Lady

"You really think you'll make it? With a voice like that?"

He laughed, and when the pain began to pour from her eyes he laughed even harder.

"Someday, when I'm rich and ballin', I'll come find you on the streets. Make you sing to me for a dollar. Then you'd wish I kept you around!"

She screamed at him then, but he was too flush with himself to have heard her.

_

Years later, when he thought himself safe, he went to the deli.

Her songs taunted him through the radio.

*

*

*

Thank you for lingering.