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View this writing in the free John T. Hitchner chapbook 
Not Far From Here.
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Friday night: 10:07.
Wyles poured himself rye and ginger over ice, clicked on the ancient stereo console turntable, and walked to his apartment front window. The wet street below hissed with traffic just the way Wyles liked to hear it, and Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” crooned with piano, horns, and brushes on snare drum just the way he liked to hear it.
He sipped the rye and ginger, watched, and listened.
No, you didn’t need a singer when you had piano, horns, and brushes on skin, Wyles thought. There was nothing like the soft call and plea of trombone and sax. The world of heart and want and need was there in those voices.
No, people don’t listen—really listen—to music anymore. They only react to it. They plug in ear pieces, tune out the noise of the world (Can’t really blame them for that...) and pummel their ear drums with metal and rap and all the rest of what the lowest common denominator will bear. No wonder most people under thirty have never heard of Sarah Vaughn. No wonder they can’t make change without using a calculator. No wonder it’s getting late.
On the street below, traffic smeared puddles, and people ducked into a restaurant. Couples read menus and leaned forward to talk to each other.
Wyles sipped his drink. He savored the bourbon, soda, and ice.
Listen: listen to that, he said to no one but himself. “Mood Indigo.” The soul of all that’s missing in us today is right there in those first seven notes. Ella and Sarah sang it but Duke felt it first. Duke knew the feeling of wanting to lie down and spend the night with someone. He knew how it was to watch window lights go out. He knew it felt to have the night pass too slow, or to know that morning might never come at all. You don’t need a singer to tell you that.
Wyles switched off the turntable and gently placed the arm in its cradle. At the window he finished his drink. Traffic and time passed in wheels and footsteps and in the faces of people in the restaurant window and in window lights that came on and went out in buildings across the street.
“It’s too late,” he said to himself and no one else.
