The Last of the Songfics!
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ailis_fictive, who asked for something Lewis and whimsical, and picked song #8, which was Bob Dylan's I Want You. Which means this nearly wrote itself.
*
Robbie Lewis strolled back into the office he shared with Hathaway and put the cup of coffee down on his sergeant's desk. A pale hand reached out, vaguely searching; with a sympathetic chuckle, he pushed the cup into the curve of the fingers.
"Any luck?" he said.
Hathaway brought the coffee to his mouth, apparently with some difficulty in getting the hole in the lid lined up with the hole in his face, and took a sip with the kind of desperate drug-seeking passion that implied he would have drained the whole thing if it hadn't been about a million degrees Celsius. Then he shook his head.
"How did you stand the sixties?" he said.
"Ah well," said Lewis, "once in a while one of us would hitch up the camel and forage for beans in the Arabian desert, and then we'd grind them by hand--"
"No. What?" Hathaway shook his head again as if it might lend Lewis's words some sense. "I meant--"
"I know what you meant; just taking the piss. Not getting on well with Dylan, then?"
"I'm up to the cracked bells and washed-out horns. No apparent association with anyone or anything in Wyatt's life. Profound and whimsical poetry it may be, but not worth a lot as clues."
Very early that morning they'd been handed the murder of Jeffrey Wyatt, a visiting American scholar who'd just given a lecture on the works of one Robert Allen Zimmerman, otherwise known as Bob Dylan. So far their only lead was a piece of paper clutched in the dead man's hand with the words "the guilty undertaker" scrawled on it. Unfortunately, no undertakers had been discovered among Wyatt's associates, nor anyone with a name like Sexton or Gotobed or Diggory or Morticia. A quick Google had provided the origin of the quote, and Hathaway had begun excavating the song. He didn't look like he'd stopped since.
"Well, I'll give you that Dylan can be dense enough to plug drains. They had plenty of music that wasn't, at that time, when I was a little young for clubs and concerts as yet, by the way. Baby, you and me, we've got a groovy kind of love, that sort of thing. Got to get you into my life. No lonesome organ grinders there. And you should talk."
"Most of what I play doesn't have words. Or they're in Middle English or medieval Latin. With occasional forays into Japanese commercial jingles. And most of what I listen to uses straightforward English phrases that form a cohesive narrative or express an easily deduced emotional state."
"Yeah, and speaking of which, I deduce that you need to get outside into the fresh air and clear your head. Even if you're planning to pollute the atmosphere while you're at it."
"Let me just finish the verse." Hathaway addressed himself to the paper again. "'Cracked bells and washed-out horns, blow into my face with scorn' -- no horn players in the vicinity, no scornful women named Belle, no one who's visited Philadelphia lately, no laundries -- any other suggestions? -- 'but it's not that way, I wasn't born to lose you.'" He glanced up, reading from the paper with a dramatic emphasis worthy of Shakespeare. "'I want you, I want you, I want you so bad; honey I want you.' Anything there, you think, sir?"
Except that looking at you makes me feel about eighty, no. "I think you need to finish your coffee and go out for a walk," Lewis said gently. "And I'll get onto the drunken politicians until you get back."
For
ailis_fictive, who asked for something Lewis and whimsical, and picked song #8, which was Bob Dylan's I Want You. Which means this nearly wrote itself.*
Robbie Lewis strolled back into the office he shared with Hathaway and put the cup of coffee down on his sergeant's desk. A pale hand reached out, vaguely searching; with a sympathetic chuckle, he pushed the cup into the curve of the fingers.
"Any luck?" he said.
Hathaway brought the coffee to his mouth, apparently with some difficulty in getting the hole in the lid lined up with the hole in his face, and took a sip with the kind of desperate drug-seeking passion that implied he would have drained the whole thing if it hadn't been about a million degrees Celsius. Then he shook his head.
"How did you stand the sixties?" he said.
"Ah well," said Lewis, "once in a while one of us would hitch up the camel and forage for beans in the Arabian desert, and then we'd grind them by hand--"
"No. What?" Hathaway shook his head again as if it might lend Lewis's words some sense. "I meant--"
"I know what you meant; just taking the piss. Not getting on well with Dylan, then?"
"I'm up to the cracked bells and washed-out horns. No apparent association with anyone or anything in Wyatt's life. Profound and whimsical poetry it may be, but not worth a lot as clues."
Very early that morning they'd been handed the murder of Jeffrey Wyatt, a visiting American scholar who'd just given a lecture on the works of one Robert Allen Zimmerman, otherwise known as Bob Dylan. So far their only lead was a piece of paper clutched in the dead man's hand with the words "the guilty undertaker" scrawled on it. Unfortunately, no undertakers had been discovered among Wyatt's associates, nor anyone with a name like Sexton or Gotobed or Diggory or Morticia. A quick Google had provided the origin of the quote, and Hathaway had begun excavating the song. He didn't look like he'd stopped since.
"Well, I'll give you that Dylan can be dense enough to plug drains. They had plenty of music that wasn't, at that time, when I was a little young for clubs and concerts as yet, by the way. Baby, you and me, we've got a groovy kind of love, that sort of thing. Got to get you into my life. No lonesome organ grinders there. And you should talk."
"Most of what I play doesn't have words. Or they're in Middle English or medieval Latin. With occasional forays into Japanese commercial jingles. And most of what I listen to uses straightforward English phrases that form a cohesive narrative or express an easily deduced emotional state."
"Yeah, and speaking of which, I deduce that you need to get outside into the fresh air and clear your head. Even if you're planning to pollute the atmosphere while you're at it."
"Let me just finish the verse." Hathaway addressed himself to the paper again. "'Cracked bells and washed-out horns, blow into my face with scorn' -- no horn players in the vicinity, no scornful women named Belle, no one who's visited Philadelphia lately, no laundries -- any other suggestions? -- 'but it's not that way, I wasn't born to lose you.'" He glanced up, reading from the paper with a dramatic emphasis worthy of Shakespeare. "'I want you, I want you, I want you so bad; honey I want you.' Anything there, you think, sir?"
Except that looking at you makes me feel about eighty, no. "I think you need to finish your coffee and go out for a walk," Lewis said gently. "And I'll get onto the drunken politicians until you get back."
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Date: 2013-01-02 01:42 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-02 02:57 am (UTC)From: