Waving Not Drowning

Eva skiffles into the kitchen, doing an improvised side stepping booty shake, singing at the top of her lungs to Hold On blasting from her computer. Old school rhythm and blues quells the melancholy. How can one stay down when rockin out to Sam and Dave? The kettle screams to life, undercutting the horns then rapidly overriding them, a shrill alarm. Eva pirouettes and hooks two fingers under the handle intending to slide it off the flame and onto the stove but her sock foot catches a sticky spot of maple syrup on the kitchen floor, a leftover from her gluten free buckwheat pancake disaster of the morning, and she trips into the counter. Her fingers slide off the kettle knocking it sideways, sending it crashing to the floor. Boiling water gushes out at a furious pace. Eva jumps back and crashes into the fridge, both feet flying out from under, landing on her tailbone in a pool of boiling liquid, scalding her hand and leg halfway up her left shin. Talk about ass over tea kettle. Stunned ...

I wanna rock with you, alllll niiiiiiight....dance you into the day- sunliiiiight. Wanna rock with you, allllll niiiight, dance the night awaaaaaaaaaay. Hank's eyes are closed, his head dwarfed by massive earmuff style headphones, cocooned inside the mellifluous sweet strains of early Michael Jackson. He does an awkward sort of jive, shrugging his shoulders towards his ears, up and down in time to the music. His face is split ear to ear with a lopsided, full toothed grin, brow furrowed as he reaches for the high notes. Occasionally he punches the air with an extended index finger as if he were dotting the i's in night and sunlight. Hank listens to this record over and over. He has it on his ipod too, but there's nothing like the warmth generated by vinyl. He's an analogue man. The record sleeve is ragged and dog   eared, torn near the center no matter how careful he is with it. The album cover is smudged with fingerprints- Hank gave up trying to keep his lp's in pri...