Cobalt

by Aldyne, Nathan

  While Valentine sat with his drink, windows had one by one lighted up in the three apartments opening onto the courtyard. If he looked to his left, he could see Clarisse wandering from room to room, looking for something she could not find, and waving her hands in frustration. Her cursing was a pleasant murmur, like the wind through the coffee tree. To his right, he could see into the bedroom of the White Prince. Directly beneath a harsh sunlamp sat Victor, his perfect vacuous face smeared over with gray cream and his proud white hair carefully protected by a skullcap made of crushed aluminum foil. While Valentine was peering into the lighted living room of the rented apartment in between, trying to glimpse the new tenant, Noah Lovelace’s screen door slammed and Noah came out with a drink for himself and a freshened gin and tonic for Valentine.

  “Have you seen the new ones yet?” he said in a low voice, nodding toward the rental apartment. Clarisse’s uncle scraped a chair up next to Valentine. Noah Lovelace was in his late forties, though he looked no more than a weathered thirty-eight; he had short gray hair, a close-cut beard that was fast going to gray, and a body that was Valentine’s good-natured envy. He was the only brother of Clarisse’s father, and though rather a black sheep in the family, had managed to make more money than anyone else, having invested his niggardly inheritance in real estate and over-the-counter stocks with spectacular results. His disinclination to have any regular profession, his sexual orientation, his insufferable financial luck, and his insane decision to live year-round in a tourist-trap resort infuriated all the Lovelaces but Clarisse.

  “No,” said Valentine, “but I suppose anybody would be better than Terry.”

  Noah laughed, and raised his glass. “To the departure of Mr. O’Sullivan. I suppose he got on your nerves, always hanging about the way he did.”

  Valentine shrugged. “He’s sweet, and he means well, but—”

  “I know,” replied Noah. “He’s very—what should I say?—sincere. But he’s left a representative.”

  “What?” asked Valentine apprehensively.

  “His administrative assistant has the apartment this week. Her name is Ann, and her girlfriend’s name is Margaret. They’re high-tech lesbians, and they’re in the first heat of love.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They’ve been going at it all afternoon. The Prince stood with his ear against their bedroom wall for forty-five minutes, ticking off the orgasms on an abacus.”

  To their left a window suddenly shot up in its frame, and Clarisse’s towel-turbaned head leaned out into the gathering night. “It’s the end of the world!”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Valentine calmly.

  “I forgot to bring my hair dryer! And I can’t find yours!” Valentine ran his hand over his head: his hair wasn’t more than an eighth of an inch long. “I scrapped mine,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Try the oven.”

  “Victor has at least three dryers,” said Noah. “Come on over, Clarisse, I’m almost certain he doesn’t use more than one at a time.”

  The window shot down again, and a moment later Clarisse flung herself out the door. When she passed Valentine she grabbed the drink from his hand and guzzled half of it. “Thank you,” she breathed. Over the rim she peered at him in the obscurity of twilight. “Oh, God,” she said, “why aren’t you getting ready? The only reason I came to Provincetown at all was to go to this party, and you’re just sitting there!”

  “Oh,” said Valentine, “I’m all dressed now.”

  “This is Garden of Evil night,” she reminded him. “So who are you supposed to be?”

  “Can’t you tell? I’m the Man Who Raped Connie Francis.”

  Clarisse swallowed the remainder of his drink and ran into her uncle’s house.

  “I’m glad you brought her down,” said Noah. “Clarisse is the only one in the family I still speak to. I’m just surprised you could get her away from that real estate office.”

  “So was I, in fact. I think she must have been really fed up.”

  “Why?”

  “Low commissions, the owners skimming, the bums making faces at her through the windows—and worse. Besides, she was going to quit in the fall anyway.”

  “I don’t have much to do with family,” said Noah after a moment. “Except for her. That’s a choice of course, but sometimes you wish you could have things both ways. You know her parents—my brother and his wife?”

  Valentine didn’t answer at once. “I’ve met them,” he said.

  Noah nodded agreement to what Valentine did not speak aloud. “And Clarisse’s brother is just as bad—worse, in fact, because he’s so much younger and he’s just the same. Oh well, I—” He broke off suddenly. “Sorry, Daniel, I’m an invariable victim of twilight melancholy.”

  “Me too,” said Valentine. “Listen, I guess I better go in and get ready. Who are you going as?”

  “Herod. I’d better get ready too—I think Victor wants to gild my nipples.”

  An hour later Valentine was again seated by the pool, sipping a third gin and tonic. On the cedar table next to him was a small candle set in a deep glass; the night was black. The candle glow was glossily reflected on his polished brown leather riding boots. His light gray pants were loosely cut; his bloused white linen shirt was collarless and opened to his waist.

  He had been amusing himself by watching the White Prince struggle into his Salome costume, when he was disturbed by a noise behind him at the latticed gate. He looked over his shoulder at three middle-aged women who were peering hopefully into the courtyard.

  Valentine smiled to himself and rose slowly from the chair. From the cedar table he picked up his coiled bullwhip, jerked suddenly around and cracked the whip violently in the air above the pool. “No!” he shouted. “This is not Poor Richard’s Buttery!”

  The three women beat a hasty retreat.

  Valentine eased back into the chair, but once again there were footsteps on the gravel. He stood poised to repeat the performance, when to his intense surprise, from behind the lattice and hedge emerged a tall, elegantly dressed Oriental woman. She bowed her head slightly, and with the same motion she delicately flicked the tinkling glass wind chimes that were suspended from one of the gateposts. On each of her fingers was a three-inch gold lacquered nail. Her hair was fashioned in a tight chignon and secured at the nape of her neck by large ornamental pins. Her gown was full-length, with red and gold dragons on a field of blue silk. She came a step closer and he saw that she held a small cream-colored envelope.

  “I…” stammered Valentine.

  The Oriental woman broke into sudden laughter. “Fooled you!” she cried. “Fooled you!”

  “Damn! How did you get out there without my seeing you?”

  “I climbed out the back window,” replied Clarisse, coming to his side.

  “In that?”

  “Anything for an entrance. I fooled you!”

  “All right, you fooled me. But I’ve still got to guess who you’re supposed to be.”

  “What do you mean, guess?”

  “You’re…” Valentine paused as if in careful thought, and experimentally touched the tape that gave her eyes their slant. “You’re Warner Oland—Charlie Chan in drag.” Clarisse pushed away his hand. “Maybe not,” said Valentine. “Wait. Luise Rainer in The Good Earth. That’s who it is, isn’t it? Except I don’t remember that costume.”

  “That’s because Luise Rainer wore sackcloth the whole film, that’s why you don’t remember this costume, you jerk.”

  “Who are you then?”

  Clarisse flicked her nails at his throat, and then pushed the envelope directly before his face. “Isn’t this a clue?”

  “Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice?”

  “I gave up my job and my apartment to come to Provincetown to live with a cinematic animal,” she said in a low voice, shaking her head. “Valentine, I will have you know that I am a near perfect replica of Gale Sondergaard i
n The Letter. The Letter,” she repeated, shaking it in front of his face.

  Valentine laughed. “I knew that.”

  Clarisse sighed. “Light me a cigarette. My hands have been rendered useless for the sake of authenticity.” She waved her taloned fingers before him. He gave her one of his Luckys and she seated herself beside him. “Well,” she said at last, “who are you supposed to be?”

  Valentine picked up the bullwhip. “Can’t you tell?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m Simon Legree.”

  “You’d make a better Little Eva. All pinafores and sausage curls. Got a date?”

  “Name’s Terry O’Sullivan.”

  “Do I know him?”

  Valentine shook his head. “He had the other place all last week.” Valentine jerked his thumb toward the section of the house behind him.

  “How convenient that must have been,” remarked Clarisse.

  “Convenient for him,” said Valentine.

  “You got chased around the pool?”

  Valentine nodded. “Fortunately I was working most of the time. But he was always here waiting when I got off, and always here when I got up, and always knocking on the door to borrow something, or return it, or to ask me if I wanted to go to the beach. I thought, Well there’s only a week of it, but then he decided to stay in town a couple of extra days—he took his things over to the Boatslip this morning—just so he could go to the party tonight. When he asked me to go out with him on his last night in town I didn’t have the heart to say no. Besides, I’m celebrating the fact that he’s getting out of here.”

  “Who’s he going as?”

  “Need you ask?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Clarisse after a moment’s reflection, “if you think that I am going to this party with you dressed up as Simon Legree, and some trick of yours in blackface dressed up as Uncle Tom, you are—”

  Behind them, there was a loud crunch on the gravel. Clarisse and Valentine turned and saw, kneeling in the open gate, a short man wearing ragged trousers with a rope belt and a soiled yellow vest over a dirty billowing white shirt. His face and hands and bare feet were carefully smeared with burnt cork. His manacled black hands were clasped pleadingly before him, and he said in a loud voice, “Oh, Massa Legree, please don’ beat po’ Tom no mo’!”

  Just at that moment a large party of well-dressed tourists emerged from Poor Richard’s Buttery across the way, and paused to watch Uncle Tom as he advanced, on his knees, across the gravel courtyard. Simon Legree stood and cracked his whip over poor Tom’s head, and the Oriental woman, in her great embarrassment, sat with her painted face hidden behind her long-nailed hands.

  Chapter Three

  COMMERCIAL STREET AT eleven o’clock on Saturday night was even more crowded than it had been at eleven o’clock that morning. The day-trippers had gone home, but their place had been taken by carousing couples in their twenties and drunk teenagers from towns up and down the curved length of Cape Cod. The shops were just closing, and the crowds at the bars just beginning to pick up.

  Weaving their way down the crowded sidewalk from Kiley Court, Valentine and Clarisse and Terry O’Sullivan kept a reasonable distance ahead of Noah Lovelace and the White Prince. Noah was splendidly costumed as King Herod in an elaborate mauve robe, its full sleeves and hem bordered in wide bands of silver. His eyes were thickly lined in brown and drawn out in careful spirals at the outside corners. His full mustache was heavily waxed and swept upward; his beard was oiled, and where it was longest beneath his chin, threaded with pearls. A chaste bronze crown rested atop his head and seemed at ease there.

  Victor, the White Prince, was done up as Salome. He stumbled along in a pair of spike-heeled open-toed slippers, trying not to trip on the seven voluminous coral veils that were attached to a brown leather girdle riding low on his slender hips. His tanned midriff was bare but for a gaudy green-glass emerald plugging his navel. A halter, also of coral silk, covered his chest, his flesh taped to give the illusion of cleavage, while the cups were filled to considerable capacity with foam falsies. His auburn wig was a masterwork of ribbon curls. On the very top of the White Prince’s head was a silver tray on which rested the severed head of John the Baptist—eyes open, mouth agape, ribbons of veins, nerves, flesh, and muscle spilling realistically from the stump of neck. Heads turned, but the Prince ignored startled stares, catcalls, and good-natured derision alike, so intent was he on maintaining his precarious balance.

  “Val,” said Clarisse, when they were somewhat ahead of Herod and Salome, “why do you suppose Noah puts up with the White Prince? I don’t think they’ve slept together in three years. And sexually, in lifestyles, they’ve grown so far apart. I just don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe they love each other,” suggested Terry O’Sullivan, tugging at his manacles.

  Clarisse looked closely at the man in blackface but said nothing.

  When Valentine replied, it was to Clarisse. “I don’t think Noah’s ever thrown anybody out. He probably thinks the White Prince couldn’t get along without him. So it’s kindness, or habit, or laziness. They still like each other, after all.”

  “The Prince holds onto Noah like an industrial secret.”

  “Listen, Clarisse, don’t make it your summer project to break those two up. Destroying workable marriages shouldn’t be looked on as a pastime.”

  “I think it’s wonderful when lovers stay together for a long time,” said Terry O’Sullivan irrepressibly. “I think gay people wouldn’t have such a terrible image problem if everybody had a lover, and there wasn’t all this sleeping around.”

  “Yes,” replied Valentine blandly, “but on the other hand, promiscuity is a lot of laughs.”

  “You just say that,” said Terry, adjusting his woolly wig, “but you don’t really mean it. What happens when you’re lonely and depressed? You think some trick is going to get you out of that depression? Everybody ought to have a lover, somebody to come home to, and somebody who helps you wash the dishes, and somebody—”

  Here Terry was separated from his companions by a passing knot of lesbians, and Clarisse turned smiling to Valentine. “I think he wants a lover,” she remarked. “I think he wants you.”

  “Poor baby!” sighed Valentine. “We’d have a perfect marriage—for twenty-four hours. But how do I tell him?”

  Terry hurried to rejoin them. He was shorter than either. “Have you ever had a lover?” he asked Valentine.

  “Yes. But he died. We were so much in love. He was all the world to me. Then he was taken hostage in a bank holdup, and the police shot him by mistake.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible! When did all this happen?”

  “Two weeks ago,” said Clarisse.

  Terry O’Sullivan looked from one to the other, dismayed. “Oh, then you must still be very upset,” he said to Valentine.

  “You want to know how upset he was?” said Clarisse. “He tried to commit suicide with a bottle of NoDoz.”

  Behind them they heard a shriek, and when they turned it was to see Salome sprawled between two garbage cans in front of a leather shop. Noah was helping him up, and saying in an exasperated voice, “I told you not to wear those damned Spring-o-Lators. They’re not even period!”

  Chapter Four

  DESPITE THE NUMBER of tourists that may be found there any time of the year, Provincetown still retains the flavor of a New England fishing village, with tiny cramped houses, sandy yards, narrow streets, and the pervasive smell of the sea—and this is especially true at night, when darkness could make you think you were back in the middle of the nineteenth century. The illusion is dispelled only by the number of roving men on the street after three A.M., and the unsubtle thump-thump-thump of rock music from private parties in houses on every other street. Straight tourists think of the town as a trove of quaint architecture, curio shops, restaurants, and guesthouses with never a vacancy glued along the narrow rim of a gray beach. When the sun goes down and the shops close up, thes
e tourists return to the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town, or drive back to Boston or to other, less expensive towns of the Cape, and have no idea that for many other vacationers, the real excitement of Provincetown is only beginning.

  The Garden of Evil party was being held at the Crown dance bar, at the rear of the same compound in which the Throne and Scepter was located. Since it was a private party, it would not be subject to the normal closing time of one A.M., but would probably go on all night.

  The Crown was one very large rectangular room with three bars. Overlooking the bay behind the place was a deck, partially covered by an awning that surrounded a swimming pool. Its architecture was utilitarian, and the decoration for the party was straightforward: bowers and festoons of red-and-black paper roses, lanterns that shed flattering red light, and on the walls large blowups of primitive woodcuts, red on black, depicting scenes of rapine, torture, and animalistic butchery. A special slide made up for the bar’s laser spelled out in wavering green lines, GARDEN OF EVIL.

  The cop on the door, his uniform viewed by many partygoers as yet another costume of evil, nodded them through, but not before giving Clarisse the once-over. She smiled appreciatively. Valentine gave the doorman the invitations he had obtained in his capacity as bartender.