(no subject)

[jholloway.livejournal.com]

I could tell the dame was trouble from the way she walked through the door of my office. Any good-looking girl can enter a room, but it takes a special kind of woman to really walk through a door. The dead kind, in this case. I puffed a cloud of cigarette smoke into the room. I don't know why, but ghosts seem to find it soothing. Maybe it's the cigarettes. I never smoked before I died. Somehow getting shot and buried in a shallow grave makes you feel like life's too short, even if yours actually isn't.

She drifted toward me, hat shadowing a face that flickered between Veronica Lake and a grinning death's head. On balance I preferred Veronica, but I had to think about it. She had the kind of legs that disappear about five inches from the floor. I gestured to a seat and she looked at me blankly.

Dead people never appreciate irony.

"Mister Donnelly", I heard. Her lips moved slightly out of time to the words and her voice wasn't quite right for her body. Good to know some things never change. "I need your help. I've heard you help ... my kind of people."

"Maybe," I said, trying to retain some of my dignity. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Somewhere in the big unknowable somewhere we amuse ourselves by calling Heaven, there's an office. In that office is a man with a green eyeshade. I know this although I have never seen him. And every now and again, this man fills out a form and marks it on a card and sends the card out into the world where it lands, as often as not, on my desk. This was one of my cards. I was already pulling out a bottle of whisky and tucking a set of brass knuckles that had once been blessed by the archbishop of Vancouver into my pocket.

"Why don't you tell me about your problem?"