Dispatches From Noir

His shirt said “Route 666.”  He liked to brag about the music he listened to.  It was “hardcore.”  He liked bands that sang “about Satan and shit.” 

I couldn’t hear the words to the music he was listening to.  I was about 8 feet away, and couldn’t tell if they were talking about Satan or anyone else.  But I could hear the dissonance grind away even from that distance.  I’d say the “and shit” part was right on the money.

The aggressive, unrelenting sound from the little boomboxes in his ears continued to shit upon my ears until he walked away.  I couldn’t help but muse over his deliberately perverse tastes. 

“The metalheads all snuggled, warm in their beds
While visions of Columbine danced in their heads.”

If I ever saw this joker in a black trench coat, I was going to lock myself in the restroom and not come out until the shooting stopped.

There I was. On the bus. Crowded. It was Saturday at 5 pm and college students were already well into their weekend partying. They showed no intention of stopping. So the party was in the bus. And the party between drunken laughter and bashing “the fucking Giants.”

I wish that had been the extent of it. Frat boys evidently have a thing for sleeveless tee shirts these days.  I didn’t like them. I liked them even less when they were swingingfrom some jackass frat boy’s belt. One fat, sweaty kid who kept his shirt on presented himself as the L.A. Clippers #6. I didn’t believe him.

All the while I attempted to breathe. Not to be overwhelmed by the senseless noise, and more senseless perspiration. It was like being in a can of sardines. Only I wish I had been with sardines. They would have smelled less.

The library is discarding mystery novels faster than I can read them.  So I have been giving lots of discarded books a loving home here.  I’ll get to them all…eventually.  But I’ve picked up a great many books recently.  Some were free, others $0.50—a steal either way.  I’ve picked up some books by some of my favorite hardboiled/noir authors, and I’ve discovered others just because I saw their books there and thought I might as well pick it up and try it.  I’ve looked fruitlessly for some authors in the used bookshops around here, and never found them—then picked up four or five of their novels at the library.  I’ve even come across a few old pulps of other genres that I, at least, find interesting.  Pulp is the forerunner of hardboiled fiction, after all.

Stay tuned to the literature porn tag, and I’ll be documenting my spoils in the days to come.  In the mean time, I’ll keep perusing the library’s discards and count myself a pretty lucky bastard.

Delacroix liked to inveigh against his pet peeves.  Sometimes everyone agreed with him.  Sometimes no one did.  Sometimes they started out agreeing and Delacroix was such an ass that they didn’t by the time he was done.  He didn’t really care.  He wanted to be a provocateur.  And he succeeded.  And all the society dames invited him back, no matter how much they poo-pooed him.

He was a neat little man, often dressing in white suits.  He didn’t care for those made no attempt to look neat in some way or other.  And he made sure everyone knew this.  “I never understood combat boots. Outside of combat, that is!”  Here he gave a little giggling snort.  “They’re just  pretentious. Trying to show swagger that usually isn’t there. But what really gets me is the girls who wear them. Hippies, hipsters, whatever they call themselves. Decrying militarism as they clomp around in combat boots. That’s like denouncing motorcycles while wearing a motorcycle helmet.”

He lapsed into the private eye voice he used when narrating his own detective stories.  “Do yourself a favor, sister. Get some heels. No one ever fought a battle in a pair of those.”

The first part is “bull,” and the second part isn’t.

She was crass.  She was loud.  She was proud.  When she wasn’t lugging around the world’s fattest baby, she was ordering her boytoy to do it.  Unless genetics worked backwards in this town, the baby wasn’t his.  Whether her penultimate fertile rendezvous preceded their romance or bisected it was more than I could say.  I didn’t inquire into the details.

Normally, not inquiring into the details is a good way to mind your own business.  But normally I’m not dealing with this broad.  She was broad where a broad should be broad.  And broad everywhere else, too.  And broadcasted the sordid details of her life to everyone within earshot.  Whether they wanted to hear it or not.

I didn’t want to hear about her love of marijuana.  I didn’t care which variety she had in stock.  She shouted it anyway.  Her entire life was addressed “to whom it may concern,” and narrated at the top of her lungs. 

Today was no different.  Having the world’s fattest baby wasn’t enough for her overweening ambition.  So a runner-up was on the way.  And the belching Madonna told the whole bus about the kid’s name. 

“It’ll be Joy Lynn,” she informed us, in between pops of her chewing gum.  “But Joi with an ‘I.”  J - O - I - L - Y - N - N.  I just decided that.  It took me a long time to figure it out.”

That was a first.  I was pretty sure it had never taken her very long to figure out how to misspell a word before.

I hat it when singers screech the anthem. If they don’t ‘t have enough respect for their country, they should at least have respect for their tone-deaf selves. They usually don’t. This one didn’t. The stadium’s awful PA system didn’t help. You couldn’t hear anything but they off-key notes. I had to assume she sang the rest of the song. I sure couldn’t hear it. I heard the ear-splitting finale though. Yeah, America was the home of the brave. They had to be to make it through this anthem.