Cocktail Talk: Trouble is My Business
He’s been relentlessly imitated (poorly, in the main), some dated by the years, and translated much in language and form, but somedays, you just get the urge to read a little of the real Raymond Chandler and slip into the gumshoe world of Philip Marlowe. At least I do! And recently I did take said slip and slipped into a few stories staring such and written by such. I’m not sure much intro is needed – if you don’t know Chandler, then let me say there’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said better by others, or even turned into a film that does the same. Let me just say that the book I picked up (I have pretty much the whole hard-boiled batch) is a story collection headlined by the story “Trouble is My Business,” and the below quote is from the same story, and is about talking and drinking Scotch, and that you should read past Raymond Chandler Cocktail Talks.
“She laughed disinterestedly and I slid past the end of her cigarette into a long rather narrow room with plenty of nice furniture, plenty of windows, plenty of drapes, plenty of everything. A fire blazed behind a screen, a big log on top of a gas teaser. There was a silk Oriental rug in front of a nice rose davenport in front of the nice fire, and beside that there was Scotch and swish on a tabouret, ice in a bucket, everything to make a man feel at home.
“You’d better have a drink,” she said. “You probably can’t talk without a glass in your hand.”
I sat down and reached for the Scotch. The girl sat in a deep chair and crossed her knees.
–Raymond Chandler, Trouble is My Business
