“Ontology! I’m just
telling you a story
about this projector, that’s all.”
Edward Dorn, Gunslinger, Book II
Dark Passage (Delmar Daves, 1946)
It's never easy, clocking the world, driving
the back roads and waterfront. Yesterday's
headlines now obsessive scrapbook fodder.
Together they watch for cops, nosey citizens
and night-time denizens. Bandages, undone,
his face, that voice, going back to just prior.
The fall, the money and a six year sentence,
their words falling like Fortian frogs through
the fog. Then, what if, a small bar in Mexico.
Walking through the door, sunshine framing
her to faded perfection. If only his paranoia
would subside. But innocence is invariably
tricky, proof "on the other side," hardly enough.
Her inherited wealth, Count Basie and a Nob
Hill apartment no more than a coming attraction.
The writer sitting at his desk, staring at a blank
page, disgusted with its whiteness, yearning for
tough mamas and after-hours on the Avenue.
No mater that Philly is written across a series
of comic asides, shoddy sofas and cheap hotels.
If not for second-rate pulpsters and their spit-
balling brethren, where would we be? Ping-
pong with Henry Miller. Insisting he was no
Dashiell Hammett, this no Maltese Falcon.
Instead: those paperbacks, that law suit, and
a camera-eye that tells only half the story.
Decoy (Jack Bernhard, 1946)
Doctor, dazed, rushes in, washes
his hands, hears shots. Margot to
Sergeant Portugal: it was love...
Then the gas chamber riff. What
a ruse, what a whiff, scarpering
with the money. Quick, get me a
doctor, with a cyanide anecdote
about antidotes. In other words,
resuscitation by proclamation.
Kisses Margot, a fatale if there
ever was one, and gets shot for his
pains, their problem and her plan.
"Do you think you could fix that
flat-tire for me while I discretely
run you over, make that times two,
before driving off with your heart
in my hand?" On that impervious
road to nowhere. What nerve,
laughing at the doctor, gold
digging 'till the cows come home.
Then down shifting to the present.
"Hey, Portugal, didn't we meet
somewhere just this side of wrong?"
But think: autonomy is just a word,
so near yet so far. Her words eating
into him like acid rain, saying,
"Try coming down to my level, for
once." Less a compromise than a
fatal kiss before laughing in his
face. How can anyone not love this
woman? Who derives such pleasure
from the corruptions of empire.
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