California, the department store state. - Raymond Chandler

She came back with the glass and her fingers, cold from holding the glass, touched mine, and I held them for a moment and then let them go slowly, as you let go of a dream when you wake with the sun in your face and you have been in an enchanted valley

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

I looked at her again. She lay still now, her face pale against the pillow, her eyes large and dark and empty as rain barrels in a drought. One of her small five-fingered thumbless hands picked at the cover restlessly. There was a vague glimmer of doubt starting to get born in her somewhere. She didn't know about it yet. It's so hard for women - even nice women - to realise that their bodies are not irresistible.