“Actually, I don’t know what he had inside. Like a doctor’s bag, maybe not as big, black leather. And I remember thinking: he had something in there that Billy didn’t want to play with, and that’s why they argued. But Valentine, what if he didn’t have just toys inside that bag? What if he wasn’t carrying around ‘marital aids’? What if he had a hammer or a lead pipe?”
Chapter Nine
CLARISSE LOVELACE waited patiently for Daniel Valentine in the lobby of the International Health Spa. She was a member herself, but men and women had separate exercise rooms, and she wasn’t as faithful in her attendance as Valentine. She examined now—as she had often examined before—one of the large paintings that flanked the wide entrance. This pair of large canvases, of the German academic school of the mid-nineteenth century, depicted the youth of Imperial Rome enjoying decorous physical activity in shimmering togas. In Clarisse’s favorite, two blond men and a lithe young woman played an elaborate game of hoops. The scene lay in a large grove of unidentifiable trees, with the portico of a magnificent villa and the Mediterranean visible here and there through the foliage. Dappled sunlight illumined the golden heads of the three participants. The two men appeared to be twins—because the painter couldn’t afford more than one model, Clarisse assumed—and she was attracted to both. Studying their features and expressions in detail, she realized that she liked them simply because they resembled a beardless Valentine.
She sighed. Valentine was at once as close and as unattainable as the two men of oil and canvas.
Clarisse had never come so near Daniel Valentine as during their brief intimacy in Bermuda, when his sexual orientation had not been so settled a question as now. But when she discovered that his impotency in her bed was counterbalanced with extreme prowess with the assistant manager of the hotel, Clarisse collapsed with grief, rage, and embarrassment, and took the first flight home. But back in Boston, Valentine had called her up and, oddly, from the moment she first heard his voice on the phone, the rift had been closed. They were fast companions since that time, and their friendship was broken only every couple of years or so by some violent pointless argument.
She pulled her fur coat close about her shoulders and turned away from the painting. Valentine approached silently across the double-laid Oriental carpets. He was hurriedly pulling on his navy pea coat over a red hooded sweatshirt.
“I’m late,” he apologized.
She shrugged noncommittally, and buttoned her coat as they moved toward the wide glass doors. They didn’t speak as they descended the dark, short flight of stairs. They had just stepped out in the frigid night air when Valentine hurried to the edge of the street, stooped, and lifted a torn playing card from a pile of snow and ice atop a storm drain. He thumped it with his forefinger to loosen the filth on it, and slipped it into the pocket of his pea jacket.
“God!” breathed Clarisse, “how can I maintain my facade as a woman of fashion and leisure if I keep company with a man who picks playing cards up out of the gutter?”
“Ten of spades. Congress. Blue field, red filigree border. Probably part of a bridge set.”
They dodged traffic to cross to the boulevard down the center of Commonwealth Avenue. Invariably they preferred this generous path to the much narrower sidewalk in front of the townhouses on either side of the street. Bare gnarled oaks and maples lined the island, and new street-lamps burned sharply behind their black branches. Daniel still said nothing, but as they were crossing Fairfield Street, Clarisse slipped her arm into his.
“What’s the matter? You gain five pounds over the holidays?”
He laughed shortly. “No, in fact I lost.”
“What’s wrong then?”
He took a package of cigarettes from his pocket. They paused beneath the statue of a bald man who had once done something, or said something, or caused something to happen quite by accident. Valentine lit one for himself and offered a second to Clarisse. She took it.
“I saw Randy Harmon at the gym,” he said.
“Randy’s always at the gym. It’s hard to believe him anymore when he tries to tell you how much he hates it.”
Valentine, as they moved on, more slowly now, told Clarisse about Lieutenant Searcy’s raucous visit to the Royal Baths.
“Well,” said Clarisse, “at least he’s living up to his name.”
“Still think he’s cute?”
“I see the man’s point. How could Randy not have noticed the john? I mean, he was interested enough to notice how long Billy stayed with him, and notice that he was carrying a bag of toys.”
Valentine shrugged. “Think, though, Clarisse. He just didn’t. Just the way that I tune out the people who come to Bonaparte’s. It’s automatic. There’s such a thing as too much information—too much input. You don’t want to know all your customers. They order a drink, you fix it, you take the money, and it’s on to the next. The regulars I remember, but even that takes time.”
“You sound like a whore,” said Clarisse.
Where Commonwealth Avenue ends, at Arlington Street, they stopped for crossing traffic. Clarisse pressed Valentine’s arm. “OK, I know you’re upset and I feel bad for Randy, but Randy’s just going to have to take care of himself, and we should all be so lucky as to have an ex who’s as good a lawyer as Cal. But tonight we’re going to have a nice dinner together, just you and I, and put all this aside. Tomorrow you have off. You have dinner with me, and then I’ll spin you around three times and send you out to a bar and you can pick up the most beautiful man in Boston.”
Valentine smiled warmly. “If you weren’t a woman, I’d marry you. Where do we eat?”
“I don’t care. Let’s try the Tudor House. We haven’t been there for at least two weeks.”
“All right. Bonaparte’s first though. The Tudor House doesn’t have a license.”
There was a small boisterous crowd at Bonaparte’s when Valentine and Clarisse arrived. Someone was going away somewhere, or had just returned, or had been fired from a job he didn’t like—at any rate, someone and all his friends were very drunk.
Valentine and Clarisse did not check their coats but settled immediately into two seats in the main bar downstairs, as far as possible from those celebrating. Jack brought Clarisse her usual scotch and water and Valentine ordered a beer.
After the scotch touched her lips, Clarisse’s eyes blew open in panic. She gripped Valentine’s arm, spilling his beer. “Oh, my God!” she cried.
“What is it?”
“I forgot to call in sick today.”
“It’s a little late, don’t you think?”
Clarisse wiped up the beer with a bar napkin and threw it at Jack. “No,” she said with determination, “it’s never too late.”
She slid off the stool and crossed through the Wicker Room. She leaned against the wall between the two restroom doors and dropped a dime into the pay telephone there. While waiting for the real estate office’s answering service to respond, she noted that although Trudy was not at the keyboard, several sheets of music were strewn across the top of the piano. There was a line of three empty glasses on the edge of the bench. She remembered then that Trudy’s weekly sing-along began at eight each Thursday night; it was the only thing for which Trudy was on time.
Clarisse shifted her envelope from one arm to the other. After fifteen rings a female with an offensive Boston accent answered huffily. Clarisse identified herself and then dictated a message. “I am writhing in bed with the flu, doped up on Contac, and waiting for a team of surgeons.” At the end, she said, “Sign that—‘Lovelace, eight-thirty A.M.’”
The woman protested the inaccuracy of the time, but Clarisse was stern. She got her way.
Pleased, Clarisse replaced the receiver and turned. The contact lens in her left eye slipped from her iris, and without hesitation she whirled about and stiff-armed her way into the ladies room.
Clarisse plugged the sink and drew a couple of inches of lukewarm water. She leaned toward the mirror, and tri
ed to right the lens with a wetted finger.
The lens was replaced. To check it, she focused first on her own image in the mirror, then on the two stalls behind her. In the one adjacent to the outside wall, there was a sudden commotion of rustling material and a violent repeated sigh of exasperation.
Clarisse turned, curious, and leaned against the sink. Through the crack by the door, she could see flashing stuffs of light green, dark green, and black.
“Oh, Jesus!” cried a deep masculine voice from the stall.
The sound of snapped elastic crackled through the small room, and was immediately followed by an even greater commotion of rustling material. Clarisse wondered for a moment whether there were a Girl Scout troop in crinolines behind the door.
There was a splash.
“Oh, God!” cried the voice.
Clarisse folded her arms and leaned back against the sink.
The door to the stall was eased open, and Trudy’s light-blue wig, the color of Cinderella’s ball-dress in the Disney film, emerged askew. Beneath it, Trudy’s green-lashed eyes fluttered up.
“Oh, Clarisse, I’m glad it’s just you. I thought one of my fans had come in to attack.”
Trudy grabbed Clarisse’s arm, and pulled herself entirely out of the stall. Clarisse pushed her over to the other sink. “Is life hard, Trudy?” asked Clarisse sympathetically.
Trudy leaned against the sink and sighed. The green plastic lashes above and below her eyes meshed like gears. “Life is a shambles,” she whispered.
“Worse than usual?”
“The strap on my new brassiere broke, right in the middle of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’ I was so humiliated I couldn’t even finish, and it was a request. Half of me was up here where it should be, and the other one was down there around my girdle. Then, when I was in there”—she pointed one broken green nail at the stall—“I was putting Mama’s Helper back in, and the damn thing fell in the toilet! Oh, Clarisse,” Trudy moaned, “I think I’m being punished for all my unpaid parking tickets. I haven’t had to stuff my brassiere with toilet tissue since my high school graduation!”
Clarisse wanted desperately to ask whether Trudy had graduated from high school in drag, but she forbore in consideration of Trudy’s distress.
Trudy straightened herself, put on a brave face, and turned to the mirror. She smoothed the material of her dress over her hips. She studied her breasts critically, and adjusted the left slightly, moving it to the side. Then she moved the other in the same direction. “Honey,” she said, “if I thought this bra would fit you, I’d take it off right now and strap it on you. Aren’t you uncomfortable bouncing around like that? Don’t take this the wrong way, but they’re not—discreet, if you know what I mean.”
Clarisse rolled her eyes and pursed her mouth. She drew her coat closed. “I rent more flats if I don’t wear a bra,” she said tightly.
Trudy shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind a little curvature of the spine, I guess it’s all right. How do I look?”
Trudy turned slightly to one side, and then to the other; Clarisse looked her up and down appraisingly. “Fine,” she said, “you’re just where you should be. But where’s your lipstick?”
Trudy looked away, and touched her mouth nervously. “I gave it up—New Year’s resolution. A little fat girl at the cosmetic counter at Filene’s told me lipstick was out this season.” Trudy pulled absently at the curls at the back of her wig.
Clarisse opened her envelope and pulled out a comb; she ran it slowly and thoughtfully through her thick black hair. Out of the corner of her eye, through the mirror’s image, she watched Trudy examining her lashes and straightening the wide collar of her green blouse.
Clarisse put the comb away, and pulled out a tube of lipstick. She uncapped it and turned the tube up; carefully she applied it to her lips. She felt Trudy’s eyes on her.
“Nice color,” said Trudy.
Clarisse smacked, and smiled broadly to test her outlines. “‘Savage Cerise.’ Only at Bonwit’s.”
“I wonder if they would have the shade that I used to wear all the time,” said Trudy. “It was darker than yours, and brighter, and it had maybe just a little purple in it. It was so hard finding something that went with green.”
“What is it called?”
Trudy shrugged. “I don’t know. Vermilion something.”
Clarisse turned and looked at Trudy. “You’ve worn it for five years, at least. How can you not know what it’s called?”
“Well,” replied Trudy, “my wife used to buy it for me, half-dozen tubes at a time, and mail order. Nobody could beat Rochelle when it came to color-coordination. I wouldn’t think of leaving the house until she had looked me over. Well, when Rochelle knew she was about to—pass over—she ordered two dozen for me. She asked if I wanted her to order more, but I said no, that by the time that I had used them up, I’d be dead of grief. I’ve run out now, or almost—I’m saving the last tube for whoever does my face for the coffin. I’d order more myself, but the dog went wild after Rochelle—kicked off—and ate all the order blanks.” Trudy smiled sadly.
“You must miss Rochelle.”
“Next year would have been our fortieth anniversary—that’s rubies. We were planning on identical outfits. Rochelle was the best seamstress I ever met. We wore the same size, a perennial ten, both of us. And there couldn’t be anything more convenient than that. Life is a drag without Rochelle…” She took a deep breath and straightened herself. “Well,” she said bravely, “it’s not New Year’s anymore. Let me borrow your lipstick, doll.”
Clarisse handed her the tube, and Trudy applied it with abandon. “Death,” she said, staring at her mouth in the mirror, “is a bad trip to lay on somebody you love.”
“Yes,” said Clarisse vaguely, rummaging in her envelope, “like that poor little hustler in the bushes.”
“Yes,” said Trudy, after a two-beat pause, “he had everything against him. Bad skin, thin shoes—”
“And somebody who wanted him dead.”
“Nobody wanted him dead. He had just turned nineteen. Just a little boy…”
“In his trade,” said Clarisse, “nineteen was hardly a spring chicken. More like a roaster. Did you know him?”
Trudy looked at Clarisse briefly in the mirror. She recapped the lipstick, and handed it back. “Of course not. What kind of people do you think I hang out with? A working grandmother doesn’t have time to hang around with little boys who sell their bodies for profit.”
Clarisse shrugged. “You talked about him as if you knew him, as if you were sorry he was dead.”
Discomfort crossed Trudy’s face. She grabbed at the waist of her skirt and pulled it up. “Of course I’m sorry he’s dead. The dead die young, and all that. God, my panty hose are driving me crazy!” She turned violently and wiggled her hips. “Don’t ever think you’re saving money by buying cheap panty hose. The elastic always breaks at just the wrong time. Did I ever tell you about my Waterloo with panty hose?”
“Ah…no you didn’t, Trudy.”
“Well,” she sighed. She released her skirt, smoothed it neatly over her curving hips. She pushed Clarisse out the door and followed her into the Wicker Room. “It was in Provincetown, about three years ago—”
Trudy crossed and sat at the piano. The three empty glasses had been removed and another drink had been placed on a cocktail napkin beside her music stand. She sipped at it. “—and I went to see Martin Drake, who does the best Joan Crawford act you ever saw in your life. We were old friends, and he had gotten me a ringside seat. I was wearing my tuxedo dress outfit—very chic that summer. So Martin finished re-creating the first dressing room scene in All About Eve—his Thelma Ritter is flawless—and he makes ’em put the spotlight on me, and introduces me as having the best set of legs in Provincetown…” Trudy turned on the piano bench, and crossed her legs at the knee, displaying them to Clarisse. “Well, all the boys—and half of ’em I didn’t even know—started chanting ‘Trud
y, Trudy, Trudy’ and Martin begged me to come up with him. So two waiters lifted me up on the stage, and the boys all cried out, ‘Show us your gams, Trudy! Show us your gams!’ So I played the band to beat Miss Grable, and hiked up my skirt—” She swallowed half her drink.
“And?” coaxed Clarisse.
“—Not a whisper in the house. They were stunned, and I thought, ‘My legs aren’t that good.’ Then they started to laugh. I raised my skirt higher. Martin picked up the mike and said ‘Put your skirt down, Trudy, your twosies are hanging out.’ God, they still talk about it on Commercial Street. I won’t go down there anymore. Last June I was there and some little boy leaned out of a car and shouted, ‘Show us your twosies, Trudy!’ Always buy the best,” concluded Trudy sententiously.
“Well,” said. Clarisse, “it must have been embarrassing, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s likely to happen to me.”
“I suppose not,” said Trudy, and turned with a small smile to the piano.
Clarisse realized how long she had neglected Valentine, and turned back to the bar. She saw him leaning forward, in close conversation with Jack; but a couple of feet behind his back was an enormous package, done up in bright red foil paper and wide gold ribbon tied in a grotesquely large bow. It was held by a well-built man with black hair and a full black moustache. The man wore a heavy black leather jacket, new-pressed jeans, and heavy mud-stained work boots. The hands holding the package were strong and wide, with thick dark hair across the backs. All his strong fine features were smiling.
“What’s that?” whispered Trudy.
“Oh, God!” mumbled Clarisse, and moved away from Trudy without answering.
Jack had stopped listening to Valentine and was staring over his shoulder. Valentine turned about on the stool.
“Happy birthday!” cried the man holding the package.
“Mark!” exclaimed Valentine.
Clarisse stood between the men smiling pleasantly. “Hello, Mark,” she said, “we’re so glad you made it.”
Vermilion Page 8
