One More Night

“What a caucaphony!”

I frowned against the cold glass of the taxi and looked across the seat at my companion. “A what?”

“A caucaphony!” Kawkuhfony, he was saying. Was that a word?

I raised my eyebrow. “A cacophony?”

“That’s what I said, Katherine.”

Oh, so he was pulling out the long name. “No, it isn’t, Anthony.”

“Close enough, and you knew what I meant, anyway, didn’t you?” I rolled my hazel eyes at my best friend in the dim light and turned to face the outside world again. I thought I heard him muttering, “That’s what I thought”.

Cacophony. It means, “a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds”. Despite how he said it, Tony couldn’t have picked a better word. We’d gotten lucky tonight – we had been asked to cover the after-party for a concert kickoff. We would only be working for tips, but it meant we got to go to the concert for free, which was a nice bonus. The downside, though, was that we had to leave before it was over, because we had to get back to the hotel in time to set everything up in the suite. Twenty minutes after leaving, we were approximately half a mile from the stadium and going nowhere fast. Horns were blaring and people were shouting (including the cab driver), and all we wanted was to get to work.

After a minute more, I bit my lip and looked over at Tony again. I was hardly surprised to see his chocolate-brown eyes staring back at me with a look of discontent resolution. We nodded once to each other, and I reached up to hand the driver a handful of bills.

“Thanks for everything, sir, but I think we’re better off trekking it.” He grumbled something angry around the butt of his cigarette and nodded. Seconds later, Tony and I were cutting through the stand-still traffic to the sidewalk, arms linked to avoid being separated.

“Can I say one more time that I hate it here?”

“You do not,” I answered promptly, tossing my head to move strands of my dark hair from my eyes. “You love Florida. You just hate the humidity, and the storms, and the tourists, and the bugs.”

"And the old people."

I snorted. "Hey! You love your Grams."

"The other old people, Kitty Kat."

"Okay, fine. And the old people. Oh, and the gators." He shivered, and I bit my lip. I was missing something, and it felt like I was losing a game. "Oh! And the mystery guy who stole your wallet on the bus." I grinned - now I'd won. "But you love Florida," I repeated, nodding my head with conviction.

Tony stopped, and – since we were linked – I stopped, too. He was looking at me with a perfectly arched eyebrow raised high. “Okay, with everything you just listed, why the hell would I still love Florida?”

I smiled, and it was genuine, if a little overdone. “Because I’m here of course!”

Tony let out a huff and started walking again, pulling me along. “Just you wait. I’ll knock you out and stuff you in a suitcase. You’ll wake up in Paris.”

I wrinkled my nose, playing along. “Why Paris?”

“Because you speak French. You’ll be my translator as poor, naïve, American me makes my way into the heart of some gorgeous French dames.”

“Two things: French people aren’t fond of Americans, and nobody says dames.”

“Oh, shut up, Kat, and let me dream.”

So, for the rest of the suffocating, muggy walk to the hotel, I let my best friend dream of Paris. He told me of all the things we'd never do, all the foods we'd never try, all the people we'd never meet, and all the places we'd never go.

And I let him, because everyone deserves to have a dream.