Metaphor is for poets, kids. We hard-boiled guys go for palpable factology. We like simile. Like or as. Like a dream. As if in a dream. Except the kind that exist out there in the Zeitgeist. You can put your meathooks on 'em. My dream is a condo in the clouds.
[O]utside the snow beat evenly and monotonously against the window panes. Andrews pictured himself vaguely walking fast through the streets, with the snow stinging his face and the life of a city swirling about him, faces flushed by the cold, bright eyes under hatbrims, looking for a second into his and passing on; slim forms of women bundled in shawls that showed vaguely the outline of their breasts and hips. He wondered if he would ever be free again to walk at random through city streets.
Then he bought a drink for everyone in the place, but did not drink with a man of them; and when they had drunk he sent all of them out onto the street for keeps. He locked, the door, poured himself a shot, turned on the juke, and sat alone beside it, among the empty chairs, thinking of his own life and of all the days to come. When morning came he was still sober, but the juke had long stopped playing. Although he had drunk steadily all night, he had never felt soberer in his life. Moving like an old man, though he was barely forty, he put the chairs on the table and his cap on his head. Then he went to the register, punched out NO SALE, and closed his doors forever.
