“I’m afraid it’s not much to see anymore,” I said. “But if you’re really interested in ruins...”
I showed her through the house, or much of it. She murmured appreciatively over the decaying evidence of past grandeur, and regretfully at the ravages of time.
When we finished out tour of the house Manny again became business-like. “We’ll have a lot of conferring to do to get this project operating, Britt. Do you want an office, or will you work here?”
“Here, if it’s agreeable to you,” I said. “I have a great deal of research material here, and I’m used to the place. Of course if it’s inconvenient for you...”
“Oh, we’ll work it out,” she promised. “Now, if you’ll drive me back to town...”
The car she had driven out in was mine, she explained, pointing to the gleaming new vehicle which stood in the driveway. Obviously I would need a car, and PXA owed me one. And she did hope I wouldn’t be stuffy about it.
I said I never got stuffy over gifts of single cars. Only fleets of them, and not always then. Manny laughed and gave me a playful punch on the arm.
“Silly! Now, come on, will you? We have a lot to do today.”
We did have a lot to do, as it turned out. At least we did a lot — far more than I anticipated. But that’s getting ahead of the story. To take events in their proper order:
I drove into town, Manny sitting carelessly close to me. I deposited the check in my bank, drew some cash and returned to the car — my car. It was lunch time by then, so we lunched and talked. I talked mostly, since I have a knack for talk, if little else, and Manny seemed to enjoy listening to me.
We came out of the restaurant into mid-afternoon, and talking, I drove around until sunset. By which time, needless to say, we were ready for a drink. We had it, rather we had them, and eventually we had dinner. When twilight fell we were on the outskirts of town, parked by the lake which served as the reservoir for the city’s water system.
Manny’s legs were tucked up in the seat. Her head rested on my shoulder and my arm was around her. It was really a very nice way to be.
“Britt...” she murmured, breaking the drowsy, comfortable silence. “I’ve enjoyed myself so much today. I think it’s been the very best day in my life.”
“You’re a thief, Manuela Aloe,” I said. “You’ve stolen the very speech I was going to make.”
“Tell me something, Britt. I low does anyone as nice as you are, as attractive and intelligent and bubbling over with charm — how does he, why does he...?”
“Wind up as I have?” I said. “Because I never found a seller’s market for those things until I met you.”
It was a pretty blunt thing to say. She sat up with a start, glaring at me coldly. But I smiled at her determinedly and said I meant no offense.
“Let’s face it, Manny. The Rainstar name isn’t worth much anymore, and my talent never was. So the good looks and the charm, et cetera, is what I’ve sold, isn’t it?”
“No it isn’t!” she snapped, and then hesitating, biting her lip, “Well, not entirely. You wouldn’t have gotten the job if you hadn’t been like you are, but neither would you have gotten it if you hadn’t been qualified.”
“So it was half one, half the other,” I said. “And what’s wrong with fifty-fifty?”
“Nothing. And don’t you act like there is, either!”
“Not even a little bit?”
“No!”
“All right, I won’t,” I said. “Providing you smile real pretty for me, and then lie down with your head in my lap.”
She did so, although the smile was just a trifle weak. I bent down and kissed her gently, and was kissed in return. I put a hand on her breast, gave it a gentle squeeze. She shivered delicately, eyes clouding.
“I’m not an easy lay, Britt. I don’t sleep around.”
“What am I to do with you, Manny?” I said. “You are now twice a thief.”
“I guess I’ve been waiting for you. It had to be someone like you, and there wasn’t anyone like that until you.”
“I know,” I said. “I also have been waiting.”
You can see why I said it, why I just about had to say it. She was my munificent benefactor, she was gorgeous beyond my wildest dreams and she obviously wanted and needed to be screwed. So what the hell else could I do?
“Britt...” She wiggled restlessly. “I have a live-in maid at my apartment.”
“Unfortunate,” I said. “My housekeeper also lives in.”
“Well? Well, Britt dear?”
“Well, I know of a place...” I broke off, carefully amended the statement. “I mean, I’ve heard of one. It’s nothing fancy, I understand. No private baths or similar niceties. But it’s clean and comfortable and safe... Or so I’m reliably told.”
“Well?” she said.
“Well?” I said.
She didn’t say anything. Simply reached out and turned on the ignition.
Raymond Chandler
Backfire
Although Raymond Chandler’s Hollywood career was frustrating, he was involved with important movies: Double Indemnity (with Billy Wilder), Strangers on a Train (with Alfred Hitchcock), and The Blue Dahlia, made from his original screenplay. Sometime in 1946 or 1947, Chandler wrote this screen story on speculation but no one was interested in hiring him to develop it into a screenplay. Published only as a collector’s edition (Santa Barbara: Santa Teresa Press, 1984), “Backfire” is an example of the first step in the filmscript process, the “original story” that precedes the “treatment” in which blot and characters are developed before going on to the actual screenplay. As Robert B. Parker noted in his introduction to the edition in which this story appeared, George is an example of the Chandler attitude: “... a vision of chivalric possibility, of hope, maybe only the nostalgia, that honor and courage in the defense of goodness is sufficient to endure.”
George comes home from the wars (I’m as sick of this as you are, I’m just spiralling) to find, say, his wife has been killed in an auto accident on a dark road in a fog at night, at a bad turn. He has no suspicions of foul play. (The cops had, but they didn’t get anywhere, so clammed up.) George finds the small town drear and too full of memories now, and he moves on.
He remembers Edna, his wife, always talked of her childhood in Poonville, Oregon. George says that’s as good as any. He goes on there and gets a job and rooming is tight, so he is introduced by Mary, a girl friend of Edna’s, to Joe, a nice guy, also out of service, and they room together. They become pals. George has asked Mary not to tell anybody who he was or anything about his being married to Edna. He doesn’t want talk or sympathy. He wants a new life in a new town, but it kind of helps his loneliness to think that Edna was a kid along these streets, and drank Cokes and ate ice cream in this drugstore, and went to this Bijou movie house, and waggled a little red and green flag over on the high school football field.
George is a nice guy, not simple, not bitter. Just lonely. Joe is a nice guy too, but his eyes are a little bitter and his mind is not so clean after the war. But the boys get on fine.
Joe finds out somehow who George is. And Joe is the boy who was stationed in Edna’s town in the war and went off the track with her and killed her because she wanted too much of his life.
Joe thinks George came there to get him, that this friendly act is just an act. Joe thinks he is in love with Mary. George is, but doesn’t know it yet. Mary is in love with Joe, who gets the women that way.