The Red Handle

The back seat of a family station wagon on a Texas highway on a hot summer afternoon, sunlight through the side window across a tan vinyl seat, on the seat a flat red plastic learning toy twenty-five centimetres wide, a cut-out carrying handle at its top, a black band with a grooved round speaker grille and a dark display window with a soft blue-green glow, below it a yellow field of flat keys in orange and yellow on a blue ground, a row of red keys, every key blank and every surface plain and unmarked, a child's small hand pressing one yellow key, flat fields soft beyond the glass.