Thanks for the compliment, Little Hawk. I love Jen's stuff, and your stuff, and Amos and Kat's, but as an example of good writing, I would point to a piece of Peter T's work that was pure in concept and execution. It came at the end of the first Blake Madison story. I had brought it to a slam-bang detective end. Then I had added a post-script that I thought was one of the better tear-jerker endings I've tried. Then Peter weighed in with this ....


And then it was late.
"Is it too late for us, Baby?" I asked, pouring her another drink.
"I'll tell you what, Blake. Nice name, Blake, by the way. Reminds me of the poet."
"Madison remind you of anyone?"
"President, right?"
"Right, Baby."
"Well, if he doesn't appear on any small or medium sized money, I don't know anything about him."
"What happened to you, Baby? You're a smart girl, beautiful, but you sure are connected to a lot of dismal men."
"I tell you what, Blake. Parting gift. It's like this. When I was a little girl, you know, back in wherever it was, my father and my mother used to fight all the time, like hell, all the time, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
"Well, when you're a kid you think, well, you think it's your fault, or you should be able to do something about it." She looked at me, with those violet eyes. "You think you should be able to do something about it." She was starting to cry.
"So, Baby, so what did you do?"
"So, what I did was -- sorry. So when he hit me I used to let him do it. It was like I was some kind of absorbent cotton. You know, the hunks of fluffy stuff you make sheep out of in Sunday school. Like I could absorb all his hate just by standing there, just letting him take it out on me. I used to let him do it. Bang, bang, he'd hit me, and I'd suck it in. I thought I could make it all right. I'd take the hate, and they would love each other, and me, and we would all love each other. You know, magic, kid's stuff. Poof, the world is beautiful." She held her drink in her hand, feeling the roundness of the glass.
"Remember, Blake, how you asked me once, a long time ago, about suffering --"
"Yeah, sure, Baby, a lifetime ago."
"Well that's what I was there for. To make it all go away. That was my role, my magic. So when I grew up, I just carried on, you know."
If there was music playing somewhere, it wasn't nice music.
"The thing is, Blake, there's a lot of hate in the world, a lot of good things that people are just trying to fuck up. It's like love -- you start something, it goes along for awhile, and then, who knows --"
"Entropy?"
"Huh?"
I looked at her. "Everything unravels unless you work at it, and even then ---"
She smiled ruefully. "Well, you've been there, Blake, I can tell."
It was even later than I thought. She reached over for her purse. She was getting ready to go.
"So when I went on the street -- yeah, I went on the street -- that was what I tried to think. Here I am, the Sunday school sheep, dabbing up all the mudpuddles, all the fuckedup sadness of all these fuckedup men. Stupid, really. I was the fuckedup one."
She struggled to open her purse to check to see if she had enough money to get wherever it was she was going. I waved some of her own money, the stuff she had given me earlier; but she shook her head.
I took another sip of my Scotch, trying to think of how to keep her from going. All I could think of was: "As Holden Caulfield used to say, you could scrape forever and you could still never get rid of all the FUCK YOUs written on all the walls of the world."
She nodded, got up from her barstool and turned to me. "Anyway, Blake, that was a long way round to a kind of goodbye. You're sweet, and we've had a lot of laughs, but I am all absorbed up. I can't take your pain, and I can't mend your threads. No fluff left, I'm afraid."
I gave her a look that I hoped said how much I understood. She was alright, was Baby Gentry. Perhaps in another time, and another place, it would have worked out. Perhaps not. She reached over and kissed me, once, on the mouth.
"Sorry", she said, "I taste like the salt on a margarita, without the margarita."
I said I didn't mind. She walked a little unsteadily to the door. I saw her silhouetted briefly in the dire purple glow from the flashing sign across the street. For a moment, it was as if she had become a neon angel at the gates of some kind of Paradise Betrayed.
And then she was gone forever.