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Barry Ergang is Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine (www.fmam.biz) and an assistant editor for Mysterical-E (www.mystericale.com/). His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. http://mysite.verizon.net/barry_ergang/ Nocturne by Barry Ergang (Originally published in The Listening Eye, 2002. Reprinted in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005) (for Stefan Hyatt)
Let the telephone ring, please. Let there be somebody to call me up and plug me into the human race again...Nobody has to like me. I just want to get off this frozen star. --Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
My office window frames a thousand midnights neoned in felled hopes, death, the want of a world gone right. L.A. sprawls below, courtesan as sincere as a casting agent’s smile: glitter crusted with sores, betrayed by sunlight. Floating in glass, among ashen stars pooled beneath a bloodless moon, my image appears and disappears, timed to the flashing sign from the transients’ hotel across the street.
Somewhere a siren sings its brutal song. More work for you, Marlowe? I ask myself.
Philip Marlowe, Investigations, the sign on the pebbled glass door says. Trouble drifts in on a raw red wind like the rancid odor of greasy food from the hash joint downstairs: the blackmailed millionaire whose pride’s untamed; the ex-con haunted by his missing lover; the elegant blonde with the cool blue gaze-- clients who rent me, sometimes sell me out while I, lockbox for secrets, lies, and illusions, deliver up their stillborn ugly truths.
That’s you, Marlowe, I mutter, pour myself a drink. Galahad in rusted armor.
Trouble: the cop who doesn’t own his soul rakes me with a stony stare, says, “Shamus, what the hell you up to now? Every time we find a stiff, I gotta see your mug.”
That’s me: the big sleep’s poster-boy, meat wagon’s pal.
Trouble: hard guys with minds like a butcher’s apron warn me off the case, guns and saps ready to back up their gaudy Hollywood patter.
That’s you, Marlowe, sneering at blue steel clutched by tight-lipped men who dole out long goodbyes.
The nights are when I know I’m old and tired. Cigarette smoke spirals into darkness, the rye scrapes down my throat and warms my gut. I’m just a reflection in a dirty pane but maybe not so easily broken. Trouble is my business, isn’t it? And all for what? Twenty-five bucks a day and expenses. I’d get another line of work, but it’s a long fall from the high window of conscience. THE END Barry Ergang © 2006 |
