Moonlight Serenade
  By Al. B. Moonlight

It was just the typical afternoon for a joe like me:  leaning back in my chair, Louis Prima’s That Old  Black Magic playing softly on the Philco, my weary dogs propped up on the desk while I pretended to actually be able to do The GenChat Times crossword puzzle.

I was getting about as cozy as an alderman receiving a kickback from a union rep when I realized I had misplaced my sack lunch.  It was then I noticed something under my keister that felt a lot like a peanut butter and tuna sandwich.  Sighing, I stood up to peel it of the back of my trousers.  It didn’t look in that bad of shape so I sat back down to polish it off like a steno kneeling in the C.E.O.’s office.  I would leave the cleanup to my secretary Twinkletoes.

I was as bored as a carpenter with a flat headed hammer, so I decided it was as good a time as any to tidy up my Rolodex, but figured I should lay down and rest my eyelids a little first.  I doubt if it was five minutes before I had punched the ticket on the Slumberland Express.  When I woke up I had to pry my face off the dried saliva on the sofa.

*****

Before you get as confused as a blind man looking for a turkey dinner on Bastille Day, maybe I should fill you in the skinny of who and where I am.  Otherwise, you might as well be shooting fish in a wheelbarrow with a bazooka.

The name’s Moonlight, Al. B. Moonlight.  I run a detective agency with my partner Lauren Bloodcall in a cheesy little second-rate chat room called ChatWorld.  No one ever gave the techs any points for originality.  The agency is called Moonlight & Bloodcall, but for some reason she had the business cards printed to say Bloodcall & Moonlight.  You know how it is with dames.  Good thing I carry pencil with me so I can fix them.

I also tinkle the ivories a little on the side and am the conductor of a rather rat-tag assortment of motley musicians in a jazz orchestra, but that is neither here nor there at the moment, but someplace probably on the dark side of the moon if you have that old Pink Floyd album on the Victrola.

Although I hardly ever do more than sign my name to an i.o.u. or a chit or a tab or a  check that will bounce higher than a super-ball on a waterbed, for some reason the publisher for this ditchwater rag has asked me to pitch in my two cents worth with a column.  Well, any dame that looks that good in a tight calf-length number and a pair of silk stockings…I can’t say no a dame like that…sometimes she just makes me want to take the dog for a walk out behind of the barn….

*****

The office was as warm and clammy as a gym teacher’s trunks on a mid-June afternoon.  My eyes started again to feel as heavy as a hearty Italian dinner after a German ethics lecture.  I was searching for some toothpicks to prop my peepers open when the phone ran.  The cigarette in the corner of my mouth fell into the wastebasket.  The overdue notices I had thrown in there unopened started to smoulder like a parsons on an Easter egg hunt.

I was figuring out whether to get the phone before the answering machine clicked on (the closest I ever figured out how to run it was the day I took a butter knife to the contraption) or get the fire extinguisher, when the door flew open like my fly on Bastille Day and Twink came rushing in like the calvary with the trots.

She was about my height and wearing a tight little blue number that emphasised the fact she was soft and had curves in all the right places.  She was wearing a perfume that made a joe stand up and salute the flag.  She was one fine looking dame.

“Oh, Al!” she said as she brushed her long blonde hair back from her sky blue eyes. “What I am ever going to do with you?”

“Well, you could send me out for pizza, but I would have to borrow some cash from you for that,” I replied as I admired the view as she bent over to put out the fire.

“Oh, Al!  What happened to that advance that publisher gave you?”

“Well, sweetheart, I needed some smokes and socks.  The rest Louie, my bookie, convinced me saving my knee caps was more important than investing it in blue chip stocks or lunch.”

She came over and stood in front of me, ready to give me one of her Dutch uncle lectures.  However, her face softened, as her fingers started to play with .my hair.  She took me by the tie and slowly pulled me to my feet.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Al B. Moonlight,” she sighed as she moulded like silly putty frying on a sidewalk against me, “you are calloused, crude, rude, unthinking, and could use a refresher course in personal hygiene, but I can’t leave my hands off of you…”

As her tongue started to do things in my mouth that were illegal in many non-Western nations, I reached out and pushed the door shut.

You guys will just have to leave the rest to your imaginations…