Marlowe’s guayabera sticks to his skin like ocean salt, toes peeking over the edge of a kidney bean dredged in soft cyan. He hates the valley. Tells me it’s a man-made lake of pure beige stocked with confidence men and carnal women. Some ruby-headed cutie with curves like a candy cane queries the crowd for a scene suggestion. In two shakes, a gang of hollow-boned youngsters mime planning a heist. Some choirboy’s dreamt up a gun, side cocked like a jaundiced eye, everyone chortling except our sleuth. Marlowe slaps the fictitious firearm out from the boy’s soft palms. Phil’s not one to yes, and. Never been told don’t think. Only time you gotta improv, he snarls, eyes glistening like his brylcreemed hair, is when your lips kiss serious steel, trapped in the twisted paws of a goon named Mad Dog with a face like a jigsaw. Marlowe twirls his madras jacket over his shoulder like a toreador, melts into the night, summer air thick as fresh poured asphalt, before disappearing down the street like a man devoured by the moon.
Ben lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a high school teacher, and three extremely powerful little girls. Ben studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Eclectica, Club Plum and other journals.
The Disappointed Housewife 