After the longish (or just plain long) Tom Waits post below, I thought I’d slip in a short couple of quotes from a book that almost echoes Waits (a book which is definitely the inspiration for the “ethics” scene in the Coen brothers’ film Miller’s Crossing, too), in that there are some shady and weird characters and everyone ends sad, dead, or drunk–a book called Kill and Tell. The first one’s about going into a bar, and the second about drinking at home (cause I wanted to cover the bases).

The bar was a fine old piece of imitation mahogany, and there was a fine old imitation Irishman in a white coat behind it.

We lifted our glasses to each other; the wine was cool and dry. I kept refilling our glasses while we ate, and when Jake brought the coffee Catherine asked him for some brandy. We were celebrating; each of us understood that.

“I think I’m drunk,” she told me.

“I’m drunk, too,” I said.

–Kill and Tell, Howard Rigsby