevin.” Anastasiya was still looking straight up at the cloudless sky. “It’s as simple as that, love.”

“She’s my wife.”

The longhaired boy burst out laughing. I wanted to throw a soccer ball at his face, hard enough to break his nose and send him to the hospital. I didn’t care how old he was.

“Wait, you think she’s real? And you’re married, too?! Holy shit! You’re fucking crazy, dude!”

“Go take your foul mouth elsewhere, will you?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. It was smooth and calm compared to his, but he could tell he was getting on my nerves.

“Oh my god, this just made my day. Holy shit!” he said laughing.

Instead of scramming, he casually reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, holding up in front of his face. Whether he was about to take pictures or shoot a video, it was clear he wanted to capture a lonely pathetic man trying to have a nice day with his lovely sex doll. He probably hoped to share it with all his friends.

Without a second thought, I rushed up to him and snatched the phone out of his hands.

“Dude!” he yelled.

I threw the phone as far as I could. It sailed over the field and landed in a thick shrub near the pedestrian path.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Now will you leave us alone?” I shouted.

No longer smiling, he shot me the middle finger before turning around to fetch his phone. I just shook my head and started putting the unopened sodas back in the cooler. The blonde boy was still standing there.

“What are you still doing here? Shouldn’t you be helping your jackass friend?”

“I just wanted to apologize.”

I smacked the lid back on top of the cooler a little louder than necessary.

“You already did. Just forget about it, okay?”

“Ryan can be kind of a jerk sometimes.”

“No shit, really?”

“And I feel responsible and everything, so...”

“So what?

“Is there anything I can do for you? I mean I feel like I owe you something.”

I thought about it for a second, and then I looked him in the eye.

“Are your parents around?” I asked.

His brow furrowed. “Uh, no. Why?”

“I just want to avoid any more trouble for the rest of the day.”

“Okay...”

“All right, you can help me pack this stuff into the car. We’ll fold up the blanket first before the wind
blows it away. Here, I can get us started.”

I bent down and pulled Anastasiya to a sitting up position, then gently dragged her off the blanket and onto the grass, and placed the cooler and the pizza box next to her. I pinched two corners of the blanket and the boy followed suit.

“You know how to do this?”

He nodded.

We picked the four corners up off the ground, walked toward each other and paired them. As we continued folding, the boy tried to break the awkward silence.

“How long have you been married?”

“Two months.”

“Cool. Um... do you go to the park often?”

“No. Today is the first and likely the last time.”

Sitting in the grass, Anastasiya gasped. My heart sank. Did I really mean what I said?

“Oh,” said the boy. “So is it usually this bad when you go out with her?”

“We hardly go out at all. I feel like... never mind. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Anyway, I think that’s folded enough. You can take the blanket over to car and I’ll take Anastasiya, okay?”

“Okay.”

We walked across the parking lot. I carried Anastasiya in my arms like I did on our wedding day. The boy trailed behind with the blanket in his hands.

“You’re not crazy, are you?” he said after a while.

“I don’t think so.”

“I mean... you know she’s not real, right?”

I knew. But I said nothing.

“Sorry,” he said.

When we arrived at the trunk of my car, I quickly fumbled for my keys, balancing Anastasiya on one arm. I heard the trunk unlock and the boy pulled it open.

“Just set the blanket down in the corner there. Could you open the passenger seat door too, please?”

He quickly complied. I eased her into the car and moved her into a sitting position.

“Thanks. I appreciate the help. I’ll get the other stuff. Just keep an eye on everything here, okay? Then you can go.”

The boy nodded.

A few minutes later, I returned to the car with the cooler and the pizza box. The passenger door was still open and the boy stood there watching Anastasiya. He didn’t see me coming. As I approached him, I watched his hand creep under her skirt, searching for the tantalizing mystery between her legs.

I dropped everything onto the pavement. The boy snapped his hand out of her skirt and looked at me in horror.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted.

He fled. He deserved a soccer ball to the face as much as the other boy, but I didn’t pursue him. I just wanted to go home.

As I drove back to our apartment, we tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

“I told him to stop,” she said.

“He couldn’t hear you.”

“I know,” she said sorrowfully.

When we stopped at a red light, I analyzed her profile and I could finally see the damage the ball had done: her nose had receded into her head by about a quarter inch and there was a noticeable dent on her forehead. She was no longer perfect.

Things weren’t the same after the soccer ball incident. We ran out of movies much sooner than I thought we would, so we spent less time together than we used to. We often ate meals in silence because I couldn’t think of anything to say. This was a different kind of awkwardness than the kind I experienced when dating. Here it was awkward not because I didn’t know how to connect with her, but because I was afraid of letting her down again, as if the simple act of speaking to her could lead to somewhere undesirable. It was an irrational anxiety, but I felt eerily similar to how I remembered feeling after a disastrous breakup.

She broke the silence at breakfast one morning. “Kevin?”

“Yeah?”

“When are we going out again?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I had been apprehensive about taking her outside before, and now I didn’t even want to think about it. After three months, I still felt sick whenever an adventurous thought came into my head. I never wanted to embarrass myself or put Anastasiya in danger like that ever again.

We continued eating without a word.

On Valentine’s Day, I bought her bouquet of roses. Not very original, but I didn’t know what else to get her. I knew if I bought her chocolate I would be the only one to eat them. I hoped she would be pleased.

“I bought you some flowers!” I said when I came through the door.

She was sitting on the futon. I pressed the bouquet into her palm and wrapped her fingers around it.

“Oh... okay. Uh, thanks, Kevin. Is that all?”

“What do you mean? You don’t like them?”

“No, they’re beautiful, Kevin, it’s just... I was hoping we could do something together. You know, I spend so much time sitting here and we haven’t talked to each other much at all lately and... I just want you to love me like you did when we got married!”

I gazed into her eyes and remembered our first night together, back when I was positive that infinite, wondrous possibilities were ahead of us. “Nothing’s changed, Anastasiya,” I said, making an effort to sound sincere. I sat down and curled my arm around her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had done that. It was such a simple gesture of intimacy, and yet it said so much more than a bouquet of flowers.

“Kevin,” she said, “why don’t you want to go out with me again? Please, tell me the truth.”

“The truth is,” I said, “I’m afraid of putting you in danger.”

“I want to risk it, Kevin. Look, I’m sure it won’t be as bad as the first time. If we go out, we can try to have a good time. What’s fun and exciting about a relationship where we don’t take a chance every once in a while? I think you’re afraid of stepping out of your comfort zone. Let’s fix that. What do you say?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Just think about it, okay?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. But I didn’t.

We tried making love that night, but something was wrong with me. I couldn’t get excited enough. We tried several positions, but none of them made any difference. Anastasiya was growing impatient.

“Come on, Kevin! Give it to me!”

I thrust faster and harder, but I didn’t get anywhere. My passion for Anastasiya was fading. I withdrew and gave up for the night.

She was disappointed in me, but she wasn’t angry. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say.

As the months passed, I neglected her for longer periods of time. Whenever we tried to make love, it was always anticlimactic. I often left her sitting on the futon for days, wearing the same clothes. One day when I was returning home with groceries, it occurred to me that I hadn’t touched her since the last time I went to the store. It had been exactly two weeks. I wondered if she would bring it up.

As soon as I entered my apartment and closed the door behind me, she confronted me.

“We haven’t had sex for over a month!” she shrieked. “Take off your clothes, now!”

“Can I at least put my food away?”

“Now,” she repeated. “And take off my clothes, too, while you’re at it. I’ve been stewing in them for fifteen days, you know.”

I shed my clothes first and then pulled off her t-shirt. I did not push her arms back down to her hips. They stayed pointed toward the ceiling.

“What is wrong with you, Kevin? Have you lost interest in me because I’m deformed?”

“You’re not deformed. You’re still more attractive than ninety percent of females on earth.”

“Ninety percent? Is that all? I thought I used to be perfect.”

I whipped her pants off a little too hastily, jolting her forward a few inches.

“You’re still perfect,” I said.

“That’s bullshit. You don’t even look at me anymore.”

I looked at her, and then remembered to put her arms back in place.

“See?” she said.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why are we arguing? This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I don’t know, Kevin. You tell me.”

I looked at her naked body. It was just as beautiful as the first time I had seen it. But it was no longer mysterious. I knew how she looked and how she felt. I knew everything about her now, and there was never much to begin with. Another major problem was that she would never change. Decades from now, she would remain untarnished by age. That might be a disadvantage in real women, but at least there was the possibility of changing and growing old together. But Anastasiya would always be the same, because she was perfect. So comfortably perfect.

I started putting my clothes back on.

“Kevin, what are you doing?”

I didn’t answer her.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “Please, Kevin. Let’s just make love and forget about this.”

“No.”

Fully dressed, I walked over to the wooden crate and brushed a year’s worth of paperwork off the lid and onto the floor. I opened the crate and saw the empty bed of packing peanuts. They were waiting for her. I pulled off my wedding ring and threw it in with the packing peanuts.

I walked back to Anastasiya and put one arm under her shoulder and the other under her knees. I hadn’t carried her this way in months.

“Kevin, what are you doing?” she said again.

Again, I didn’t answer.

I bent down and gently lowered her into the crate, as if she was a sleeping child and I was putting her to bed.

“Why are you doing this?” she said once I laid her down. I withdrew my hands from beneath her.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us. It wasn’t your fault, though. My imagination wasn’t enough.”

If she had tear ducts, she might have been crying. But I imagined no such thing.

I replaced the lid on top of the crate. Then I nailed it shut.