after class, before dinner

I continue to be taken aback by Raymond Chandler’s descriptive prowess.

On describing Geiger’s house:

The Chinese junk on the walls, the rug, the fussy lamp, the teakwood stuff, the sticky riot of colours, the flagon of ether and laudanum – all this in the daytime had a stealthy nastiness, like a fag party.

In that paragraph, three words require a dictionary for me to know what they refer to. I also wonder if a fag party is what I think it is.

In describing Carmen’s reaction to the narrator:

Her eyes became narrow and almost black and as shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray.

In describing Eddie Mars the moment he enters:

…two scarlet diamonds in his grey satin tie that looked like the diamonds on roulette layouts. …beautifully cut flannel… his hair underneath it [the hat] was grey and as fine as if it had been sifted by gauze… thoughtful grey eyes.

I was talking to a student as we were in the same elevator going down. Earlier in class, she had mentioned that, having just finished high school, she was looking for a part-time job as an accounting clerk. I asked her what her dream job was, and she said she still didn’t know. I said that’s a question she had to answer at some point. After class, we found ourselves in the same elevator going down.

I told her to go abroad for a year or so. She said she couldn’t. “I get homesick,” she said. “I was in Malaysia for a month and I cried the whole time because I missed home so much.” She was an only child. At home, there were mom, dad, and two cats. We got down to the narrow pavements of Kwun Tong and weaved our way around pedestrians. I had in my hand a detective novel and a Japanese magazine picked up at the laundromat. I asked her if she was taking the subway, and she said, “Yes, I live in Lam Tin.” “Then you can walk home,” I said. She smiled and shook her head simultaneously, and before she could explain, I said, “I have to cross here,” and stopped at the corner. Her momentum took her to the direction of the station, but she turned to me, in no rush, and with a smile made by lifting her cheek to the corner of her squinting eye, she escorted the stillness of the moment to wave goodbye, before resuming her walk to the station. Cars and the rush-hour hoard found my senses again as I crossed the road, headed for the building where I was about to have dinner by myself.