It was less than a fifteen-minute walk to
Joyce’s apartment on Meridian,
five blocks from the beach. This evening, though, Harry felt he should drive,
not be walking along the streets at night. His car was in a lot on Thirteenth,
behind the hotel: his ‘84 Eldorado he’d have to do something with before he
left. Maybe sign it to Joyce. She didn’t do too bad as a catalog model, but it
was seasonal and she had to work in between jobs as a cocktail waitress. In one
catalogue she’d be a young matron in sportswear; in the next, a swinger in a
gauzy lingerie, garter belts, her hair all curly. Harry would open a catalog thinking,
Okay, which model would you most like to jump? He told Joyce, kidding, to which
one nine times out of ten he would pick. Her. He told her thinking she’d say he
was sweet, but all she did was to look at him funny.
Pronto, Elmore Leonard
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| Alexandria |
My novelist, composer, actor friend, John
MacLachlan Gray has suggested that the pictures of the Raymond Chandler blonde, Colleen Hughes, are more Elmore Leonard and less Raymond Chandler. MacLachlan
Gray could be right. I differ in only that I see all of the Chandler women in black and white and
Leonard’s in colour. This colour somehow has to be lurid and or grainy. I have
such a candidate in Alexandria aka Lisa Prentiss
who hails from Washington
State. She likes to wear
bright red lipstick and is a brunette (no Zulu blonde). Could she be an Elmore
Leonard girl? Would MacLachlan Gray be persuaded to write an essay on the
subject?
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| John MacLachlan Gray |
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| Elmore Leonard, crow painting by Judith Currelly |
