Apologies to Mr. Chandler

The gal kicked off her flip-flops and hoisted her bare, sweaty gams onto the coffee table. She was the kind of leggy brunette that still turned the occasional head, despite the fact that she was clinging to her forties like a roof rat clings to the last orange on the tree. And despite all her years in what could more accurately be called the City of Demons, the utter misery of Los Angeles in late summer never failed to take her by surprise. How could this city be a virtual paradise for 11 months of the year, and then, in late August, become a plastic raft in the Lake of Eternal Hellfire; a hot, sweltering, endless expanse of stripmall-lined blacktop, devoid of life, hope, or even the smallest nugget of human compassion.

Yeah, it was hot. And it had been hot for days. It was so hot she couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t hot, when she didn’t feel a murderous impulse every time the oscillating fan turned its limp ripple of air away from her and toward the boyfriend who sat sweating beside her on the sofa. “If I killed him,” she thought, “there’d be more cool air for me. Besides, I wonder how much heat his body is generating, even at rest.”

But she soon abandoned her calculations and ambled slowly into the kitchen. It was too hot—even for physics. “All I want to do,” she thought as she opened the icebox door “is crawl inside and curl up next to the pickles and beer.” She sighed heavily. “Maybe tomorrow will be cooler,” she said to herself as she pushed a damp curl back from where it clung to her forehead like a cheap starlet clings to Bruce Willis at a movie premiere.

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