Noir to Hide

The following is a short novella I wrote in the irreverent style of Marcel Boulestin, or perhaps the late Thomas Keller.

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Noir to Hide - Ghostwritten by Orin Bishop

          "That's some office," I mused loudly as I decried the Mesopotamian wallpaper and crocheted egress. I regretted leaving the keys inside.

          That's when I saw, for the first and third time, the dame who would change my life so tangentially. She didn't seem to regard it as an egress, and strode through it with something resembling the character of someone who was once confident, but who lost it all one day to the blind yammerings of lady liberty. She opened her mouth loudly to speak, but I already new what she was going to say.

          "You want me to find the man who killed your husband." I absentmindedly tipped my ashtray out the window to the familiar and comforting screams of the city. She looked at me with surprise, her flawless features diminished somewhat by her sad eyes and dripping gun wound.

          "No, my husband's fine; he's been dead for weeks. I want you to find the man who nearly shot me."

          Apparently I hadn't known what she was going to say.

          "Ma'am, I think he more than nearly shot you." I indicated her charming laceration.

          "This? No, I tripped on the stairs on my way up here. The man who shot at me was..."

          She paused, scanning the room with the air of an ardent quadruped. After several hours, her gaze fell upon the shadowy figure atop my desk.

          "That's him! On your sofa!"

          "It's a desk," I pointed out, with the manner of a tollbooth operator who has just been refused parole... again.

          "I'm not a desk," said Bob.

          "Look," I offered, attempting to lighten the mood by hurling a Molotov cocktail, "perhaps we can discuss all this over some cold jazz and a warm martini."

          "Alright," acquiesced my bleeding client as she loosened her sombrero, "but I must warn you that I like mine practically scalding."

          I took this as a sexual advance, and called the police on speed dial. It seemed I needed an adult.