“Oh my god, Dave! Did you hear that, the television? Dave, you have to get a load of this!”

Dave had not heard the television, or Jennifer, for that matter. He was in the couple’s study, head wrapped in enormous noise-canceling headphones, eyes dancing across the lines of text displayed on his laptop monitor. A nightly habit of late, he was writing at the large oak desk he had inherited from his father.

He was absorbed in reworking a particularly dense section of dialogue when Jennifer burst into the study, backlit by the television in the adjoining room, a silhouetted specter portending the death of his productivity. With arms spread wide in mock dramatic fashion, she descended upon her bemused husband.

Read the full piece at Open: Journal of Arts & Letters