The Drowning Pool

There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

He had pink butterfly ears. The rest of him was still in the larval stage.

I felt like a lonely cat, an aging tom ridden by obscure rage, looking for torn-ear trouble. I clipped that pitch off short and threw it away. Night streets were my territory, and would be till I rolled in the last gutter.

My free hand reached for something to hold on to, and closed on liquid nothing.

There’s a contradiction in your thinking,” I said. “If I took your dirty money, you wouldn’t be able to trust my honesty.

The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And the whole pier rose and fell in stiff and creaking mimicry, dancing its long slow dance of dissolution. I reached the end and saw no one, heard nothing but my footsteps and the creak of the beams, the slap of waves on the pilings. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the dim water. The nearest land ahead of me was Hawaii.

dozed off with my consciousness slightly ajar.

Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?" I felt it. I took it easy.

Like other self-educated men, he was vain of his vocabulary.

I’ve taken an option on it, but I haven’t bought it yet

Her eyes, dark brown and experienced, carried a little luggage underneath.