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.