Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti Page B

stuff” in there, among other things. Spot on, my dear—it would be foolish to leave anything important out in the car in this red-light district.
    Well, I wouldn’t say that this part of town is simply a
pit
. It is, of course, that. But your colloquialism doesn’t begin to describe the various dimensions of decrepitude in the local geography.
Decrepitude
,
Ro. It has your
pit
in it and a lot more besides. I speak from experience, more than you would believe. This whole city is most certainly a pitiful corpse, while the neighborhood outside the walls of this bar has the distinction of being the withering heart of the deceased. And I am a devoted student of its anatomy—a pathologist, after a fashion, with an eye for necroses that others overlook.
    For instance, have you ever been to that place called Speakeasy? Well, then you have some acquaintance with a bastardized nostalgia—the putrescence of things past. Yes, up a flight of stairs inside an old burlesque house is a high echoey hall with a leftover Deco interior of arching mirrors and chrome chandeliers. And there the giant painted silhouettes of bony flappers and gaunt Gatsbys sport about the curving ballroom walls, towering over the dance floor, their funereal elegance mocking the awkward gyrations of the living. An old dream with a new veneer. It’s fascinating, you know, how an obsolete madness is sometimes adopted and stylized in an attempt to ghoulishly preserve it. These are the days of second-hand fantasies and out-of-date distractions.
    But there are other sights in this city that I think are much more interesting. Not the least of which are those storefront temples of dubious denomination. There’s one on Third and Dickerson called the Church of the True Dividing Light, not to be mistaken, I presume, with that false light which blinds so many searching eyes. Oddly enough, I’ve yet to see any light at all shining through the windows of this gray dwarfish building, and I always look for some sort of illumination as I ride by.
    I tell you, no one worships this city as I do. Especially its witticisms of proximity, one strange thing next to another, which together add up to a greater strangeness. One of the more grotesque examples of this phenomenon occurs when you observe that a little shop whose display window features a fabulous array of prosthetic devices is right next-door to Marv’s Second Hand City. Then there are those places—you’ve noticed them, I’m sure—that are freakishly suggestive in a variety of ways. One of them is that pink and black checkerboard box on Bender Boulevard that calls itself Bill’s Bender Lounge, where a garish marquee advertises Nightly Entertainment. And if you stare at that legend long enough, the word “nightly” will begin to connote more than the interval between dusk and dawn. Soon this simple term becomes truly evocative, as if it were code for the most exotic of nocturnal entertainments. And speaking of entertainment, I should cite that establishment whose owner, no doubt an epicure of musical comedy, gave it the title of Guys and Dolls, Inc. What a genius of vulgarity, considering that this business is devoted solely to the sale and repair of manikins. Or is it really a front for a bordello of dummies? No offense intended, Rosalie.
    I could go on—I still haven’t mentioned Miss Wanda’s Wigs or that ancient and squalid hotel that boasts “A Bath in Every Room”—but maybe you’re becoming a bit bored. Yes, I can understand what you mean when you say you don’t notice that stuff after a while. The mind becomes dull and complacent, I know. Sometimes I get that way myself. But it seems that just when I’m comfortably mired in complacency, some good jolt comes along.
    Maybe I’m sitting in my car, waiting for a red light to change. A derelict, drunk or brain-diseased, comes up to my defenseless vehicle and pounds on my