Cherchez La Femme

June 21, 2018 at 9:52 pm (Detective story, Entertainment, Film, Mystery, Poetry, Romance, The Supernatural, Vampire novel) (Carson Albion Private Eye, City of Los Angeles, Countess Draculina, Dracul Van Helsing, Film Noir, Los Angeles, Midsummer Night, narrative poem, poem, Private Eye poem, Summer Solstice)

Cherchez La Femme

It would take a long time for the sun to set on Sunset Boulevard tonight
Carson Cody Albion thought to himself
in the midst of cigarette smoke and haze of bourbon
in his Los Angeles private eye’s office
It being the Summer Solstice and all that

Long hours of daylight
The riff raff of the city wouldn’t have so many hours to steal, extort and murder
Bummer for them! Albion thought

Albion had been hired to find a woman
Cherchez la Femme
as the French would say

He’d been told that she only seemed to venture forth at night
by the man who had hired him
The man a Hollywood director intended to give la Femme a screen test

Yeah right!
That’s what they call it these days
Albion laughed to himself
The gumshoe had his office door open to try to keep things cool
Between the hallway fan and the office ceiling fan
Maybe a touch of the Norse frost giants
would help cool down the flames 🔥 of Hades
on this Midsummer Night in Los Angeles

Albion’s ice in his glass had melted
The penalty for drinking straight from the bottle
He reflected
Well he should go see the sun set on this solstice night
before he started hitting the night spots and lounges
where la Femme was said to hang out

Albion locked his office door and walked down the four flights of stairs to the office building lobby
He tipped his fedora to the cleaning lady and walked out into the night

The neon lights hadn’t started to shine yet
As he walked through his sector of the city
They wouldn’t really come on until after the sun had set
Maybe that’s why he preferred California winters to California summers
The temperatures were about the same
maybe slightly cooler by inches of degrees in the winter
but what was missing was the glow of neon at night
in the summer
Neon the blood that seemed to make this city feel alive

It pulsed like the beat of a drum 🥁
and summoned all to partake in the wildness of the night
It was there that this urban jungle became a jungle
The women danced and swayed like tropical 🌴 dancers
and the men sharpened their spears for the time it was necessary
to stab both friend and foe in the back

Albion saw the sun set
He whistled
and the nearest neon light
seemed to answer his call
flickering on like a woman stirring towards orgasm

Speaking of women, it was time to Cherchez la Femme
Several gin joints and several nightclubs later,
he found her
in a midnight blue evening dress

Her brunette hair
The touch of a foreign accent as she introduced her next song into the microphone
Romanian I believe the film director said it was
And when she sang, Albion thought that the moonlight had never serenaded the ocean 🌊 so beautifully
The City of Angels had been touched by an angel
Albion stubbed out his cigarette
and approached her
when she had finished singing her numbers

It was a Los Angeles night in the mid-1940s
Midsummer Night
and Orson Welles wanted him
Carson Cody Albion to locate a woman for a screen test

What Midsummer Night’s Dream did Mr. Welles have in mind,
Albion thought cynically to himself,
after all the man was married to Rita Hayworth?
Wasn’t the Love Goddess enough for him?

But enough of reflecting like Chandler’s Philip Marlowe,
Albion started heading in the woman’s direction
for he didn’t have all eternity to make a connection
La Femme flashed Albion a warm smile as she saw him approach
Her sharp incisors that hung from her top front teeth puzzled the private eye
What manner of woman is this? Albion thought
If Albion knew at the time he asked himself this question
he’d have realized that the woman did have all eternity.

-A private eye poem
written by Christopher
Thursday June 21st
2018

Dracul Van Helsing was in Romania.

He was trying to track down Dracula’s daughter the Countess Draculina on behalf of her father.

The Count since his Cadbury Rocher inspired vampiric resurrection had learned how to use the Internet.

He was trying to track down his daughter.

The only thing he managed to find on the World Wide Web was that his daughter had once done a screen test for Orson Welles back in the 1940s

Now Van Helsing had managed to track her to Romania her ancestral homeland.

He had heard that she had dyed her hair blonde.

He walked over to the window of his room in the old inn in which he was staying.

And watched the sun set on the Carpathian Mountains on this summer solstice evening.

He turned on the television to watch the news hoping to find out the weather.

And there he saw… Countess Draculina.

(Notice her vampiric incisors unless of course your eyes are focused elsewhere for some reason 😉)