“My, my…” she said, a smile bigger than New York City parked on her yapper, “is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” 

I wasn’t about to fall for her flimflam. “You just stroll in here and start getting’ chummy… I gotta tell ya’, sister, I don’t like being behind the eight-ball, see?  How do I know you ain’t some boozehound bindlestiff with a bulge, tryin’ to bunco me with the bum’s rush?”

She seemed to be jake with the idea, but she didn’t make a move. This jane was giving me a look that said she wanted to jaw but she was lousy with a jones and wanted to make me her mark.  Well, my dance card was full and I wasn’t about to go out on the roof with some looker freaked on muggles. 

“You been snortin’ the nose-candy?”  I backed off and picked up my pack of puffers, one for her and one for me, but I never turned my back on this looker.

I offered her the cylinder of sin and she glommed it like a junkie on a mud-pipe.  Drawing deeply, she blew smoke all over my face, letting me know she wasn’t going to sing to anybody, especially not some two-bit shamus. 

Slowly, she crossed her legs, like she had class.  “Who wants to know?”  was all she said, her eyeslits assuming that dreamy look kids and crackheads get when they’re just about to pass out. 

There was no point in re-hashing who I was.  If she didn’t know by now, my  attempts at educating her would no more good than trying to teach a seal to play the zither.  I was done playing the shill.  Time for doing the crab-apple two-step was over… she was going to give me her name or else!

“I’ll tell you who wants to know… the guy who’s going straight to the blower and let the coppers know that I’m being rousted by a roundheel redhot ripe on reefer… that’s who wants to know.  For all I know, you’re some punk proskirt waiting to pump metal into my puss!” 

“Whatsamatter, snooper, no grapes?  I thought you were jake.  I’ve tipped my hand to you, already. How many snow-birds have you seen who’d be on the square?  If I were going to string you out or squirt metal, I’d have already stung you, sugar.  So jump down off that high-horse and maybe you and I can talk spinach.  You like spondulix, don’t you, sleuthie?  You want a name?  Okay, I’ll give you a name, but first, get me a pencil… I need to do some ciphering.” 

Then, she paused.  She was a cool one, all right.  As she took another long pull on her cigarette, her words cut me like a knife, but not a sharp one, one of those cheap Ginzus that won’t cut through ¼” sheet steel, but will still leave a nasty bruise.  “Either that or go call your pals at the precinct… the same mugs who don’t think you’re good enough to be one of them.”

I nosed her good, then made it clear that she wasn’t going to shine me on. “What’s your grift, skirt, you lookin’ to see me pull the string while you put the screws to me? Cuz if you are, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, sister. I’ve seen pro skirts before, and not one ever layed a hand on me, see? You wanna pitch woo? Well, I can be had, you understand, but I ain’t no pushover. Throw me a bone and come up with a John Henry and it’ll be off to my flop before you can shake a tailfeather, but if you’re a fakeloo artist, I’ll have you in bracelets before you can dust out!” 

Act 3

I felt the wild, storming hurricane flash thunder into my loins, as the fire of love and passion burned white-hot flames into my psyche; pokers of laser-bright emissions permeated my pericardium, the too-hot blaze attempting to consume me, leaving me naught but burned, charred ashes. The light of  knowledge and happiness now became a shining sun, and I touched the sky above, blinded by love and other emotions too numerous to mention.

She'd carried me from the darkness of ignorance, sadness, anger , ennui and, dare I say, even loneliness; now, all the bad stuff associated with the dark (including night, blindness, shadows, etc.) and the rain of tears splashing from my swollen eyes, falling into a sea of salinity (similar to, but not chemically identical to the pharmaceutical solution injected by IV into terminally-ill patients to keep them from getting dehydrated), were gone. I had never before experienced seasons nor stages of life nor any relationship even remotely as hot and horny or really neat as this one. She stampeded the parapets, laid waste to the sentinels and broke down the walls I'd so carefully erected for protection from harm (especially from love-harm), and was now attempting to drown me in her sea of hot bodily fluids.  No more broken heart, no more prisoner of lust, no more cold emotional indifference like the icy, frozen stares of the other patrons staring at me as I sat in the dimly-lit loge of Kitty's Pleasure House and Adult Book Store...

It was becoming all too apparent that this chick could, in all likelihood, suck-start a Harley-Davidson (not that you’d probably have to these days, most all models now have electric starters...), not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, all things considered, but I thought I’d mention it, at least, so that there would be no misunderstanding about her obvious ‘talents’.  It was time for a diversion, and I had to act quickly, before I was sucked into the vortex of her maelstrom of passion.  In deference to my audience’s intellect, I shall refrain from using the description ‘black hole’.    

“Hold on a second, sister…” I extracted myself from her vise-like embrace.  My arms were suddenly two ten-pound rolls of butcher shop bologna, the kind that has just enough garlic added for flavor… the kind that comes with the USDA toxicity warning label, the variety in which one thick slice could provide an average-sized man enough fat and nitrates to induce a myocardial infarction within an hour.  Briefly, I considered taking several large bites out of my own arm.  Anything would be preferable to the agony of love gone wrong.   

Well, almost anything… maybe not actually taking a hunk out of your forearm, but you get the point, right?  This veritable fountain of excess was threatening to effervesce her miasma of molten magma all over my fertile steppes, and I couldn’t allow it to happen.

At least not until I found out her name…