night scenes

Raymond Chandler



[excerpt, The Big Sleep]

"I'm leaving it in your hands."

"Very good, sir.  May I call you a cab?"

"Positively," I said, "not.  As a matter of fact I'm not here.  You're just seeing things."

     He smiled then.  He gave me a duck of his head and I turned and walked down the driveway and out of the gates.


     Ten blocks of that, winding down curved rain-swept streets, under the steady drip of trees, past lighted windows in big houses in ghostly enormous grounds, vague clusters of eaves and gables and lighted windows high on the hillside, remote and inaccessible, like witch houses in a forest.  

I came out at a service station glaring with wasted light, where a bored attendant in a white cap and a dark blue windbreaker sat hunched on a stool, inside the steamed glass, reading a paper.  I started in, then kept going.  

I was as wet as I could get already.  And on a night like that you can grow a beard waiting for a taxi.  And taxi drivers remember.

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