by Thom Jones
As she picked up the cigarette, Clifford pulled out his cock. The girl snuffed out her smoke and turned away. She had a hot fucking ass. Suddenly the lights went off, causing Clifford to wonder if it had all been a dream. A moment later the low-watt bulb from her refrigerator blinked on. Baby was now attired in a long black Metallica T-shirt. He watched her stand before the open refrigerator eating yogurt with a plastic spoon. When she finished she threw the spoon and the empty cup in the garbage. She shut the fridge. The show was over.
The nighthawks in Hudson & Swain knew how to put out quality entertainment. Dopers in black leather jackets occupied the third floor. Clifford trained his binoculars on them. A pair wearing paper face masks sat chopping dope in the small kitchen, while others packaged it into glassine bags. Junkies came and went, fifteen in the space of an hour. They laid cash on the table and retrieved thirty or so bags of powder. A huge brute of a black dude Clifford dubbed Big Boy stood by the door. Periodically, Big Boy peered through the peephole and opened the door to most of the same street hustlers Clifford had seen twenty or thirty minutes before. A few came in, made their buys, and retired to a shooting gallery in back. He couldn’t see what was going on in there; the windows were covered with foil.
Clifford aimed his binoculars at the choppers again. On the table before them sat two handguns and a pile of cash. When the pile grew high, Big Boy stuffed it into a safe. Shit, it was quite the operation. If any window deserved a layer of foil it was the one where the choppers worked. Yet who other than Clifford had a vantage? Still, they were careless as all hell. The amazing part of it all came from the throbbing rap sound of DJ Screw on the boom box. Why not just call the narcs and tell them what was going on? Clifford was sure he knew where the second-shift man, Johnny Magill, scored. Magill regularly came to work half baked. It was a wonder he could function at all.
The next night at Hudson & Swain was a repeat of the night before. And so it went. Night after night Clifford nearly creamed his jeans watching Baby.
One night a skinny pothead wearing an army jacket and White Sox cap turned up with Chinese food and a video. Baby demonstrated a certain amount of affection toward him, but he made no moves. Possibly he was her brother. Both of them sat on a torn couch, smoking dope, adept with their chopsticks as they ate, and watched the blue light of the TV. Looking through the binoculars gave Clifford a blinding headache. He shook four Percocets from the dental prescription bottle and swallowed them with mineral water. When they kicked in half an hour later he was back on the watch.
Now Baby was holding hands with the skinny guy. What was the deal with that? Nothing more than a little hand-holding. Maybe the guy was a homosexual suffering from AIDS. It seemed likely. When the stupid little fairy finally left, Baby took her shower and made her appearance before the window. She stood caressing her breasts a moment or so. This was new. Was it some kind of weekly breast exam? She lifted her arms as she removed the towel covering her hair. This provided a five-star view of those incredible breasts. Clifford trembled as she caressed her belly and the tops of her thighs. Christ, she was turned on. She was going to go frig herself off!
Instead she repeated her Gauloise ceremony. Four deep drags before snuffing out the butt in the Martini & Rossi ashtray. Looking out into the black void, Baby had no idea that the king of voyeurs had her in his crosshairs. He watched her stretch her arms and let go with a long, luxurious yawn. She did the perky ass pivot, killed the lights, and the show was over. It was a no-yogurt night. No doubt she was frigging off. As she went to bed with rock-hard nipples, what other explanation was there? He wanted to bust the door down and say, “Look, I can see you’re jerking off, no doubt fantasizing about cock. I got a hard-on. What say we get it on, baby?”
Suddenly Clifford heard air horns from the river below. He hit the button and watched a salt barge clear passage. He hit the button again, and in less than a minute the car traffic resumed. It had snowed through the night, and he watched fluffy flakes spin through the air, no two alike; another miracle from the magical universe that wasn’t so magical without Percocet.
When his shift was over Clifford walked to his apartment and abused himself twice before he closed his eyes and watched Technicolor cartoons play out on the back of his eyelids. He was amped up on Percocets and the delirious chemicals of infatuation. No matter, he would take what he could get. Oh Christ, she was beautiful!
He woke up at three the next afternoon feeling like death warmed over. He took three Percocets with a cup of instant coffee and within fifteen minutes was back on top of the world. He rushed over to the Hudson & Swain building to scan the mailboxes for her name. Maura Michaels, had to be Maura Michaels. Clifford walked nine blocks to the House of Roses. He tried to order four dozen long-stem red roses for her loft. The florist told him his MasterCard was maxed out. There was enough money on his Visa card to cover three dozen roses. “Okay, fine,” Clifford said as he penned a note. “To Maura with love. Your secret admirer.”
By the time he got to work he was kicking himself for writing such a lame piece of crap. “Your secret admirer,” what kind of shit was that? He began scanning Baby’s apartment the second Johnny Magill punched out, but it remained dark clear through dawn, when he heard Cotton’s heavy feet tread up the stairs to begin the morning shift.
That bitch! No doubt she was out fucking some sleazebag on the assumption the roses came from him, or whoever she had been banging last, or maybe the guy before that. A thousand or more! What a slut! He might have known. Christ, what an idiot he was! He gives his own mother a four-dollar bouquet from Dominick’s along with a “Sorry I’m late” birthday card, and he sends three dozen roses to a whore.
His mother, Christ. The last time she bailed him out he had promised to shovel her walk whenever it snowed. Clifford felt a pang of guilt over that one but not enough to make concessions or amends. Bridges were burning, but he was running nonstop on the hamster wheel of life. All of his pocket cash went for injections of testosterone and that fountain of youth—human growth hormone. To get the amphetamine rush from the stuff, he had to use more and more, until he was exceeding the recommended dosage two-hundred-fold. He couldn’t drop it cold turkey, and his efforts to wean himself were in vain. Shit, he was spending more on hormones than a junkie with the biggest habit on the South Side. One minute things were under control, and then suddenly the whole shithouse came down. He felt like a supersonic jet pulling ten Gs in an all-out screaming nosedive. Like a doomed rocket manned by Daffy Duck. He could feel himself smash through the earth’s crust, bore through layers of packed sediment and superheated rock until he came to a grinding halt at the planet’s core. Steroids. Juice.
Maura was not home the next night either. Sitting alone in the bridge house while she was out cheating on him was almost more than he could bear. Heartbroken, he scanned the third floor of Hudson & Swain. The bloods had DJ Screw going strong again. The door to the cutting room was wide open and so was the door of the safe. DJ Screw. The fucking shit was driving Clifford nuts.
It seemed like an out-of-body experience. He patted the blackjack he carried in his side pocket. From on high he watched himself stalk out of the bridge house determined to exact retribution. He crossed the street, and then it was up the cigarette-and-syringe-strewn stairway to the drug den. Ding-dong. He saw a shadow cast over the peephole. Big Boy asked, “What is it?”
“Your pizza,” Clifford said.
“We didn’t order no goddamn pizza. Plus, I don’t see no pizza in your hand, gray boy.”
“Okay, motherfucker, make that fried chicken.”
Big Boy opened the door with a gun in his hand. “I’ll pop a cap in your ass right now,” he said.
“Go ahead, do that. Every cop, SWAT team, and National Guard will burn you to the ground.”
“Get the fuck out of my face! I ain’t goin’ tell you twice. Get lost!”
Big Boy dropped his vigilance for a second, and Clifford clocked him across the skull with the blackja
ck. Rage was packed behind the blow, and now the motherfucker was stretched out on the floor bleeding.
Two of the dopers at the cutting table reached for the Glocks lying no more than an arm’s length away, but Clifford hit the room like a thermite grenade. He grabbed both cutters by their thin junkie necks and smacked their heads together. The cutters sank to the floor as if they’d been shot. Clifford heard the frantic scuffling of shoe leather. He grabbed both guns and went back to investigate. He found nothing but an open window and shadows of junkies running over the Cermak bridge. They were running over his bridge!
He returned to the cutting room, where he scooped up a bag of cash and two bags of powder. On his way out he fired five rounds into the ghetto blaster, putting an end to DJ Screw.
Back in the bridge house his ears rang from the gunfire. Still, he heard a pair of boats blaring their air horns from the river. He pushed the red button. The air horns gave way to the sound of sirens and the screeching tires of squad cars, blue lights flashing as they surrounded Hudson & Swain. Clifford secreted the Glocks, dope, and cash behind a trick door he’d discovered when he painted the walls, the stash hole where Magill hid his marijuana.
It took three hours for the police to clear the crime scene. Thanks to DJ Screw, Big Boy was going to pay through the nose for a lawyer and a bail bondsman. Well, he had it coming. You don’t fuck with the kid and live to tell about it.
When the cops were gone, Clifford went back to the stash and pulled out the dope for a taste. He’d started sorting the cash in piles of tens, twenties, and fifties when a euphoric glow replaced the adrenaline rush occasioned from his violent rip-off. He was calm for the first time in months.
The cash added up to $19,000. His rash actions had provided a way out of his financial bind. He took another taste of heroin, ran to the bathroom to puke, and then lingered with his head on the toilet seat. He closed his eyes and found himself in seventh heaven.
It was nearly eight A.M. when he emerged from the toilet. He quickly stashed the dope, guns, and cash in his backpack. He heard Cotton trudge up the stairs, punch in, and pour coffee into a mug his granddaughter had given him for his fifty-eighth birthday. He took a sip and spewed coffee from his mouth like Oliver Hardy in one of the old Laurel and Hardy farces. He said, “This coffee tastes burned. Why didn’t you make fresh? It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do. Hey, what’s so funny, bub? You look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”
“I did, Cotton. I swallowed the yellow bird whole.”
The next afternoon Clifford deposited $3,000 into his checking account. He wrote checks as partial payments to the three credit-card accounts. He paid Winston his growth-hormone debt in cash and then breezed down to the House of Roses. It was eight degrees out, but the old neighborhood felt like paradise. He sent six dozen red roses to Baby and a dozen yellow roses to his mother. He shucked out limp and greasy junkie-handled bills in payment. Yeah, the money was greasy, but even that was righteous. He didn’t give two shits about the petty day-by-day. After another snort of heroin he puked twice (hey, now, is that cool or what?), and then he flipped WLS on the radio and bopped around the kitchen in stocking feet. Goddamn it, muh fuck, let’s get down!
That night at work, kicking back on H, Clifford caught the next episode of the Baby show. “You lookin’ fine, girl. I’m goin’ make you mine, girl!” He flashed on the dope den. It was black and devoid of action. Oh ho ho haw!
Clifford called in sick the next day. He caught a cab over to Michigan Avenue and got a $100 haircut. So much for the mullet. He hadn’t even known it was a mullet until the stylist told him. He bought an Italian suit, size fifty-two, and gave the tailor an extra $200 to rush the job. He bought a pair of shoes, a $300 dress shirt, and a $400 silk tie. He paid for these in greasy junkie bills. He bought a carton of Gauloises and a $900 solid-gold lighter, a steal. The lighter generated a superheated laser beam, and according to the salesman it was fail-proof in hurricane-velocity winds. What Clifford liked most was the lighter’s car-door-sounding click. It was irresistible, and it took a blister on the thumb to stop him from clicking. Late the next morning, clicking his new lighter left-handed, Clifford called in sick again. He Michael Jackson–voiced it. “Hi, Gloria, it’s Cliff again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Boy, if it wasn’t February I’d swear I have West Nile,” he said.
“There’s a lot of flu going around,” she said. “Take all the time you need, and you be careful, big boy.”
Big Boy! Ah ha ha ha.
Clifford taxied downtown and tried on his new suit. He looked great in it. Soon he was climbing the steps to Baby’s loft. Bolstered on heroin, he rapped on her door. The door opened, and there she was, alive and in living color.
She wore a black turtleneck and black leotards under a short gray skirt, a beatnik outfit. She was taller and more beautiful than he’d expected.
“Hi, Miss Michaels, my name is Cliff Grimes,” he said. “A pal of mine in the art world has been raving about your formal introduction, but he got me so excited, I just had to drive over.”
“Who is your friend?” she asked.
“Mick Magill. He’s a collector.”
“How come I don’t recognize the name? I know everyone in the Chicago arts community.”
He looked past her and said, “You’ve got a lot of flowers in there.”
Maura lit a Gauloise and said, “I take it you want to come in and look at my work.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you just get out of prison?”
“Prison?”
“You’re huge. Only men in prison have enough time to cultivate big muscles like yours.”
“Maura, come on.”
“Never mind,” she said. “Take a look around.”
Clifford stepped inside, shaking a Gauloise out of a blue packet of his own. He flashed the gold lighter and with his sore thumb torched the Gauloise with a red laser beam. “Looks like we smoke the same brand,” he said.
“People in my business all smoke them,” she said. “We conform in our eccentricities.”
He studied her pieces with fierce concentration, nodding his head once in a while. Best not to open his big mouth. Soon Maura was talking about her work, her inspiration, her hopes and dreams. He didn’t look at her legs, tits, or ass. He focused on her eyes, her forehead, and her eyes again. He listened. He smiled now and again. She began to preen. They shared a couple of laughs. After Clifford bought four ridiculously inept sculptures, he asked her out for dinner. Maura replied that she should take him out to dinner given the magnitude of his purchase. Dinner, Saturday night. Settled. How much better could this tumultuous hell on earth get?
He ordered a town car and took her to Rush Street. He let her pick the restaurant and, as they ate, let her do most of the talking. Her parents had been well-to-do. Once as a girl they had taken her to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth II, then they flew home on the Concorde. A month later her father and mother were killed in a car wreck on the way to church. A back-seat human projectile, Maura had been launched through the windshield.
Maura began to sculpt by carving bars of Ivory soap in her hospital bed. Simple stuff—a duck, a camel. She joined two moistened bars of soap (“a big innovation for a kid”) to form a block. She sculpted busts of her parents as she remembered them. She told Clifford that if she focused her attention on the figures she was making, the pain of life couldn’t intrude into her consciousness. She said she had never given the full version of her tragedy to anyone before. Clifford nodded sagely, then said, “Sometimes it’s easier to tell a stranger.”
“That’s so true!” Maura said. “It seems like I’ve known you all my life. Are you a Sagittarius?”
Maura kissed Clifford that night. She let him cop a feel on the second date. By the third date she took him to her bed, where, thanks to the heroin, Clifford couldn’t get it up. Maura gave him a hand job. From the sculpting, her hands were as rough as a construction worker’s. When he didn’t
respond she squeezed his cock as if she were choking a chicken. With that kind of action he knew he wouldn’t come in a million years. She went down on him like a professional dick sucker. Just before he came she begged off, claiming her jaw hurt and she had drunk too much wine. As she began to snore Clifford went into the bathroom to facilitate himself.
After he got back to the bridge house, her apartment remained dark for eight days. He left phone messages that were not returned. Finally he showed up at the studio one afternoon, catching her home at last. He gave her the gold laser lighter she so admired. Why not? He hated smoking. She was so pleased, she asked him if he wanted to lie down.
“Lie down?”
“Yeah,” she said, taking his hand as she led him toward the bed. He couldn’t get it up despite the Viagra. She said she felt congested and asked him to eat her pussy. After twenty minutes of this, she said, “More pressure.”
“Huh?”
Now she was exasperated. “More pressure. You’re a big guy, use more pressure. Jesus Christ!”
He was a big guy, but he couldn’t do push-ups with his tongue. He really didn’t know what he was doing down there. His limited access to air made him snort like a hog. At last she came from the friction of his nose rubbing against her clitoris.
Back at work the next night, he’d hoped to scope out the Baby show but saw the fey dude in her Metallica T-shirt wave Maura over to a telescope! He was too stunned to move. Suddenly she was staring back at him. She flipped him the bird and killed the lights in her loft.
It took Clifford a week to get the nerve to call her, but he just got a phone-company recording that said the number had been disconnected. He went across the bridge and knocked on her door. Nothing. He half knocked it down and still nothing. “Goddamn it, son of a bitch, motherfucker!”