Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Then suddenly, Dumb Duck is found murdered. He's been partially erased. There are still crumbs of mingled eraser dust and ink on the floor. The wife shows up having spent the night elsewhere. She tells everybody she's innocent. She looks like a combination of Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, shoehorned into a dress that clings to her like a kid's tongue to a lollipop. She hunkers down over the corpse and cries and her heaving boobs make a sound like rubber balloons.

Eastwood goes to her nightclub. He sits in the dark and watches her sing. Taffy sings like Marlene Dietrich. She rasps every word. She sings like somebody's tickling your testicles. She's a sex bomb married to a duck.

Gay men can desire a woman if she is caked in enough artifice. Young Michael forgot his trauma. He found himself yearning to bury his face in those huge soft perfect breasts. And sleep. And wake up somewhere else, as someone else.

It was a comedy about being wrongly accused of murder. Ho, ho. The weapon, a giant eraser – stamped: the Philadelphia Rubber Company – is found in the trunk of Taffy's car. Tests confirm that the inkgroup is the same as Dumb Duck's.

For young Michael, Taffy's nightmare became his nightmare. At that age, he felt more affinity for fantasy than reality. When the film was over, it was back to reality, though in a curious way he felt the burden had been shared.

It was many years ago, but Michael still felt that affinity. The idea of calling up Taffy made Michael grin sideways. He didn't fancy Clint Eastwood at all. You aren't meant to fancy Clint Eastwood – you are meant to want to be Clint Eastwood. Eastwood had played the gumshoe like Humphrey Bogart. Michael went out to Jermyn Street and bought himself a trenchcoat and an old-fashioned fedora hat.

And then he wondered where you could go on a hot date with someone who was obviously an animated cartoon. It might cause comment at the Savoy.

A candlelight dinner a deux at home was the answer.

Phil, as always, was going to be out. Michael told him, I've got a hot date so come back late. Does this one jump out of trees as well, Phil asked. Ho ho.

Michael cooked a light meal of salmon with salad and cold Chablis. Light enough to assuage hunger, not heavy enough to weigh down desire.

Then Michael put on his trenchcoat and his 1940s hat and waited.

Go, he told the universe, at 6.00 pm.

At 6.00 pm the phone rang.

It was her.

'Oh, Mr Shamus,' she said breathlessly, helplessly. 'Thank you for returning my call. I need help so badly, and I don't know who I can turn to.'

'Well. We can talk in private here. How soon can you make it over? I took the liberty of preparing a meal.' Michael curled his upper lip inwards, talking American.

'Oh thank you. But I couldn't possibly eat. I'm too upset.'

'I got a good bottle of Chablis growing dew in the cooler.' It was like being in a role-playing game.

There was a pause. 'Mr Shamus. I'm sorry. I'm afraid cartoons can't drink wine. It dissolves the gouache.'

'Forgive me.'

'No, no. I know it's hard for you to imagine what it's like. I'm just so pleased that finally, finally, someone wants to listen to me.'

That damsel in distress routine. Standard forties stuff. The audience can read it like a peach, velvet skin and pit, and so can I. Under that svelte exterior pulses animal heat.

You spend most of the movie absolutely sure she did it and that she's playing Eastwood for a sucker. You see, Eastwood falls for her, and if Eastwood falls for somebody, you do too.

She was the kind of woman whose high heels you hear ten minutes before the doorbell rings. You're there waiting, trying to pretend you aren't hanging on like it's a liferaft. Where's the shipwreck? You've got sweaty palms and the fettuccine aren't cooked. The doorbell rings, you wipe your hands on your trousers, and you open the door. There should be a soundtrack, the kind with blowsy music played on a sax.

She's delicious. She's a cartoon, so her skin controls the light and shadow on her face. Right now she's dramatic, backlit, lots of shadows, and she looks up mournfully, helplessly. An unlit cigarette sticks to a white kid glove. The white kid glove goes up above her elbow. The gown is strapless, showing acres of shoulder and collarbone. The white fur stole has fallen back down to her elbows, like she's disrobing in public. Her red hair has a life of its own. It moves in a mass like a sexy octopus and there are no individual strands of hair.

Her way of saying hi is to hold out one long kid glove.

'Oh, Mr Shamus. I'm so glad we finally meet. Now I can put a face to that kind, kind voice.'

Never in real life could a pink dress be cut that low around mammary organs that large and stay in place.

'Come in, come in please.' Like the gumshoe is a priest offering sanctuary.

Michael reminds himself. This is an animated cartoon. It's walking across my hall carpet, and her stiletto heels leave no impression.

The white fur slips, trails. The assumption is that he will take it up, and hang it on (non-wire) hangers. He does.

Her head hangs down and she looks up coyly, the cigarette weighty on her lips. 'Could I trouble you for a light?'

No one in the household smokes, and all Michael can do is offer a rolled-up newspaper lit from the gas-stove pilot.

This kind of blows his cool gumshoe exterior. She looks stricken as he holds up the torching newspaper. 'I'm sorry, I should have asked if you smoked. How thoughtless of me.'

Michael reassures her, no, no, no problem, as he tries to put out the newspaper before it burns his fingers. Finally, he flips it into the toilet. The basin is still full of flame when he closes the bathroom door. He arrives back in time to slide the chair under her as she sits down.

'I can't tell you how awful it's been. People simply don't understand my relationship with Uncle Duck. Oh, I know he was older than I…'

He was also a duck, but then hey, you're both cartoons.

'People find it so hard to believe that you can love someone for their mind. Those terrible cheap parts the studio made him play…'

You mean the one where he keeps blowing off the top of the bald hunter's head? Or the one where he drops an anvil on it?

'This is a duck who dreamed of playing Hamlet, who read philosophy, who wrote poetry.'

Always tell an intelligent person that they're beautiful. Always tell a beautiful person they're intelligent. Tell a cartoon that they're both.

Michael says, 'It must have been wonderful for him to find a soulmate like you.'

Dreamily, she nods. 'Reading the classics by firelight together. It was all I ever wanted.'

Except for your boyfriend Bruno Bruiser.

Taffy bursts into Hollywood starlet tears. All coughing sobs, hankies and dry eyes. 'And to think that people could say that I am capable of… of… uh-huh uh-huh [sniffle]. Forgive me for carrying on like this.'

'It's understandable. Under the circumstances.' Michael lays his hand on top of hers, and she gives his a quick warm squeeze. She feels warm, human warm, but smoother too, slick, no creases or texture to the gloved and perfect hands.

Michael. Do you really want to have sex with a cartoon?

She looks up, determined now. 'We must find whoever killed my husband. I have money, Mr Shamus. I'll pay every last penny of it to find out who killed Uncle Duck.'

And to prove you didn't do it.

'I warn you. I don't exactly come cheap, Mrs Duck.'

She breathes heavily and leans forward. 'People say that you're the best in the business.' Appreciatively, she takes his hand again.

'Perhaps we can leave this difficult decision until later. Won't you eat something? Starving yourself won't help.'

Taffy looks wistful. She has a perfect tiny nose that is completely invisible except when she is in profile. 'No, thank you. Cartoons are different from people. We're fuelled only by our motivations.'