I figured out what my dream job is. Old Timey Private Eye Detective. Like the kind that spied on people from a tree and then flashed a mirror to your partner in the ice cream truck down the street when the subject enters a building. You’d get your own office, your own cigar, your own voice-over. There’d be telling shadows, cool clothes, rain. My own jazzy theme song??? I hate the saxophone normally, but it’s essential to the overall scope of my vision, so, cue the saxophone emotive background music.

She smoothed her gladrags down her getaway sticks, and then lit a cigarette. As she opened her cherry stained lips from the kiss of her drag, smoke billowed underneath her large hat, hiding her cold and calculating eyes. I’m assuming her lips are cherry, but we’re in black and white so it’s hard to tell. 

A jalopy horn honked in the distance and some Hard Boiled started yelled obscenities into the night. The rain beat down harder on the window pane as the dame wiped potential lipstick off her front tooth with with her polished, manicured pinky finger. 

 “Look, I need you to do somethin’ for me.” She sat back on the corner of the desk and swung her long gam back and forth like a child’s swing. “I need you to get down to the bottom of some crimes,” she says.

She tosses a manilla envelope on to the desk with the ease and grace that comes from no longer caring. Or maybe caring too much. I’m intrigued by these crimes. Seeking out and solving mysteries is my passion. I pick up the envelope and she gives me a smile. The moody saxophone swells in the room as she takes another drag off her cigarette.  

Or maybe I’m not a P.I. from the 30s. Maybe I’m from the 80s and I get to solve some mystery art theft in a fancy suit with big feathered hair like on Moonlighting or Miami Vice or that movie with Renee Russo and the brown haired James Bond. Oh I like a good truth hunt in a smart, knee-length pastel, pencil skirt with matching shoulder-padded suit jacket. Someone is snorting cocaine as the happening saxophone wails on the yacht. Our attention is taken off the boat as a crocodile briefly chomps and trashes in the waters below. That doesn’t seem right but we’re going to go with it because I’m pretty sure I saw a crocodile snap in the Phil Collins episode of Miami Vice. 

No matter what it is, as long as there are shoulder pads, cool clothes, and a saxophone to dictate my moods, and mysteries to unearth, and some shenanigans for me to make fun of, I’m sold.