Prepping the IV

[Robin Landseadel]

	It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside
	the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second
	floor dine and dice emporium called Florian's. A man was
	looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty
	windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky
	immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was
	a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not
	wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me.
	His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked
	behind his enormous fingers.

	Slim quiet Negroes passed up and down the street and stared
	at him with darting side glances. He was worth looking at. He
	wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with
	white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie,
	pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white
	explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded
	a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie.
	There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of
	his hat, but he didn't really need them. Even on Central Avenue,
	not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as
	inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
	Raymond Chandler, "Farewell My Lovely", 1940