Once upon a time, I foolishly feared Bogart might clean his teeth with that cigarette. Now I understand that he’s employing an elaborate technique: he neatly sets the filter’s tip on his second right top tooth, then closes his lips…

You can’t know anyone until you know what they want. You can always know anyone smoking a cigarette. For the moment that’s all they want. You can know Gloria Grahame, you can know Humphrey Bogart. Hold on, let me find…

I’m always drawn to a symmetry. Now we’ve got glasses and napkins and cigarettes. Then once I’ve registered the symmetry, it quickly becomes oppressive, and I want it destroyed. Maybe what I really want is to be in the frame…

To pass through Gloria Grahame’s lungs for a moment or two, wishing you could linger, only to emerge as light as a cloud.⠀

I am interested in the tiniest possible turns capable of destroying perfection, the insignificant occurrences that would terminate even the most incandescent love affair. A lover haranguing an unsuspecting waiter. In an envelope sealed with a kiss, two tickets to…

That night a drunken Riggs left Britt on Sunset Boulevard after some shouting, went home (such as it was), and set about shaving his brown corduroy pants. “I feel like I’m wearing a frickin’ pelt in these things!” a neighbor…

“Do you like me even just a little?” Riggs had asked, hating himself. “I’m not here to be someplace else,” she had hissed, stubbing out a freshly lit cigarette beneath a sharp heel. He didn’t know whether she was quoting…

During his lifetime, and even now, Riggs has always felt a sexual chemistry with self-involved women. He’s good audience – attentive, admiring – a faceless form in a red velvet theater, until his paramours are encouraged to reveal the extent…

Only now do I notice that her index finger must be red-tipped, which is exciting me far more than anything else today, although for some reason the straightness of that finger is also irresistible. Maybe when you fell in love,…

I woke up this morning, noticed something odd about Bogart’s left hand, and counted six fingers. Perplexed, I counted again, and still somehow calculated a second pinkie. Increasingly excited, I wondered if I was being given a sign. Was Bogie…