“I wanted somebody like him to protect me, and in some reflexive twist of consciousness, I think he wanted somebody like him to protect him too. … I tried to tag along wherever he went, even to the bank or the supermarket or the drugstore, to make sure he wasn’t lonely. But none of that ever satisfied my longing for him, because even when we were together I missed him, as if he wasn’t actually there.”
Excerpt from Criminals by Robert Anthony Siegel, published in The Paris Review Fall 2015 Issue
Image credits: The rubáiyát of a bachelor – illustrated by Harold Speakman – 1915
