All Along the Watchtower

Clifford Homer Grimes Jr. got the interview thanks to an uncle on his mother's side of the family. Harry was a bottom-feeder in the Daley machine who had just enough bite to foist his wayward nephew on the city's Department of Transportation. He did this reluctantly, only after his sister Martha got down on her knees and begged. But Uncle Harry came through. After announcing the good news, Harry sat in her living room fingering his pencil-thin mustache as he awaited a token gesture of thanks. Clifford being Clifford, none was forthcoming. Harry moved to the bay window and saw a cop stick a parking ticket under the wipers of his Oldsmobile. He was out the door like a shot It was all a blur to his groggy nephew, who was recovering from a stupendous hangover. Moments later Harry was back, holding an orange ticket. "Too late, goddamn it. but I know people in Traffic. I'll have it squashed. The sons of bitches."

Harry had been worn down by his sister's appeals. His nephew was a fucked-up mess, and when (not if) he was canned, Harry's good deed would generate only scorn downtown. It was an idle stab, but Harry handed Clifford a paperback copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. He had done his best; his nephew was hopeless. All he wanted to do was hang out with those faggots at the gym and lift weights. He looked like a goddamn freak. Then Harry put on his trench coat and stepped outside. He noticed a couple of kids running away from his car. The Olds hadn't been on the street more than 15 minutes and it had been zapped by the parking ticket and a pair of quick-ass hubcap thieves.

Clifford dragged himself into the bathroom, brushed his teeth and left for the gym. Interview in less than a day; he was terrified. After his workout he went home for a nap.

At 8:30 p.m. Clifford got up and hit the bars. He favored silk shirts, gilded chains, a zircon pinkie. As his main man Winston liked to say, "Who's goin' get the booty, muh fuck? I'll tell you: the chief peacock, not that ugly drab-ass cousin!" When Clifford told him about the interview, Winston hopped around Casey's Bar and Grill singing, "After breakfast every day, she never fail to say, Get a job. Sha da da da, sha da da; yip yip yip yip, mum mum mum, get a job." Clifford proceeded to get hammered.

When he came to the next day, the last thing he remembered was puking in the alley. He glanced at his watch. Shit, it was late. He got dressed and was out the door with barf still on his breath. The battery in his beat-to-shit Morris Minor was dead. He looked at his Timex again—shit, 11:30—and made a dash to the El. He chewed his fingernails and paced. The train came at last, packed to the gills. By the time he showed up for the interview, his iridescent blue satin shirt was stained with sweat. The chain around his neck was a major mistake. This was a suit-and-tie interview, and he looked like a damn greaseball. He tried to slide his pinkie ring off but couldn't get it past his second knuckle. He reeked of booze, vomit and cologne.

There were no preliminary courtesies. The three-person panel immediately began firing questions. Flop sweat rolled down Clifford's face. He reached for his handkerchief, a crumpled yellow rectangle of cloth, and shook it open; the members of the panel recoiled. The three huddled over his résumé, speaking in whispers. Clifford heard snatches of muted questions.

"Fired? A drywall hanger? What's this here, mortuary assistant? Well, what is it, mortuary or exterminator? Both? Fired from both? Oh my god, a paperboy! Thirty-three years old and a paperboy?"

Clifford struggled to compose himself. Having heard enough, the assistant deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Bridges and Transit tossed his half frames on the table and rocked back in his chair. He locked his hands behind his head and leaned back, revealing two muffs of nasal hair. The smirk on his face was enough to make Clifford want to pound the bastard to the ground.

A man resembling Joseph Stalin poured a glass of water. He took several small sips, straightened his tie and began, "Mr. Grimes, it says here you served in the armed forces. Tell us about that."

Clifford told the panel he had won a Silver Star during Operation Desert Storm. A broad grin lit the assistant deputy's narrow face. He leaned forward, picked up his glasses and said, "Your recent work history points in the opposite direction, Cliff. Things just don't seem to jibe here."

Clifford wiped down his face and said, "Look, I can do this job!"

"An orangutan can do the job. That's not the point."

The heat of the room was unbearable. Clifford rolled up his sleeves, revealing a tattoo that read Juliet and Cliff, True Love Springs Eternal. He saw six eyes fall upon it. He could scarcely breathe. He said, "Gulf War. Sergeant in the Green Berets. Some heavy shit went down, and——"

The third member of the panel interrupted Clifford. She was a dour woman of 50, her hair in a salt-and-pepper bob. She had a snub nose as bad as Lon Chaney's in The Phantom of the Opera. The woman waved a copy of Clifford's service record and said, "Bad-conduct discharge. Private. No Green Beret, but a four-month stretch in the stockade."

Clifford hadn't thought about a background check; this job was supposed to be a shoo-in. He turned up his palms in a gesture of wonder. "You must have the wrong Clifford Grimes." He swallowed hard, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down like an elevator. His larynx was tight, dry and strained. He sounded like Tweety Bird with his cartoon nuts in a vise. The interview was blown.

The assistant commissioner replaced his glasses and scanned Clifford's service record. "These are discharge papers for a Clifford Howard Grimes at 1187 South Sullivan in Chicago. Is this your address, Cliff? You listed it as such on your application. Are we meant to believe there were actually two Clifford Howard Grimeses in the U.S. Army?"

"It does seem a little far-fetched," Clifford said. "I don't under——"

"I've heard enough bullshit for one day," the commissioner said. "Let's cut it off here. Thanks to your uncle Harry, you are hired, effective next Monday. Report to personnel at nine a.m. sharp, and be advised that all new hires work on probationary status the first six months. If you slip up, if you can't cut the mustard, you'll be out on your ear."

"I'm a hard worker. I never get sick, and I will do a terrific job; you will be glad you took me."

"Enough! Get the hell out of here!"

As he staggered from the building his silk shirt was soaked. Oh man, Disaster-ville! But at least they didn't know he'd been thrown in the brig for impregnating the colonel's daughter, Juliet, an epileptic, 14 years old, with an IQ of 64.

•

The bridge-tender job was simple. All Clifford had to do was sit in the bridge house at Cermak Road and push a red button to let a ship pass through. Still, Clifford pissed and moaned because they stuck him on the graveyard shift. Harry said, "What do you expect, sonny boy? You're the junior tender. You're lucky to get the job. Goddamn it, I'm not God! What more can I do?"

"Graveyard sucks. Why do you think they call it graveyard? It fucks up your body rhythms. You don't get any melanin, which leads to cancer, which leads where? I'll tell you, Uncle Harry, it leads to the graveyard!"

"Oh, fuck you, you son of a bitch. You don't want a job. You just want to lift weights. You look like a cocksucking faggot. I'm done with you!"

Harry was wrong; Clifford liked girls. Nights he prowled the neighborhood bars in a relentless search for pussy. Like Cinderella, Clifford now had to cut things short to punch in before midnight. Not many ships went by during his shift, and, half drunk, he often slept on a coffee-stained futon when things were slow, which was almost always.

The two retractable leaves of the bridge opened like the jaws of a crocodile and could clamp down with surprising speed. With the push of a red button it was up or down, up or down. It was Clifford's bad luck to come in drunk on a night when traffic was brisk. Up, down, up, down, until he was ready to die. As the booze wore off, the familiar black cloud draped over Clifford's brain. He was worthless. Go out drinking? Never again!

He felt better after the first month on the job. One night when things were especially slow he picked up How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was a blueprint for moral renovation. Clifford bought a fresh copy and pressed it on Winston with the fervor of a street-corner evangelist. His buddy backed away. Clifford was coming on like some sort of 12-step freak working his program. Who wanted to hear that crap? Clifford accepted this without resentment. His old life was shed like a snake's skin.

Back at the bridge house, Clifford set to work like a human tornado. He cleaned the windows with old terry cloth towels and Windex. They were covered in pigeon shit, and it took all night. Next he hauled out the floor scrubber and removed what seemed like 50 coats of wax from the floors. He put down new wax and buffed it to a diamond-hard shine. After tearing off aged pinups, he painted the walls powder blue. The day man, Cotton McCormick, was not happy. The next day he came tramping on the fresh wax with his galoshes. He carried a bag filled with replacement centerfolds and tacked them to the walls.

Clifford cleaned the refrigerator, an old-timer with the motor on the top. It was filled with rancid food and warmer than a swamp cooler. Clifford dumped everything, including a partially eaten tin of sardines. He took a screwdriver and attacked the glacier of ice in the freezer like a Gila woodpecker. Near the back Clifford discovered a Hungry-Man meat loaf dinner, two Nutty Buddies and a frozen rabbit. He pitched the lot into the river, then scrubbed the fridge interior with Mr. Clean. When he plugged the fridge in again the temperature dropped to 40 degrees in the space of two hours.

Cotton hit the ceiling when he discovered his "perfectly good sardines" missing. To make amends Clifford replaced them with three fresh cans of Pride of Norway sardines. The day man put on his reading glasses and studied the label suspiciously. Rather than thank Clifford, he took the sardines to the garbage can and slammed them to the bottom. "Those sardines are packed in soybean oil. Goddamn it, did you ever eat sardines packed in soybean oil? Soybeans are what they feed to pigs. The whole mess tastes like transmission fluid."

"I don't eat sardines. I didn't know."

"There are a lot of things you don't know, Clifford. A whole lot. Keep your goddamn hands off a man's food! And what's this crapola coming in with a pierced ear and that stupid turban?"

"It's a do-rag, Cotton, not a turban. Winston gave it to me."

A blue vein throbbed on Cotton's neck. "You come in looking like a damn jungle bunny. Now you're talking like one. And tell me this: How can you man your post if you're cleaning all the time?"

"Hey, dude, I'm sorry about the sardines. I'll get you a can of King Oscars and a box of saltines, okay? Meanwhile, what is so bad about clean? If you think I'm trying to make you look bad or rat you out, tell people I'm the lazy ass and you're the one doing the cleaning."

Cotton had no retort, but Clifford felt himself take a swan dive into the dark abyss of his former life. You could only read How to Win Friends so many times before the chickens came home to roost.

•

Not only did he continue his workouts at Gold's Gym, he brought his own weights to work, where he spent another two to three hours pumping iron. To make up for lost ground he skin-popped huge doses of steroids and human growth hormone. In a matter of weeks he was a giant. The drugs brought to the fore long-buried primal urges.

He called his old girlfriend, Suzie Q. Suzie had a low-slung ass, but her tatas were looking fine. After Clifford dicked her one afternoon, she told him to ditch the cologne. "It's worse than chloroform. While you're at it, lose those gold chains. You look like Iceberg Slim."

He felt like saying, "And you can lose that cellulite, you fat-ass bitch."

She had more corrective advice. "Those muscles make you look like some kind of S&M fairy. Back off on the weight training."

"You liked me better when I was a geek?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "Definitely. You were smoking pot and mellow. Now you're fucking scary!"

He sent Suzie Q a dozen red roses the next day with a note that read, "Dear Suz, I'm real sorry about last night, babe. You're a real Georgia peach. XXX's, Cliff."

•

There were attacks of roid rage. Once he clenched his teeth so hard he cracked a molar. The dentist who pulled the shattered tooth gave Clifford a script for pain pills. That night at work, while goofing on Percocet, Clifford picked up his high-powered binoculars and scanned the six-story Hudson & Swain lofts.

Clifford spotted a brunette working on a clay sculpture. She was a newcomer to Hudson & Swain. She had a cigarette in her mouth as she removed her smock and washed the clay from her hands. She disappeared from view, and Clifford shifted his binoculars to another floor. Suddenly the brunette returned to the window nude except for a white towel around her head. He could see each and every detail.

She stood at the window extracting another Gauloise from a blue packet as she raised the sill for a little air. Jesus, what a set! Thirty-four-D cups with no sag factor. She lit her cigarette with a Diamond-brand kitchen match. She took a deep drag as she shook out the match. She must have been about 25, and she was absolutely gorgeous. She set the cigarette down on a white Martini & Rossi ashtray and removed the towel covering her hair. She leaned forward, running her fingers through her shoulder-length hair, and straightened up, flipping it back. Clifford's dick was hard in an instant. It pressed against the inside of his Levi's like a pole.

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. Cutie Pie 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, 15 in the space of an hour. They laid cash on the table and retrieved 30 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 20 or 30 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 a 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 (continued on page 274)Watchtowercontinued from page 232) 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 15 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 $4 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 200-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 10 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 it is?"

"Your pizza," Clifford said.

"We didn't order no goddamn pizza. Plus, I don' 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 blackjack. 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 $10s, $20s and $50s 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 into his backpack. He heard Cotton trudge up the stairs, punch in and pour coffee into a mug his granddaughter had given him for his 58th 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 52, 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 cardoor-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 work. I'm sorry to bother you without a 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 backseat 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 20 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 the 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!"

He started down the stairway and was dealt a concussive blow on the back of his head. He got the full star show as he tumbled down the stairs. Soon the blue-steel barrel of a .44 was working over his head, while his body was being kicked by a total of six combat boots. Then everything went blank.

When he came to, Clifford found himself bound in a chair in a dark room. His mouth was covered with duct tape. A tall man wearing a ski mask pointed a Mini Maglite in his face. "I want the money, the guns and the good," the tall man said. "Where is it?" He ripped the tape from Clifford's mouth.

"I got the guns and most of the dope, but I spent the money."

"Wrong answer. I want to hear the right answer."

"I told you, I blew the money."

Two sharp blows to the face. Clifford swallowed a tooth with a mouthful of hot salty blood.

"I don't want to hear that fucking shit. I want the good, brother. The good."

"There's a way," he said. "I know a way."

"You find the way, you give us the good, and you can go back to your strange little life."

He was led outside and pushed into the back of a gray Mercedes. They drove him to his apartment and collected the dope and guns. Next stop was his mother's house. The old woman, fresh from chemotherapy treatment, got the bad news. She sat next to her son in the back of the Mercedes as they drove to the bank. She took out a second mortgage on her house, converted it to cash and handed the tall man $19,000.

Driven to the driveway of her twice-mortgaged home, Mrs. Grimes staggered into the house, locked the door and wet her pants on the hardwood floor.

Meanwhile, the thugs dropped Clifford in the hospital parking lot. Two days there and he was shipped to detox. From there it was in-house rehab. He had full medical, so the stay cost him only $70, which he had to borrow from his mother. He had more than exhausted his sick leave, but given the nature of his situation, other tenders contributed to a sick-leave pool on his behalf. He lay in his mother's house watching Oprah, drag-assing between the couch and refrigerator until the end of June.

In July he returned to his post on Cermak, though he could hardly stand. In between button pushings he rested on the floor. The wax was fragrant still. One nice thing, he had done a good job on the floor. He felt as if he would die. Day after day it was the same routine. By midsummer he was feeling a little better, though he was unable to reestablish contact with the higher power. It was a bleak and godless universe.

In early August Cotton had a hernia operation, and Clifford filled in for him. He wasn't used to bright sunshine and the heat of summer. He sat in the bridge house with his binoculars. There had been three jumpers that month, there was a full moon, and he was told to be on the lookout for anyone gathering his nerve. The advice was ironic, since Clifford wanted to jump himself.

The river smelled of rotten carp. Clifford needed to hit the floor again, but a barge was coming down river. He could lie down and get up in five minutes, but that would entail doing a sit-up to right himself. So he stood waiting on frail, toothpick legs. Since he quit the juice, and since he had been away from the gym, he'd lost so much muscle mass that he was just a gray bag of skin. He pushed the button, and as the cement barge chugged through the oily waters, Clifford spotted three dead dogs in its wake, bloated like sausage boiled to the point of bursting. They were medium-size dogs, one black, another gray and the third—whew, the third!—a rotten blob of golden fur without shape or form. In the dogs Clifford saw dimensions of death no mortal was meant to see.

Meanwhile, horns blared on Cermak, punctuated by psychotic screams of murder. The sun shimmering off the chrome bumpers and trim was blinding. Drivers stepped out of their vehicles and shook their fists at Clifford, who stood at his post in the watchtower feeling nine inches tall. The air was saturated with misery; the room spun, the dying carp gasped. Clifford pushed the red button.

His Larynx was tight, dry and strained. He sounded like tweety bird with his cartoon nuts in a vise. The interview was blown.

She stood at the window extracting another Gauloise from a blue packet as she raised the sill for a little air. Jesus, what a set! Thirty-four-Ds with no sag factor.