DAVID STEINMAN — NOIR NARRATION (Suno‑Ready Version) (pimp‑noir / classic radio theater energy, sparse instrumentation, no singing) I would tell you about the time I first felt my nuts growing… if I could. I had been a greedy little chipmunk — a creature of luck, charm, and privilege — for as long as I could remember. I was a father before I was thirty, but my manhood didn’t come to be until I was sixty… and nearly gone. [instrumental break — low bassline, brushed drums, noir trumpet in the distance] They say trouble comes tripled, strengthened by the power of three. Up until the day I found myself at the morgue, identifying my wife, my life had been drama‑free… mostly. Tina’s casket was being lowered into the ground when I got the first warning on my phone — a video of a drooping flower bouquet in a vase shaped like a cryptic mausoleum. The text beneath it said: “Boo‑hoo, fool.” My stomach sank. I didn’t want to play it. But I couldn’t help myself. I pressed the little arrow. The flowers woke up — opened their tiny eyes and circular mouths — and started wailing, crying bright red tears that flew across the screen, filling it with crimson. My hand threw the phone across the cemetery lawn. I scanned the funeral crowd, searching for the sender in the strange faces. I had been married to Tina for over twenty years, and most of the people burying her… I had never seen before. Who were all these people? I was thinking that as I watched Hope — my little girl’s nanny, the woman who stayed on as housekeeper when Jackie went off to boarding school — shaking hands with strangers in mourning. I hadn’t seen my daughter in so long. Hers could’ve been one of those unfamiliar faces. Hope was hugging a group of young women — all dolled up, sunshine glistening off their iced ears, necks, wrists, and ankles. They were probably just about Jackie’s age. They were smiling as Hope bid them farewell and rushed toward me… …just as another young woman approached, holding my phone. [instrumental swell — noir strings, low brass, tension rising, then crashing into a suspensful, bass line.]
