Rihanna ft. Jay-Z - "Umbrella". After the relative off-year of 2006, this, Amy Winehouse, and Amerie's "Gotta Work" show that pop in 2007 is back, back, back. (Maybe the new Avril single applies as well but - !?!!! - I haven't heard it yet.) With its crisp drum break "Umbrella" is post-"1 Thing"; with its alt-rock r&b it's post-"Since U Been Gone"; with its "umbrella / ella / ella / ay ay / ay" it's even post-MIA. More weirdly however, there's something almost post-rock about "Umbrella" -- it's ripe not just for indie-rock covers, but for takes by the po-faced likes of Explosions in the Sky or Mono. Despite Jay-Z's giddy intro, the song's not in the least bit light: it's serious, sincere, full of promises and forevers. "Crazy in Love" had a similar weight but here nobody's singing about infatuation, new love - Rihanna's singing about certain love, alwayses, literally the weathering of storms. The lyrics are heavy: "You're part of my entity / yeah, for infinity." Not a track for the first date, or the second; probably more suited for a diamond anniversary (Jay-Z: "No clouds in my stones." / Rihanna: "Took an oath, gonna stick it out til the end.") It's dark, droning, forceful (and yet totally summer-boombox awesome). Sean's promise: By the fourth time you hear it you will understand that it is amazing.

Or, said another way:

For two and a half weeks they had been fighting. Little things - he arrived late for breakfast; she forgot to check her email for the name of that band; he let the spaghetti sauce splatter all over the stove; a waiter was rude and she was rude back even though she "didn't have to sink to his level". It's what at one time would have been called "squabbling" but today, in this day & age or maybe just today, was called fighting. Elsa and Jamie had been fighting. It was Wednesday and they had last been together on Monday night, at a play, where she had given a standing ovation and he had not.

Elsa had not slept - as Tuesday became Wednesday she lay wide-eyed in her sheets, listening to the rain that stopped-started outside the window. Street lights flashed through the curtains and she just wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep. She couldn't. She buried her head under her pillow; she curled her feet to her chest; she stretched out and drummed her heels against the mattress. She wanted to sleep. She kept thinking about Jamie, trying not to think about Jamie; she kept thinking about Jamie and trying not to think about him.

In the morning she sat in her kitchen and felt grey, dusty, worn. She drank a glass of stale water and then refilled it from the tap. She sighed. And the glass broke in her hand. She leapt to her feet and brushed the shards from her palm into the garbage bin. She was thinking: I wonder what Jamie would say. She sopped up the water with paper towels and collected the pieces of glass from the table. "Fuck," she said, but only after she had finished tidying everything up.

She went to work and looked at her computer screen and typed and at 10:40 she went into the staff-room and filled a mug with water from the water-cooler.

"How're things?" said Mirabel.

"Good," said Elsa.

"You and Jamie should come over for dinner on Saturday."

"That would be nice." Elsa looked at the mug. It was earthenware, blue and gold. She imagined it shattering in her hand. And then it did.

"Jesus!" said Mirabel.

---

Elsa broke one more mug that morning, then a water-bottle at lunch, then a plastic cup in the afternoon. When she got home after work she broke two glasses - one short, one tall. And listen, she never meant to break any of them. They just came apart. She wasn't squeezing them til they shattered, she wasn't having an involuntary spasm. Glasses, bottles, mugs, everything was just coming to pieces when she touched it.

She called Jamie.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Fine," he answered. "How are you?"

And she told him about the glasses, about how everything was breaking all the time, water always dripping from the ends of her fingers. And he said "Oh no! Elsa, are you okay? Are you okay?" and she said "I'm okay," and he said "Should we go see a doctor, or a specialist, or a scientist or something? Figure out what's going on?" And she heard the way he said "we".

"No," she said, "just come over, Jamie. I love you so much. Please just come over. All I want is for you to come over."

"We'll hold glasses together," he said. "Let 'em shatter."

"Let 'em shatter," she said. "Come over."

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