For Wren

I knew that she'd be trouble from the start. All dames are. Still, I couldn't help but let her in. She was the kinda dame that even a blind deaf guy with a two-bit sense of smell would notice the moment she walked in a room. She had legs that wouldn't quit, and a mouth on her that outran those legs. I always said a dame didn't need to talk, but I got a perverse pleasure outta listenin' to her devastate every lowlife barfly who got the notion she'd give him the time of day.

And I'm as low as they come. Still don't know why she didn't turn that acid tongue on the likes of me and put me in my place. It woulda been short work. But I was a private dick, and I had somethin' she wanted: a way out.

Like every beautiful woman in this town she had a past as dark as the bottom of the East River. Lookin' into her eyes sometimes was like starin' down the barrel of a gun. There was pain there, and danger: two things that seem to attract me like nothin' else. She'd been hurt real bad, though she didn't talk about it much. It made me want to get my hands around the throat of the man who'd done it and squeeze until the light left his eyes. Even though I knew this dame was strong enough to do it herself if she got the chance.

But it wasn't a man that'd done it. Well, not just a man, and not in the way I thought. They were a small family out of Saint Louis. New Money. Thought themselves grand because they'd done better than their parents. He was a lawyer: the kind so slimy no cell could hold him. The kind who could get the lowest scum off the hook without batting an eye.

She was a lazy housewife of the worst kind. Not enough brains to fill a shot glass. Spent all his money without wonderin' where it came from. That is, until the divorce. Messy business. The guy had an affair with some dancer at the kind of club a lawyer ought not to be seen at. Ended up making her his new wife. From what I gather, the dancer's got more decency than the housewife and the lawyer put together. But that ain't sayin' much.

So these people, if you can call 'em that. They took this dame in when she was just a kid with nobody and no place to go. She was an orphan and some kinda blood kin to the lazy broad. They spend half a decade makin' her feel like she's nobody. So now they figure she owes them a debt so big she can never repay it.

They want to see her, she says. And soon. Big family Christmas and all that. I try to remember the last time I celebrated Christmas by doing something besides spending some quality time in the dark with a scotch old enough to be my father. She's afraid that if she goes, she's done for. They got plans for her. They got a way of breakin' down this pillar of a woman and ruinin' her. I can't let that happen.

I tell her she don't belong to anyone. I don't got any family and I don't need any. But I wouldn't say no to comin' home to the sweet sight of that dame sittin' in my favorite chair while the smoke from her cigarette drifts up to stain the ceiling of my sorry excuse for an apartment. This dame makes me want to be somebody, and somethin' in me doesn't wanna let that go.

But it ain't my choice. And the pain and danger in the barrels of those eyes draws her toward that morning flight. And I know in my gut as I watch her step onto that plane without a backward glance that I'll never see her again. I don't know if anyone could help her, but it wasn't me. I'm already forgettin' the shade of her lipstick and the challenge in her eyes as I swear I'll never let myself love a dame again.