The Sixteen Steps

A music instrument shop in New York on a grey winter afternoon, electric guitars hanging soft on a pegboard wall, plain black amplifiers on a worn wooden floor, on a glass counter a flat drum machine about half a metre wide, its sloping anthracite grey panel between black side cheeks, rows of small black knobs with orange caps above pale cream strips, along the front sixteen rectangular step buttons, four red, four orange, four yellow, four cream-white, a large beige button at each end, a large black tempo knob at the left, every panel plain and unmarked, two hands in brown corduroy sleeves pressing the red buttons.