HOLD THE FAUX

I’ve been rereading Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister.

 

As we know, Chandler liked a drink and so did many of his characters. In The Little Sister we meet Dolores Gonzales – a faux ‘Mexican spitfire’ who at one point says to Marlowe ‘I wear black because I am beautiful and wicked – and lost’  

Reader, I’d be tempted to marry her.  Of course she also turns out to be a murderess, but in Chandler we pretty much expect that.

 

She was played in the poorly regarded film adaptation of the book, titled Marlowe, by Rita Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico.

 

    In the novel Dolores also says, ‘We will have a drink … The goddamedest drink we will have … Scotch?  Or would you prefer a mixed drink?  I mix a perfectly loathsome martini.’

Well nobody’s perfect.

 

But Marlowe isn’t only about booze. He goes for something to eat

‘Down at the drug-store lunch counter I had time to inhale two cups of coffee and a melted cheese sandwich with two slivers of ersatz bacon embedded in it, like dead fish in the silt at the bottom of a drained pool.

‘I was crazy. I liked it.’

 

Here’s one I made earlier – ersatz-free.