Noir

by Christopher Moore

Her lips reminded me of a valentine, shiny red and plump, but a little lopsided, like maybe she’d taken a shot to the kisser in an earlier round, or the valentine heart had acute angina.

careful not to ogle her wares, as dames often do not care for that, even when it is evident that they have spent no little time and effort preparing their wares for ogling.

When he took his hat off, he revealed a jailhouse window of dark strands of hair combed over a bald pate.

The fog lay spread across the city like a drowned whore—damp, cold, smelling of salt and diesel—a sea-sodden streetwalker who’d just bonked a tugboat . . .

(Sal always said “Madame Mabel” with her title, like she was a doctor or senator or had received an advanced degree in Salami Concealment from a respected College of Floozie Management.)

being as there is no small town so small as a neighborhood in a big city,

The building was built in the twenties and had good times and denial written all over it—ten stories with a pink granite façade and bronze Art Deco inlays of streamlined Greek gods dancing across the cornice like the market crash, the Great Depression, and World War II could never happen. It might have started life thinking it was going to be a nice hotel, but now it was cut up into tiny apartments that looked down on a skid row full of broken veterans and low-rent hustlers. Olympus had fallen on tough times.

the fog off the bay was streaming between the buildings like a scarf through a stripper’s legs, leaving everything damp and smelling of sailors’ broken dreams.

was the first time I had to drive in Bay City fog, and it was like trying to find your way in a bruised martini full of lightning bugs.

Every guy can basically be boiled down to what he wants and what he’s afraid of.