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| - I'm a dick. A private dick. That's like a private dancer but with a gun and dances cost extra. That's how we do it in the detective game. It's a game like Clue, but without the cards or the board. Just the dice. And they always come up snake eyes. The name is Gwendolyne. Last name's not important. All you need to know is my friends call me Gwendolyne. My friends are bourbon and ice and I haven't spoken to ice in years. It was a stormy and dark night. Not a dark and stormy night. That's an unrelated story, one that’s got little to do with this narrative. That somber tale has got something to do with Paul Clifford and I'd tell you about it, but the library revoked my card. Something about expositioning too loud last time I was there. Come to think of it, this narrative has little to do with this narrative. It was dark, like under the bed where you hide when a dame’s husband comes home early, and stormy like when he finds you and you put up a fight with your pants down. His pants are up and zipped, too, but his belt’s off 'cause he’s beating you with it. Husbands whose wives are two-timing tend to get like that. So it's a stormy and dark night, right? And this dame walks into my office. I know it's mine, 'cause it's got my name on the door, see? No, go up a little...left, no, look left, you got it; Gwendolyne: Private Eye. That's it. Dick, Eye. They're the same thing, sometimes. Other times it's an embarrassing trip to the optometrist. Then he stops taking your calls. And this dame, see, I can tell just by looking at her that she's a real classy broad, uptown all the way. Classy like that lollipop she's sucking on. A grown man would give a kidney to be a lollipop like that. Not me though; I gave at the office. An office just like this one. One with a girly-named detective sitting behind a desk expositioning to himself and a classy broad sucking on the luckiest lollipop in the whole damn city. She smells like old money. Money so old that you could hardly see the blood that was spilled to earn it. Prim and proper, with the upright posture of a minister's daughter. A minister like the one from Pulp Novel: The Case of the Murdered Minister. Can't remember what that was about. I really should write these things down. So she walks over to me and says, "Are you a detective?". I reply, "Sure." It doesn't sound like much, but from me it sounds like it's comin' from a hardboiled detective. Which is me. A detective, I mean. Can't stand things hardboiled. Detectives are like that. Now that she's walked over I see this broad's got legs that just won't quit. Round, tasty things with thighs big like ham hocks, going all the way from her succulent hips right to the ground, where they end with little piggies so sweet that a fella like me just wants to dip them in sauce and eat 'em right up. Note to self: order lunch. And that's not all, see? They go all the way up, too. Up to a place so nice that a down-on-his-luck private dick would sell his own mother to pay for a cab to the airport to buy a one way ticket on an airplane just for the view. A private dick who's afraid of flying. And one who'll give you a good deal on a mother, slightly used, for cab fare and a plane ticket to whatever they call that place up there. I'm starting to wish I hadn't skipped out on so much school. Too busy solving crime. So, just like a dame, she starts talking. Classy broads like her don't skip a beat. They're cool like that. Cool like that time I passed out with my head in the refrigerator. Never did find that salami. She says, "I hope you can help me. It's about my husband, you see. He is, or was, involved with a real shady character." 'Shady like 'good on a sunny day' or shady like 'five o'clock shadow at ten in the morning'?' I ask. She just sits there, staring at me with those big, beautiful doe eyes like a red dress wearing bombshell Bambi caught in the headlights of my question. Or maybe I didn't ask out loud. Internal monologue, probably. Even odds I'd learn soon enough. Enough like three helpings of spaghetti at the twenty four hour diner. Note to self: have spaghetti for dinner. Spaghetti and bourbon. Hold the spaghetti. "He's a real bad son-of-a..." her eyes dropped to the floor as she trailed off. 'She's classier than I thought.', I thought to myself. She couldn't even lower herself to say that word. Monkey, probably. Monkeys are always causin' trouble. Never go to jail for it though; they yank their Johnsons and throw their own scat and what do they get? Bananas. What do I get? Banned from the zoo. And a date with the judge. Problem is, I hit a Jap tourist with one of my steamers. I tell His Honor I got a medal for the same thing during the war, but no dice. Still don't know what Japs were doing at the Somme, anyway. Serves 'em right for being cheap seat rubberneckers in the wrong war. So she says, "Mister Gwendolyne. Are you listening to me?" "Sure thing, doll." I say, while I think to myself, 'Listening like a guy with attention deficit disord...hey! What's that on my desk? I always wanted one of those things! A rotary telephone, just like the kind of rotary telephone that a private dick would have in his office on a desk. Which is also his.' I hope the telephone is mine. Maybe later I'll try calling myself to see if I answer. I look up. The broad is gone. Guess she got tired of my expositioning. Dames are like that. Sure, they need you to put yourself in harm's way for four bits a day plus expenses, but if you sit there thinking to yourself they just walk out without so much as a...whatever it is people say when they walk out. Too busy solving crime to pay attention. I didn't need her anyway. Last time a girl like that walked into my office the next thing I knew I woke up with a concussion in a ditch outside Chicago. And my name was Gwendolyne.
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