Brossard, Chandler - The Wolf Leaps
His pale face looks out of place in the Harlem bar. A tourist, slumming? Or a prospect? One of the hookers sizes him up, approaches. After a few comments, he follows her to a grimy room. Money is exchanged and the bed soon squeals. And at that point, the priest develops a taste for dark meat.
Back at the parish house, the wife of our Episcopalian priest contemplates her miserable existence. Awful neighborhood, disgusting residents, not to mention her husband, a male with “needs”. How happy she had been in the days of her all-girls school, with soft female companions. Sappho beckons.
Then there is the pimp, sweet talking charm to the friendly waitress. She’s wasting her life on her feet all day when she could earn so much more on her knees or on her back. He’d pocket half, and promise her it’s for them, their future. Just have to coax her away from her family, her boyfriend. Easy.
Chandler’s style is lean, not a sentence wasted. Not surprisingly, after this novel of adultery, lesbianism and prostitution was written in 1962, publishers shunned it. When it was finally published in 1973, few in white bread America bought it.
Headlong rush down grubby Harlem backstreets.