TV

The window had been loose in its housing for years already. Whenever one of the residents wanted to let in a breeze, they had to prop the heavy wood frame up with a wood spatula or a clumsily wedged cutting board. Right now, the breeze is a roaring wind, and the window is a shivering membrane between the dim, squash-colored kitchen and the tropical storm outside. Flashes in the storm catch raindrops for a frozen instant in their crawl down the surface of the glass before their sparkle fades and they vanish into the dusk light without.

Inside the kitchen, the light plays a slower game as the gentle glow from a countertop TV warps the orange-brown into the growing dusk's undifferentiatable greys. A couple on screen are getting dressed, but none too efficiently. The man tries on shirt after shirt, each one more garish than the last, and his mate disapproves, her eyebrows arching impossibly higher between each costume changes. A chorus of laughter arrives with every cut to her face.

A cockroach scuttles along the counter. Here, it pauses, greedily drinking at a puddle of spilled apple juice. The light from the TV flickers, and a survival reflex in the insect triggers; it zips under the toaster hiding from threat and nibbling at crumbs. Always nibling. On the TV, the man is shirtless now, and gesturing helplessly toward his partner. None of his shirts meet her criteria. The roach pokes out from beneath the toaster, antannae twitching in the electric air. The rain spits angrily at the window. The roach leaves the shelter of the toaster and settles in front of the TV. It's brown carapace appears inky and iridescent under the cool glow of the tv.

The window rattles again, drowning out the laughter for a moment. The man says: "No, I guess stripes have always been more your thing." Laughter. The window bursts inward. It falls in a few large shards that explode and scatter when they hit the stone-tile flooring. The tinkle of subsequent shattering is quickly drowned out by the arrival of the wind. The droplets which had congregated on the window's surface now alight on the counter, cabinets, and floor. The cockroach remains poised before the TV screen.

Water is driven into the house as chaos but quickly pools and organizes into a topographical relief of the grout lines and lowpoints on the floor. Wind agitates the liquid surface into miniature waves, and the tide continues inward from the window. It seeps under the refrigerator through to the wall behind. The encroaching tide finds a hole behind the refrigerator where a thin plastic pipe for drinking water snakes up from the subfloor and into the refrigerator. For a moment, the rainwater hesitates at the lip of the round hole. It crowds, growing taller, the surface supporting an impossible belly of puddle before the tension snaps. Rain courses into the hole, riding the plastic tube in veins downward and sideways. It charts the intersecting beams and joists that criss-cross the naked basement ceiling, soaking readily into the rough-milled oak. A runnel finds a dangling nail and descends, dripping plit-plit-plit onto a dusty armchair below.

Upstairs the TV is a kaleidescope through the bedazzling of water beads on its screen. The roach is still rapt, antennae twitching curiously. The tv will short out in a moment, but right now the man is looking over smugly at his wife. "Fine, we'll stay in!" she says. The pursuing laughter is distorted, fuzzy for the water accumulating on the tv's speaker cones. The man, satisfied, sits. He leans into cushions and lifts his legs onto an ottoman. "Home, is there anything ever so sweet?"