Headphones (2004)
John S. Cooney's final Northern Virginia / DC novel, Headphones follows Thomas, a bartender who spends his nights listening to old men argue about baseball and his days planning abstract electronic music performances. When his comfortable, insular life starts to fall apart, Thomas decides to risk everything for a chance to connect with his audience of like-minded wing-nuts. The rare literary work that discusses the merits of Eric Hinske.
Lauren’s blonde hair was spread out around her head, forming a sunburst with her face in the middle, its glossy sheen in contrast to the faded floorboards. She blinked up at the dirt-free paddles of the ceiling fan, rotating slowly, the hanging lights wobbling in the dark, their bulbs unlit. The room was entirely silent except for the ungainly clump of a beat constructed out of strange and haunting wisps of unexplained found noise, metal being hit with metal, heavy objects being dragged, something organic snapping.
The deep pile of the orange rug supported Lauren’s back as she lay with her legs spread slightly apart, her arms out on either side. She wore blue panties with a Superman S over the crotch and an oversized “Nixon in ‘92” t-shirt. Thomas lay on his side, facing away from her, his knees pulled partially up to his bare chest, his black briefs faded. His eyes were closed and his cheek rested on his pressed-together hands. Drops of rain slid down the large windows that stretched across the front of their apartment.
Trailing wires back to the low entertainment center, the two speakers were off their stands, facing each other, the rug and the bodies of Lauren and Thomas between them in the middle of the living room. The bent-plywood chairs had been stowed under the window.
A fragment of piano stumbled over the beat, elongated into a single note, and then repeated itself. Thomas rolled over onto his back, his hands over his face.
Lauren was staring at him in the dark. “Do you dust the ceiling fan?”
Thomas reached his arms up in the air and let them fall back to the rug. “Yes.”
“How often?”
“Every couple weeks.”
A strangled figure from a lone trumpet moaned out of the right speaker. Lauren looked back to the ceiling, following the fan’s blades around in their unending journey.
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