(Reblogged 8/20/13, for Elmore Leonard)
Train Song
You take it, friend. I’ll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.” —Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
People, no matter how broken, will find a way to break themselves just a little bit more. I was no exception. Only I would rather have had oblivion.
It went like that, me with a pint looking for trouble or nothing when he walked in out of the starlight, frowning. Which country he said and he knew, anyway, down to which shoulder had the scar. On a mission that much was clear. I’d have asked what but he wouldn’t have told me.
He let me tag along though, when he caught the outline of the Browning.
By dawn I’d killed a man and he knew all my secrets.
I asked him to tell me one of his and he said he played the violin, said he was a detective, but not the regular kind.
Only one in the world, he said, dropped a wink just to see the damage.
His eyes were an entire night in themselves.
I hadn’t come back from war to fall in love. But he asked which country and I had nothing else to give.
Took me to his bed and I woke, clean, to the rail going by.
***
(aderyn wrote some noir as a joke, but I love it, so)
Wow.