drmstream[writing]

I must have dozed for a few min­utes.  A dream rushed by the thresh­old of my con­scious­ness, mak­ing a gen­tle noise.  Death was in the dream.  He drove a black Cadil­lac loaded with flow­ers.  When I woke up, the cig­a­rette was start­ing to burn my fin­gers.  A thin man in a gray flan­nel shirt was stand­ing over me with a doubt­ful look on his face.

He was big-nosed and small-chinned, and he wasn’t as young as he gave the impres­sion of being.  His teeth were bad, the sandy hair was thin­ning and reced­ing.  He was the typ­i­cal old youth who scrounged and whee­dled his liv­ing around motor courts and restau­rants and hotels, and hung on des­per­ately to the frayed edge of other people’s lives.

“What do you want?” he said.  “Who are you?  What do you wnat?”  His voice was reedy and change­able like an adolescent’s.

“A room.”

“Is that all you want?”

From where I sat, it sounded like an accu­sa­tion.  I let it pass.  “What else is there?  Cir­cass­ian danc­ing girls?  Free popcorn?”

He tried to smile with­out show­ing bis bad teeth.  The smile was a dis­mal fail­ure, like my joke.  “I“m sorry, sir,” he said.  ” You woke me up.  I never make much sense right after I just wake up.”

“Have a nightmare?”

His vauge eyes expanded like blue bub­blegum bub­bles. “Why did you ask me that?”

The Imag­i­nary Blonde, Ross MacDonald

The small-chinned man did have a night­mare, a liv­ing night­mare, that becomes clear as we move through the story. We are in the hands of a con­fi­dent, play­ful writer. Mac­Don­ald wrote for pulp mag­a­zines, the hard-boiled mys­tery com­pi­la­tions printed on cheap paper and dec­o­rated with lurid cov­ers, a form of mid-century mass enter­tain­ment. He told sto­ries of crime, mis­for­tune and cor­rup­tion in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, seen through the eyes of tough, fair-minded men who were excep­tional only in their com­fort with the mul­ti­tude of grey shades that peo­ple live in. When I read Mac­Don­ald, I’m inspired by his choices, the things he leaves out and the things that he puts in. Form isn’t a con­straint for him; it’s an inspiration.