Riffing the Stories: Down and Out in Limbo City

Of course allmusicjunkies didn't forget Valentine's Day.

This is why they suggested the first lines of "My Funny Valentine." For me though, the only rendition of this song that's stuck in my head is Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie 'The Fabulous Baker Boys'. (Which one do you people prefer?)

Throw in my current reading of detective fiction of Jedediah Berry's excellent The Manual of Detection, plus China Mieville's The City and the City, and I had to write the customary scene of a detective in his dingy office and the cool, sexy blonde that walks into his life...

Down and Out in Limbo City

My funny valentine, the phonograph scratched from the old vinyl record playing at one side of his office. Sweet comic valentine.

The dead detective barely heard the song as his unseeing eyes stared at the necklace wrapped around his hand. A shot glass and a half-empty bottle of whiskey were on his desk.

You make me smile with my heart.

There was a slight knock at the door and the detective roused himself to say, “C’mon in. And that better not be you, Simon.”

The door swung open and a tall, curvaceous woman in a tight black dress walked in. A small black hat and a black silk veil covered her head and features, but the dead detective felt the woman’s gaze like a punch to the gut.

“I’m not Simon,” said the woman in a soft steel-limned voice. “I trust I’m not disturbing you?”

I've noticed though that current spate of allmusicjunkies fiction has been devoid of local flavor. But that's all right. Sometimes it comes, sometimes you gotta let the imagination run wild for a bit.