Fred Muratori

FROM NOIR

The blonde took her teeth out of my hand and spit my own blood at me. In isolation, an almost incomprehensible sentence, courtesy of Chandler, but a story in itself. And what about the eerie grace of The woman stood up noiselessly behind him and drifted back, inch by inch, into the dark back corner of the room. Not perfect, almost if not certainly ruined by the repetition of back, but in life I have often witnessed such imperceptible edging, sometimes by women, often by men. Guilt is no different retreated from than withstood. That's a Philip Larkin line in its bones. He was just a sumame away from Marlowe, and would probably have been quite good at this game: nondescript, unmarried, few friends, his hand quick to the gun-drawer at the suggestion that routines he had spent a lifetime perfecting were about to be disrupted by a livid husband, or a beautifully enraged widow.