A recent winter sun, shy, dares to enter through the small holes that flood the blind. The rays that manage to pass through them, in that inexhaustible struggle that light has to occupy the spaces, create lines on which float small specks of dust in suspension that dance to the rhythm of clarity and that join, puff after puff, with the smoke of a cigarette that already tastes like night, tonic, black phlegm.

He moves his body before putting the vinyl record on the turntable. He knows what it is going to sound before placing the needle and imitates the bass drum clap by vibrating his lips and playing with his tongue behind his teeth. A rustling sound occupies the first few seconds as the sapphire touches the chloroethylene, then, two voices, his and Sting’s, shout “Roxanne!” in parallel.

With one hand he picks up again the cigarette he had left in the ashtray, with the other, a can of beer: a deep puff and one more drink, this last one is promising. At the same time, he constantly moves some part of his body to the rhythm of The Police’s white reggae and sings looking at the vinyl record that doesn’t stop spinning, as if his breath, as if shouting “you don ́t have to sell your body to the night!” were the electricity that moves the vinyl record track after track.

The coffee he left brewing in the kitchen when he staggered into the house is not yet bubbling, but it is already beginning to impregnate the living room with its smell and its promise to save, as quickly as possible, the process from drunkenness to hangover, from excess to lack, from life to death.

Just a few more seconds before breakfast, before coming back to reality, moving his feet to the rhythm of the drums during the final beats of a refrain that repeats, endlessly, “Roxanne! (put on the red light)”, “Roxanne! (put on the red light)”. With his fingers, he plays the imaginary guitar and with his toes, he snags the soft fluff of the flannel carpet on which he has been doing his choreography since some time before the music started to play.

He shouts one last “Roxanne” and falls down on his knees, just so that the light of a dawn that is almost over reaches his eyes and the choirs end up singing, illuminating his face, as if they wanted to tell him something: Put on the red lights.