Clara

ClaraIt took me a month to convince Clara that she was too beautiful and too fine a girl to work in Queen Lil's whorehouse. Thus on a night in May, Clara came to live in my attic room whose lone window overlooked the Chicago River and the bridge lights swimming in it like Coleridge's fiery snakes.Clara arrived without a suitcase. She had taken my appeal that she leave everything behind and start life anew a bit more literally than I had meant it. Or maybe not. I had talked a great deal about ref...