Noir Car, Episode 10

Meanwhile, in an even more pitiful part of the metropolis, on a mattress much harder than the floor, he rests in blackness after a hard afternoon of kidney punches and boxed ears. In the soothing, somnambulant service of his dreams walked his memory, reminding him of his first her.

When he hit the jukebox, his quarter stayed stuck inside, jammed in the tunnel at the end of which lay the mechanical click that set in motion musical fulfillment. A quick feminine finger enters the frame and raps the yellow, bubbling arch of the machine just so, so the coin let go and dropped. "Petty cash," she says, "it's all petty cash. I know a good pennies from bad, I can smell the copper burning," and walked on through without him needing to see her face. Ka-chink and those soft strains, Duke's tickling black fingers on the ghostly white keys etched back in black plastic floated his favorite melody, his favorite, Satin Doll. She'd made music for him with a flick of her finger, not like a whore but like a god, in her feel for the weight of a coin, for the gravity of everyday things, for the motion that sets all other things in motion.

For him it was the con, this magic flick of the finger that set everything right like dominoes standing at attention. The con was his magic trick that made him believe in life, that made his spine tingle with impossible dreams, like we believe the magician can cut a lady in two without leaving mark. No regular man could do that, and no regular man could bring his dreams into being (albeit at the mark's expense) so quickly and so smoothly as this sidewalk find-the-peanut three-card monte hood.

There, in his memory, he stood staring at the effervescent jukebox. There, standing, in his memory, he fell in love once more without even looking at her face.

TO BE CONTINUED
this episode by Matt Fontaine

Noir Car, Episode 9

She touches her tongue to her lips quickly, so as not to put forth the impression that she was that kind of girl. Her mouth is filled with the sands of what not to say, and utterly lacking the keys that will unlock the lips of these usual suspects with unusual skills. Every eye in the bar watches as she takes a shot with her left hand, and tenses to shoot with her right. The rum rolls down her throat, over her voicebox and steadies the shaking in her lungs. A skeleton key sentence clatters against her teeth as she swivels with her hips to survey the silent bar. Save said jukebox, now ringing out Nina Simone Don’t let him take me honey, don’t let him handle me, every eye in the bar calculated her hand on her hip as she stood and said, "I’m looking for a man with cement under his fingernails." Nina sings out I love you, Porgy and her mind flashes to how she got in this splinter-floor, cast iron door den of undeserved trouble.

TO BE CONTINUED
episode 9 by Sonya Walker