Author

Steve Almond (2013)

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the story collection God Bless America, which features a Best American Short Stories 2010 selection, “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” and which won the 2012 Paterson Fiction Prize. [2013]

CONTRIBUTIONS

26.1 Cover

Fiction

Mar 01 2003

Wired for Life

Janie met the electrician Charlie Song in August. The AC adapter to her laptop had frayed, and the connection kept failing. Thus, she was forced to jiggle the plug until the current returned, at which points she would have to remain very still for many minutes at a time–she worked with her laptop on her actual lap, which was ridiculous, she knew, pathetic, but there you have it–lest the sadistic plug icon disappear and the machine revert to battery mode, which was supposed to last six hours but which ran down (and this Janie had timed) in seventeen and a half minutes.