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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: Tomorrow
is officially the Ludic
Log's 3rd anniversary. Do come by for a big announcement.
"super crime girls in trouble press release how to" "ape genitals" "mail order hookers" "fuck Oliver Cromwell" "really fat gorillas" "blood sausage comic book" "badmouthing other people" "screwed blued and tattooed" |
02.02.2005
"Evening, Smitty." "Hiya, Race." "What's the good word?" "No good words in this town, Race. Only bad ones, with four letters." "Christ, Smitty, lay off, will ya?" "Hey, Race, I didn't mean no..." "And can't you turn on a goddamn light in here? It's not even 5:30 in the evening and it looks like a jail cell. This is a coffee shop, Smitty, not a darkroom." "What's eating you, pal?" "Sorry, Smitty. I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm a little on edge, that's all." "Yeah, I heard about Lalene falling off the wagon again. You're probably worried she'll spill the beans about the Blaine ring, eh?" "Well...it's partly that...I mean, it's exactly that, but that's just part of the whole picture." "I don't get you, Race." "I mean, this whole thing! Haven't you ever noticed that nobody's who they say they are anymore?" "That's the way of the world, buddy." "But it didn't used to be like that!" "Listen here, Mr. Rose-Colored-Glasses, you've been around long enough to know better. You're wise." "Damn right I'm wise. Wise enough to know that, statistically, we can't all be crooks. It's not economically feasible, let alone rational." "I don't follow you." "Do you know how I met Lalene, Smitty?" "She was that nurse who fixed you up after the gunfight with Chance's gang, right?" "No, that was Rayette." "Was she the one who pulled that scam on Ritelli down at the pony track?" "No, no. That was Colita." "I give, I give." "She's a Sunday school teacher." "What the hell would you want with a dame like that for, Race? It ain't like you." "That's exactly my point. Every skirt I've ever been with has turned out to be a cold-blooded killer, an ice queen, a rackets moll or some psycho's last punching bag. When I went after Lalene, I deliberately picked out someone who'd be as pure as the snow before the hacks grubby it up with exhaust." "But she ain't clean, Race. She's mixed up in the dope. She's dirty as they come." "I know! But how does a goddamn schoolteacher from Nebraska get mixed up in the dope rackets? She never even took an aspirin until she moved here." "This town is hard on a man. A woman double." "That's what I'm saying! How can every damn human being in this dump be on the make? Little kids down at the playground have switch-knives in their sleds. I went in to have a crown put on, and it turned out the dentist was deep in the Shanghai white slavery game. There were six dead on three continents by the time I finally got all my teeth cleaned." "It's the city, Race. It does things to you." "That's another thing, Smitty. I don't even know what this city is called, and I've lived here for thirty-seven years. People always just call it 'the city' or 'this town'. I went down to the mayor's office last week to straighten it out once and for all the name of this burg, and you know what it says on the plate in front of his office?" "Uh..." "It says 'MAYOR'. It doesn't even have his name. On the way out I tried to look up at the seal over the entrance to City Hall to see if the name of this town was written on it, and it was so deep in shadows I couldn't even make it out!" "Maybe you oughta go in the daytime." "It was ten A.M." "Hey, look, forget about it, okay, Race? You're tired. You've been workin' too hard on the Estelle case. And it can't have been easy on you when your partner turned up floating in that drainage culvert." "That wasn't my partner. It was my milkman." "Well, whatever. Let me get you a bottle of the good stuff, on the house." "Gee, thanks, Smitty. That's real human of you." "Sure thing. Let me just go in the back and get it. Oh, if the guy comes by with the beer delivery, could you sign for it?" "No problem, Smitty." "Just, uh, don't use my name. At least not my real name. Yours either, to be on the safe side." "Christ." |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "Write with difficulty. Work, as nature works, in fire." (Dante Alighieri) |