The View

Winter in the high desert. Cold. Dry. Windy.

I’ve left the city behind and decamped to the suburbs for a holiday party. It’s that time of year when half the world gets chummy with coworkers for the evening and pretends to care about the lives of others because they’re also involved in getting a check from the boss. We’re a bunch of hard cases and a collection of saucy broads of questionable virtue shacked up in a house in the hills, sipping cocktails, swilling wine, and shooting whisky like Dragna with a tommy gun.

I step out of the din onto the balcony for some air. The house is set half way up the hills overlooking the valley; the balcony floats atop a run of stout timbers and juts out into space, just over the edge of the hillside. You can see everything from up here, just like a hawk waiting to swoop down from the sky or a cat waiting to spring out from the shadows. It looks like every light in every home and on every car in the valley is lit all at once. I can make out downtown, busy streets, and the new freeway line job. Fanciful types might say it’s as if there are a billion eyes of all different colors looking up at me and twinkling.

It’s frigid out here, in the 30s maybe. The cold air is sharp, just like that razor Frank keeps in his back pocket. The gentle breeze steals my breath for a moment, and makes my eyes water. It’s quiet out here too. Still as glass even. The usual city noise is all but gone–no screeching horns, wailing sirens, motor noises or the rest of the normal auditory assaults of daily life. Up here it’s all faded out, like water rushing softly down a creek. The occasional snippet of noise floats up on the breeze, but is gone just as quick.

I swear It’s quiet enough that I can actually hear myself think. I’m pretty certain that I can hear my gun leather squeak as the holster in my belt rubs the cold steel of pop’s trusty old .45. It’s strange. It’s refreshing too, and let my mind wander after a belt of Cutty. My mind turns to a saucy dame I met in the kitchen of a clubhouse in the west valley. She was short, dark haired, gently curved in all the right places, and decorated with more tattoos than quite a few of the sailors I’ve tangled with over the years.

That broad also had a mouth on her that’d make any dull man blush. Whip smart and gifted with a vocabulary that made sea captains proud, she boasted a taste for good cigars and better scotch, and enjoyed both with the boys any chance she got. We spent a few fall nights together enjoying the pleasures of each other’s company—and pleasure it was. A given evening might’ve found us stalking quality dives downtown, enjoying varying libertine adventures about the southland, or embarked on a tour of questionable joints all over Hollywood.

We parted ways suddenly one morning. A note appeared under my pillow, in her delicate script, informing me that she was going to Malibu to work on her health, and would contact me upon her return. I wondered where she was that chilly evening, what he was doing, if she was alone, how her health had progressed. Less gentlemanly parts of my head mulled visions of our next sojourn in a Cigar lounge, scotch session, and how her skin moves under my hands.

It was then I realized I’d nearly chewed a hole in my cheek. Seems memories and Scotch are dangerous.