Cobalt (11 page)

“Gay people ought to learn—”

“I'm not talking about ‘gay people,' I'm talking about
me
!”

“What about Clarisse?” Terry demanded pettishly.

“Clarisse,” said Valentine solemnly, “is the love of my life.”

“She's a woman!”

“You're being rude, Terry.”

“Rude! I
love
you. I…” He broke off in frustration.

“Please leave,” said Valentine quietly, not allowing the man to speak.

“No, you're wrong, I—” Terry began again apologetically.

“Please leave,” Valentine repeated in a tone of voice that wasn't as soft as before, “because if you don't leave now all you'll have to show for your efforts is an early grave and all I'll have is a cell in Walpole.”

Terry eased off the barstool. “You do this a lot, don't you?” he said bitterly. “You must, 'cause you're real good at it.”

Valentine turned toward the cash register and pushed several buttons in rapid succession. In tiny red lights across the screen were spelled out the words REGISTER CLOSED.

Terry O'Sullivan turned on his heel and left the bar.

O
N MONDAY NIGHT Clarisse decided that she ought to catch up on a little sleep. She had gone to bed not at all on Saturday night, slept little on Sunday, and after two full days of work and thinking about a dead man, she was weary. She declined an invitation to dinner with Valentine, and dined alone on a glass of red wine and half an Explorateur cheese—her favorite. After a leisurely bath, she put on a fresh nightgown, slipped between the sheets and was asleep within five minutes.

Next morning she awoke ready to face life. She checked on Valentine and discovered that he hadn't returned home the previous night. She made coffee for herself, indulged in part of an Entenmann's pecan Danish ring, and sat down at her makeup table still with plenty of time to get to work. Provincetown, she reflected,
could
be very pleasant. Birds sang in the coffee tree.

She heard the gate rasp open. Thinking it would be Valentine returning after a night's successful hunting, she went to the window to greet him. It was Noah carrying a suitcase. She called down and waved.

“You're back!”

He looked up at her and smiled. “Yes. Come on over and watch me unpack.”

She hurriedly dressed and ran across the courtyard. She opened the door of Noah's apartment, and the White Prince lunged at her down the hallway with an Electrolux. He wore his birch-heeled sandals, which clattered noisily—audible even above the vacuum cleaner—on the bare floor, white silk designer shorts, a kelly green tank top, and a dozen thin gold bangle bracelets on each wrist. A white rubber skullcap with green stars protected his hair against flying dust.

“Hi!” he screamed over the vacuum cleaner. “Noah's upstairs!”

Clarisse jumped out of his way, slipped past, and went up the stairs. Behind her the vacuum cleaner was shut off, and the Prince shouted behind her, “Did you steal my Bon Ami?” He gave it a French pronunciation. “I can't find it anywhere.”

“No!” cried Clarisse, and knocked on the door of Noah's bedroom. The vacuum cleaner started up again down below.

Noah opened the door, motioned her in, and closed the door behind her. The sound of the White Prince in the throes of housecleaning were mercifully dampened.

Clarisse looked around the room. It had been redecorated since she'd seen it last. The walls were deep rose, the prints were Japanese, the furniture was lacquered black—but the windows still looked out on unmistakably sea-resort foliage and Cape Cod sky. Noah's bag lay opened on the quilted black bedspread.

“I thought you hired someone to do the cleaning,” remarked Clarisse. Outside the room, they could hear the Electrolux being dragged up the stairs.

“I do. But the Prince took the wrong pill this morning. What he thought was vitamin E was actually an Eskatrol. And at ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning what is there to do on an upper except clean house?”

The White Prince flung open the door of Noah's room and demanded, “Where is the drapery attachment for this machine? Who took it?”

“All the attachments are kept in the bathroom closet,” said Noah patiently.

The Prince rattled his bracelets and slammed the door.

Noah shrugged, and began sifting through his bag for dirty clothes. He looked up and smiled at Clarisse.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Boston.”

“I didn't know you were going.”

“I didn't think to tell you. I had planned the trip. I went to Boston to look over the Brookline Swiss Miss, and to have breakfast with Cal. You know Calvin Lark, don't you?”

“Yes,” Clarisse replied. “His firm also represents the real estate office where I used to work. And naturally he's a friend of Valentine's. He's the one who suggested that I go to the Portia School of Law.”

“Well,” said Noah, “I went to see Cal. On business.”

He closed the drawer on some shirts that hadn't been worn.

“Why so curious? Did I miss something around here?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Somebody at the party on Saturday night was murdered.”

“I know.”

“And I found the body.”

“I know.”

Clarisse turned her head a little and raised her voice; the vacuum cleaner had started up again, this time right outside the bedroom door. “How did you know? You left town so early after the party.”

“The Prince told me, I—”

The Prince opened the door. “I need another extension cord,” he cried. “I want to reach out the window and clean out the eaves.”

“Clarisse,” said Noah, “I'll be right back.”

He left the room with the White Prince directly behind him, volubly complaining that not only was their only dust mop in terrible shape but that
somebody
had bought Amway furniture polish instead of good old Lemon Pledge.

Noah was gone for nearly ten minutes. Clarisse peeked into his bag. When he returned he apologized for having taken so long, and said that the Prince had given him a long list of supplies that
had
to be purchased before he could get
anywhere
with the cleaning. “So I'll have to go out now. Do you want to wait here for me?”

“No,” said Clarisse, “I have to get on to work.” She couldn't help but feel that her uncle was doing what he could to abandon the conversation regarding his trip to Boston. “Do you want to have lunch?”

“I wish I could,” he replied. “But I'll be at the restaurant. On Tuesday, we have the management-union meeting. Angel and I stand up against the wall, while the twenty-five waiters hurl complaints and day-old pastries at us.”

“Maybe tomorrow then?”

“We'll see,” he smiled. “But don't worry about it, we're both here all summer.”

She stood to go. “Well, why don't you walk me to work, I—”

“Opposite direction,” he smiled with a small sigh.

They at least went down the stairs together, and out into the courtyard.

The White Prince leaned out the bathroom window and screeched, “Don't forget the brass cleaner!”

C
LARISSE ARRIVED AT the Throne and Scepter just as Valentine was finishing his shift that evening. He was preoccupied and morose.

“You broke a heart today, didn't you?” said Clarisse. “You're always like this when you have to break a heart. Whose was it?”

“It wasn't today, it was yesterday. And I'm still depressed.” Valentine told her about the disagreeable scene with Terry O'Sullivan.

“I would have thought you'd be over it by now. Didn't you go out last night?”

“Yes.”

“And didn't you find someone to make you forget your woes?”

“Yes. But today my woes has come in five times to beg forgiveness.”

“What you need,” said Clarisse sympathetically, “is a little sign over your bed:
Three-Day Limit
. For your birthday I'll make you one, in needlepoint.”

“What I really need,” said Valentine, “is about five more drinks.”

“Sorrows float in liquor,” said Clarisse. “Only two things help in a case like this. Spending a lot of money or trying on a lot of clothes. I've been known to do both.”

“I don't want to do either.”

“Accompany me to Maggie Duck's Duds,” said Clarisse. “I've got to find something for my date with Matteo.”

“Who?”

“Matteo Montalvo—the object of my most recent flights of fancy. Cops, as you must know, have a fine eye for the details of a woman's clothing, so I have to be careful what I wear.”

“Maybe that's the answer,” said Valentine.

“What?”

“Maybe I should date straight men—at least they wouldn't be prone to fall in love. And I
dote
on uniforms.”

“Val, I have just secured for myself the only good-looking unattached straight man in this town. If you try to take him away from me, I will staple your ears to your shoulders.”

Maggie Duck's Duds was two doors down from the Swiss Miss in Exile. Its stock was good used clothing from the middle forties through the late fifties, and considering the general run of Provincetown markups, its prices were moderate. At nine o'clock on Monday night the shop was not crowded, and Valentine and Clarisse were alone in the back room. From a rack of dresses Clarisse selected an ocher silk evening gown with silver bugle beads shot through the pleated bodice. Valentine was desultorily examining shirts.

Clarisse put on the dress, then stood before the mirror and adjusted the wide padded shoulders and bolero sleeves. She turned around to admire the sway of the floor-length skirt, then pulled back her hair, pushed it up, lowered her eyelids and pouted, affecting her sultriest demeanor.

“For once you got it right,” said Valentine over her shoulder in the mirror. “Miss Barbara in
Double Indemnity
.”

“Wrong,” she said, “Diana Dors in
Yield to the Night
.” She shook out her hair and turned to face him. She stopped abruptly, staring.

“It's that bad?” he asked. From the rack against the wall, he'd put on a shirt with a scattering of black figures on a vibrant red background. The price tag dangled from one of the sleeve buttons. When Clarisse continued to stare dumbly at him, he stepped in front of her and examined the shirt in the mirror. “Collar too wide?” he suggested. “Cut too full?” He pulled the sides of the shirt close to his body. “Maybe cleavage would help,” he said, undoing two more buttons. “Clarisse, say something!”

Clarisse faltered. “It…looks good on you too.”

“What do you mean, me too?”

“I mean that it looked great on Jeff King when he got off the ferry wearing it.”

“Oh,” said Valentine softly, after a moment, “dead man's clothes…” Then: “Are you sure it's the same one?”

“Tulips,” she said, poking at one in the design. “Black tulips on a field of red. When I talked to him after we got off the boat, he was wearing
this
shirt. Bend down.”

Valentine leaned forward, and Clarisse pulled back the collar. “No name tag, but the label's period. I'm sure it's his. I'd bet Richard Nixon's political future that there's not another one like it on the eastern seaboard.”

“Maybe you're right. Think anything else of his turned up here?”

“Let's look! What should we look for?”

“Underwear,” suggested Valentine. “Drug dealers always wear fancy underwear. Oh, and Jeff King went swimming Saturday afternoon, look for a wet bathing suit.”

“You're making fun of me.”

“Of course I am. The only things you saw him wearing were this shirt and the toga on Saturday night.”

“Chiton,” Clarisse corrected.

“All right,
chiton
,” Valentine allowed. “So he probably got buried in the chiton, and now you want to look through an entire clothing store for the rest of his wardrobe, which you never even saw?”

“This is a clue!” she said, stabbing at another tulip.

“Wouldn't it make more sense to ask the people running the shop where
they
got the shirt?”

“I suppose,” said Clarisse, reddening a little. “Take it off.” While he did so, she went into the dressing room, and removed the gown. She came out with it over her arm. “Get out your Visa, I don't have enough money for this.”

At the counter Valentine surrendered his plastic. Clarisse smiled at the young woman behind the counter. She had a pinched, heavily rouged face, pouting lips outlined in fuchsia lipstick, chopped hair dyed black and streaked above the ear in turquoise. She wore a leather jacket so tight that she probably could not have raised a cigarette to her lips, and whether she would be able to handle the cash register was itself an interesting question.