I Want You More Than Anything in My Life

Fiction

On a city sidewalk, their voices made up a medley of music with others, talking or singing or shouting, with passing traffic, and with pop songs, rap, jazz, and rock and roll.

From the alley, Louis said to his phone, If that’s how you feel, what can I say?

He was speaking with his love (in another country) who said, hold on a second — there’s an odd smell coming from somewhere in the house.

His lover’s grandfather was asleep in a chair by the open windows with a cigarette burning in his hand.

Papa will never learn, he heard.

By this point, Louis was on the sidewalk and signaled to his friends.

There’s bird shit on your tie, one of them said.

It was his favorite tie, a pity.

He’s waking up, his lover said, I have to go.

Someone is waking up here from a siesta, Louis thought. He’d read siestas were gaining enormous popularity, since everything in the world had changed, and was insusceptible to redefinition.

It crossed his mind, as long as he could still love them, redefine everything.