I laughed and turned to Virginia and pulled her against me and she, still watching me in that strange way, pushed me back for an instant, then relaxed into me and giggled. I kissed her and the bartender clapped. When I quit kissing her there was a crowd around us, everybody clapping and smiling, and I guess most of them thought we were newlyweds and that the Colorado air and the bourbon were working on us so hard we couldn’t wait. Virginia’s wedding ring had a splendid glow to it in the dim light and she was slightly flushed with the excitement. People were introducing themselves to us and the next thing I knew an usher in a checked vest like the bartender’s came up to us and handed me two phony mustaches. He showed me how to stick them on. I pasted mine in place and put the other one on Virginia and we laughed and laughed and so did the others.
Almost everybody in the room had on the mustaches and some of them wore papier-mache derbies, lettered in white: THE GOLD BAR. The audience sat at tables, not in rows of seats, little drinking tables which allowed them to continue buying drinks all through the show.
OK, so I’m reading ‘Black Wings Has My Angel’ on the recommendation of another Hiddlestoner, and it is awesome Raymond-Chandler-Dashiell-Hammett-style good old 1953 crime/suspense/noir. And we know that Tom Hiddleston will be playing the lead in the film, the character who is speaking in the quote. When I read this passage, I just about dropped my Kindle because of remembering this:
