Andrea met him nine years ago. She doesn’t remember his name. Was it Mr. Barnes, or Baker, or Bennett? Something that begins with a B. She calls him The Hot Sauce Man.
June 4th Monday (2016)
Andrea drives her yellow Toyota Corolla, a second-hand sedan to the hospital. She parks it. Half of the parking lot is still empty. She walks fast with light steps as if she were floating. Her ponytail in the back flaps.
In three weeks, Andrea will start a new job, a real doctor’s six-figure paying job. At the age of thirty, she feels she has spent all her life in schools and residency training. It’s about time to make a living. The thought of this makes her heartbeat quicken.

You don’t know me, but if you’re of a certain age, it is very likely that there is a connection between us — a way in which I am a part of you. I want to tell the story of how that came to be, how some amateurs messing around in the backroom of a low-rent novelty store ended up producing a brief national sensation. This is the story of a band from the Detroit suburbs called 24 Radiant Green Umbrellas. This is the story of their accidental hit song — “Strike Anywhere” — which crept onto the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1989. And most of all, this is the story of a drum fill that occurs at precisely two minutes and thirty-five seconds into the song.