That ain't noir way to treat a lady...

 
It always starts with a dame... and this dame was wearing  
the kind of heels that gave her legs more curves than legs  
have any right to have - legs that went up and up and up  
to some piece of heaven you could visit for a while to forget  
why you had come to this hell hole in the first place. It was a  
heaven that let you forget all the cheap rooms and the watered  
whiskey and the wan smiles of all the other dames who kept  
their real smiles in a shoe box together with their comatose dreams.  
She had dreams too but she never told the shoe box what they were -  
and you knew her heaven was not with you but someone like you and  
in a place as far away as her eyes. To her you were a reminder of  
a time not yet happened and of a hope not yet dead in this town  
of nothing but dead dreams and dead hopes and lost souls.