Cobalt (7 page)

“She knew how to work the register, then?”

“No,” said Beatrice with widened eyes, “she was stealing the
merchandise
.”

Clarisse looked around. “Are you sure?”

“I caught her one day pushing a ceramic toothbrush holder down the front of her pants. Then I went to see her parents, and they showed me her room. It was
filled
with things from this shop. Her parents were very upset. Judy had told them she got them as commissions for doing so much selling.”

“A wicked girl!”

“I brought everything back,” said Beatrice, “and put it on a markdown table. And do you know that that girl had the effrontery to come back in here and buy the pieces that she liked best?”

“What she did was very wrong,” said Clarisse.

Customers entered. Beatrice smiled at them, and stepped closer to the counter. She said to Clarisse, “I'm flying up to Boston this afternoon to go to the gift show at Hynes Auditorium.” She sighed happily. “The gift show is like Aladdin's Cave to me. Can you imagine this place expanded to the size of twenty-five basketball courts?”

“No,” said Clarisse quickly. “I can't.”

“
That's
what the gift show is like. I should be back by seven and I'll bring you some catalogs to look through. You can help me choose some new stock.”

“I'd love to,” said Clarisse, with a smile that was genuine.

Clarisse liked Beatrice, though she could by no means endorse the woman's taste in bric-a-brac. Clarisse did her best to wait cheerfully on customers that afternoon and not condemn them as Philistines simply because they wandered in to browse. But her resolution wavered as the crowds grew larger and the hour grew later. When Beatrice returned at the promised time and took over for the rest of the evening, Clarisse staggered across to the Throne and Scepter, where Valentine still had an hour on duty.

“This was the worst day I've spent since I heard that Patty P. Hearst had been kidnapped,” she whispered, and groped blindly for the drink he'd prepared for her.

Valentine smiled. “Too bad you had to begin like this, but Sunday's always the busiest day around here. Probably during the week everything'll be very quiet and pleasant—”

“The Provincetown Crafts Boutique could
never
be ‘quiet and pleasant.' Not with
that
merchandise. I felt as if I were presiding over an elves' workshop in there.”

“Well, just relax. After I finish here we're going home and changing clothes and I'm taking you out to dinner. I even”—he opened the refrigerator behind the bar and took out a small box and held it up to her—“bought you a corsage. Cymbidium.”

Clarisse shook her head slowly. “As bribes go, it falls short of a proposal of marriage or a shoeboxful of diamonds, but I suppose it will have to do.”

The Throne and Scepter was not crowded. Many of the visitors who had come to Provincetown for the day, the weekend, or the previous week were packing up now or had already left; the town seemed quiet. At a table just behind where Clarisse sat at the bar two men in their late forties were fighting, merely for the pleasure of it, it seemed. Their relationship had broken up formally eight years before but they still debated the causes and the blame, and seemed very pleased that Clarisse was attending closely to them.

To her right at the bar were seven men, of greatly varying age and appearance but all Provincetown regulars, engaged in a kind of round-table discussion on who had the biggest tits in Hollywood. The contest had narrowed to Kathryn Grayson and Mamie Van Doren, with Miss Jane Russell contemptuously dismissed as publicity hype. When Valentine placed a second drink before Clarisse, one of the men turned to her and asked, “You ever had a screen test, honey?”

When she went to the ladies' room, Clarisse passed through a dark corner of the bar, and to her surprise, discovered Ann and Margaret sitting at a tiny table that was nearly hid behind a vast palm in an Art Nouveau pot. Holding hands and gazing intently into each other's eyes, they did not even notice her until she spoke.

“Good afternoon,” said Clarisse pleasantly.

The two women looked up, grasped for recognition, and then broke into smiles.

“Hi,” said Ann, lifting her drink in a toast.

“Hello, Clarisse,” said Margaret with a smile.

They spoke for a moment about the party, about Noah's pool, about their plans for the evening, then Clarisse went on into the ladies' room. When she came out again, Ann said, “Have Daniel bring me another gin and tonic, will you please? He's been forgetting me.”

“No, he hasn't,” said Margaret in a low voice. “You've had enough. If you have any more, you're not going to be able to
taste
your dinner.”

“I want one more!” protested Ann.

Margaret sighed and nodded to Clarisse. “Have Daniel send one over, and a Perrier for me.”

Clarisse walked away, and heard the two women buzzing behind her. When she got to the bar, she said, “The lady who doesn't need another gin and tonic wants another gin and tonic.”

“That's six,” said Valentine, shaking his head. “Do you think she'll try to bust up the place?”

“I like to drink,” said Clarisse. “But I think it's undignified for a woman with an appearance to maintain to fall on her face before eight o'clock. Barroom floors always smudge your makeup.”

“If I had Terry O'Sullivan for a boss, I'd get sloshed on my vacation too.”

“Margaret is trying to keep her in line, that's something. Is this summer love or is it a real affair, do you think?”

“Summer love. Unfortunately, they're involved in a four-sided triangle.” Clarisse turned to him inquiringly. “Ann will have to go back to Miriam in Boston. Miriam has a lot of money and an ugly temper.”

“And Margaret?”

“Is married to Joyce, in Toronto. Joyce is thin, and supports her mother in a nursing home.”

“How do you know all this?”

Valentine shrugged. “A good bartender learns a little something about every one of his customers.”

“You eavesdrop, you mean.”

Valentine held up his hands in protest. “I draw the line at mechanical listening devices. I scorn hidden microphones. All my information is obtained legally. This information came from Mr. Terry O'Sullivan.” He moved away to wait on Mamie Van Doren's most fervent partisan. In the dark corner of the bar, Ann burst into tears and fled into the ladies' room.

Margaret came to the bar. “Tell Daniel to forget about the reorder, Clarisse. Ann and I are leaving. You don't happen to know where I could pick up a home Detox Unit, do you?”

A
LITTLE LATER Valentine and Clarisse were walking back up Commercial Street from Kiley Court. Valentine wore a loose-fitting white summer suit circa 1940 with a black shirt printed with a single line of enormous long-stemmed yellow roses. Clarisse wore a white dress of the same period with the spray of cymbidium pinned to her bodice. She'd fashioned her hair into a style in imitation of one worn by Eva Perón. Their appearance as a sterling couple of fashion and consequence was undermined only by Valentine's winking at every good-looking man that passed.

After the madness of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the streets seemed almost deserted. The day's blasting heat had abated beneath a balmy salt breeze that wafted across Commercial Street from the bay.

The Swiss Miss in Exile was a small two-story Victorian house, set well back from the street which had been renovated into a fair likeness of a Swiss chalet, with pierced shutters and a great deal of gingerbread. It was painted raw sienna and canary yellow, and its window boxes were filled with red geraniums. Daniel led Clarisse up the evergreen-lined path toward the entrance.

She paused at the threshold and glanced at a couple of grinning stone dwarfs that stood bowing at either side of the door. “I've never eaten here before,” she remarked meaningfully. “Swear to God that the food will make up for the decor?”

“Food's good,” said Valentine, stepping into the front parlor. In this room was the maître d's desk, the reservation book open on it, and several comfortable chairs for guests waiting to be seated. “But don't you know why I brought you here?”

“You're meeting a boyfriend who's into dirndls?”

Valentine shook his head, and lit cigarettes for them. The maître d' hadn't yet appeared. “Your uncle
owns
this restaurant.”

“What!”

“He bought it last January, and then had it fixed up. I forget what it was before—a guesthouse I think. It wasn't gay so of course it went under.”

“You mean to tell me that Noah
authorized
those charming architectural details on the facade of this building?”

Valentine pointed to the bright red-and-green stenciled walls in the reception room: “And the interior decoration as well.”

“
Why?
Noah keeps his business dealings pretty much secret, but I didn't think he knew anything about restaurants—or does he?”

Valentine leaned forward and whispered, “Maybe not, but the White Prince does…”

Clarisse nodded with sudden understanding. “And
that's
why he's never mentioned it to me, I'll bet. So Noah invested let's say fifty thousand dollars to keep the White Prince happy. I might have known. Why doesn't Noah want to make
me
happy? For only twenty-five dollars he could buy me a sledgehammer for the Provincetown Crafts Boutique.” She looked around her with increased interest. “It's probably doing all right, too. Noah's never lost money at anything he did.”

“And the White Prince has never made any,” Valentine reminded her.

“God. At least he's not the maître d'. If he were, straight customers would never get seated.”

“I think he's mostly kept out of sight. Even though he looks as though the only pencil he ever used was to do his eyebrows, the White Prince is actually pretty good with books.”

Beyond the front parlor, in the warren of large and small rooms on the first and second floors, from two to seven tables had been set up in each, and in the backyard, made private by an old and vigorously pruned privet hedge, there was garden dining. Presently, the maître d', wearing a saffron-hued peasant shirt and raw-cotton slacks, seated them in a tiny room overlooking the garden. The breeze through the lace-curtained window was warm and fragrant. Their waiter was tall and sufficiently handsome, clad in a white shirt, knee socks, clogs, and chocolate shorts held up by brightly embroidered suspenders. They settled comfortably into high-backed rush chairs, noted with satisfaction that the only other table in the room was unoccupied, and ordered drinks. The illumination was provided by candles only—on the mantel behind Daniel, in sconces behind Clarisse, and in a yellow glass globe on the table between them.

“Thank you,” said Clarisse to Valentine when the drinks were brought. She raised her glass. “This is just what I needed after today.”

“I was thinking about taking you to the Forward Pass, but I wasn't sure you'd be up for waiters dressed like cheerleaders.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, “probably not.” She placed her clutch bag on the table, and cautiously lifted the lid of a small box next to the saltcellar. It played a tinny Viennese waltz. She slammed the lid shut. “Candlelight,” she said. “And a large menu, and a waiter who knows what he's doing—that's what I needed, having been so recently subjected to the brutal side of human nature.”

“Your customers weren't that bad.”

“I'm talking about Jeff King.”

“Are you going into your
Witness for the Prosecution
routine again?”

The waiter returned. Clarisse said, “Order for me, Val. I'm in no condition to make minor decisions.”

Valentine spoke to the waiter for a few moments, and when he was gone, leaned forward and pulled back the lace curtain from the window. The last moments of twilight hovered over the garden. Yellow lamps placed in niches carved in the privet hedge lighted the area softly. The murmur of conversation and the discreet clatter of dishes and cutlery was very pleasant.

“There's a cutie,” said Valentine, and pointed to a man seated alone at a table in the corner of the garden.

Clarisse peered out. “How can you tell? He's got his back to us. And he's in almost total shadow.”

“Sea air sharpens my senses. I can
smell
a cutie—especially when he's got shoulders like that.”

“Maybe if I smashed a window he'd turn around and you could get a look at his face.”

“I know those shoulders, in fact,” said Valentine.

“You would. Who is it?”

Valentine paused for a moment, considering. “It's Axel Braun,” he said.

“At the party? Polyphemus?”

“And where's Ulysses I wonder,” mused Daniel.