Your Monday Moment of Noir

"I lay there, thinking about the sunset, trying to remember what color it was. I don't mean the red, I mean the other shades. Once or twice I almost remembered; it was like a name you once had known but now had forgotten, whose size and letters and cadence you remembered but could not quite assemble. Through the legs of my cot I could feel the ocean quivering against the pilings below. It rose and fell, rose and fell, went out and came back, went out and came back... I was glad when the siren blew, waking us up, calling us back to the floor."

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
by Horace McCoy
(Simon & Schuster, 1935)