Slate

by Nathan Aldyne

  As they passed, Sweeney sing-songed, “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think…”

  “Horticulture?” echoed Julia. “I’ll horticulture you, Sweeney Drysdale, you white-meat turkey.”

  As Sweeney let the door swing shut on the two women, he was suddenly knocked off-balance as Clarisse elbowed him aside, heading toward Valentine who was now standing on the other side of the front door.

  “Have you seen this?” she demanded of Valentine, slapping her hand against a folded tabloid newspaper she was holding. “Look what some jerk said about Slate. I can’t believe it.” She thrust the copy of the BAR into Valentine’s hands, and immediately took it back. She looked at Sweeney. “I’m outraged,” she said to him, in lieu of formal introduction. “I just can’t believe anyone would do this.”

  “What does it say?” Sweeney asked with feigned curiosity.

  “Clarisse,” said Valentine, indicating Sweeney, “this is—”

  “What does the paper say?” Sweeney interrupted swiftly.

  “‘Dry Dishes,’” read Clarisse, gripping the paper in one hand and with her other placed defiantly on her hip. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean.” She took a deep breath and continued: “‘The new South End bar, Slated to open on New Year’s Eve, is being managed by an unemployed social worker and a sadistic drug addict, a perfect combination, I suppose. Will this mean confessionals in the corners? A dungeon in the cellar?… Mr. V may be a visual treasure behind somebody else’s bar, shirt slit open to the navel for the panting crowd, but what will he manage to accomplish on his own? He promises me that Slate will be like no other bar in the city— cruisy and comfortable and check your attitude at the door, please—but if my other sources are correct, that is a promise to rank with Your check is in the mail and I promise I’ll pull out…’ This is despicable.” Clarisse lowered the paper and addressed Valentine and Sweeney heatedly. “Not to mention overwritten. Val, this is the same man who wrote that you were in the hospital for a nervous breakdown, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Sweeney, “it certainly is. Well, time to circulate. You have a marvelous reading voice,” he said to Clarisse as he moved off into the crowd.

  “Who was that?” Clarisse asked, looking after Sweeney. “Have I met him?”

  “You want another drink first?”

  Clarisse eyed Valentine suspiciously.

  “That was Sweeney Drysdale II himself. You just read his column out loud to him.”

  Clarisse’s eyes widened with surprise and then swiftly narrowed as she wadded up the newspaper. “Get me that drink,” she said. “And a harpoon.”

  “Sweeney is not worth the harpoon,” said Valentine with a shrug. “Most people don’t know who the hell he’s writing about anyway. Come New Year’s Eve, they’re going to be lined up outside no matter what he writes.”

  “He makes me ill,” said Clarisse. “In fact, he’s just given me a headache. I’m going home for a little quiet.”

  “Good luck,” said Valentine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure how long Julia and Susie’s truce is going to hold up.”

  “They’re fighting? About what?”

  “Same old thing. Julia resents the fact that Susie gets to stay home most of the day while she goes out and does manual labor.”

  Clarisse considered this a moment. “Swimming pool repair and prostitution both have their disadvantages as professions.” She shook her head and went off to retrieve her law book from the back room.

  There she found, to her surprise, Sweeney Drysdale II whispering into Mr. Fred’s ear. Mr. Fred was laughing. Miss America was not laughing. “Come on, Fred,” Miss America was saying, “our guests, our guests…”

  As soon as he saw Clarisse, Mr. Fred’s grin faded and he looked embarrassed. Clarisse knew what Sweeney had been whispering in Mr. Fred’s ear. Mr. Fred said, “Clarisse, this is—”

  Clarisse ignored the beginning of this introduction and said, “America, thank you for a wonderful party. Mr. Fred, you’re the perfect host.” Turning, her eyes grazed across Sweeney whose hand was uselessly extended. “Goodbye,” she said, with a parting smile over her shoulder for Mr. Fred and his sister.

  Chapter Six

  CLARISSE’S STUDY WASN’T A large room. The shelves on three walls and above the door made it seem even smaller, but she called it cozy. Her desk and chair faced away from the single window. The floor was thickly carpeted, and the door, covered in cork, served as a bulletin board. When the door was closed Clarisse couldn’t even hear a telephone ring in the next room; the study was her sanctum.

  Half an hour after she had left Mr. Fred’s party, she sat with her elbows resting on the edge of the desk, poring over an open notebook.

  A few minutes later she went into her bedroom and took down a brilliant red football sweater from the top of the closet. It had belonged to Valentine’s father, but the Boston College letter had been removed and lost years before Valentine had given it to her. Clarisse shoved her hands into the pockets and wandered into the kitchen, wondering if a small shot of whiskey wouldn’t calm her so that she could concentrate. While trying to decide whether to pour the whiskey or not, she fished a stale cigarette from one of the packs she’d secreted at the back of her utensil drawer.

  She was about to touch the flame of a match to the tip of her cigarette when she flinched violently and very nearly seared her nose. The whole apartment seemed to reverberate with the sound of squealing tires, crunching metal, and shattering glass. She flung the match into the sink and darted to the window. The sparse traffic below moved slowly and without a hitch.

  Then there was another crash, and Clarisse realized that the noise was coming from the apartment below. More sounds of skidding tires and breaking glass surged up through the floor.

  Clarisse angrily threw the still unlighted cigarette back into the drawer and stalked through her apartment out to the hall, where the noise was even more deafening. She clattered down the stairs to the third floor and repeatedly banged the palm of her hand against the door to Susie and Julia’s apartment. The door was finally jerked open by Susie who had changed into a skintight tennis outfit, hose and heels. In one hand, she held a television remote control device. “What?” she screamed over the noise of the television.

  Clarisse seized the control from Susie’s hand and stabbed her finger down hard on the off button. There was sudden, palpable silence.

  “Hey, goddamn it!” shrieked Julia from within.

  “Clarisse, what’re you doing?” Susie demanded. “That was our favorite ‘Demo Derby.’ That was the Akron Marathon!”

  “Kill her!” shrieked Julia from within.

  “I’m trying to study!” Clarisse shouted back.

  Susie was suddenly jerked aside and the door slammed in Clarisse’s face.

  Clarisse ran back up to her apartment. By the time she got to her bedroom, the Akron Marathon had been replaced— and more than matched—by the voices of Susie and Julia. Clarisse tossed the sweater on her unmade bed, slipped into some walking shoes, and took her fur coat from the closet. She checked herself in the vanity mirror and pulled on her fur hat. She applied a quick coat of lipstick, picked up her text and a notebook from her desk, and swept through the living room. Just as she was going out the door, the telephone rang. She closed the door and locked it and started down the stairs.

  Curiosity got the best of her, and she ran back up the stairs, frantically unlocked the door, and dashed for the telephone.

  “Can you come downstairs for a few minutes?” asked Valentine. “I’m in the office.”

  “Is this important?” demanded Clarisse. “I mean, is this really important?”

  “Clarisse,” said Valentine earnestly, “your coming down here will virtually ensure total nuclear disarmament.”

  When Clarisse entered the office, she found Valentine sitting on the edge of his desk facing away from the door and toward the one-way mirror. Ashes and Linc
flanked him. Laid out on the desk were more than two dozen samples of tile in various shapes, materials, and colors.

  “I’m leaning toward a gray floor with a white border,” Valentine said to Clarisse.

  Linc folded his arms. “I still say this burgundy quarry tile would highlight the walls.”

  “Black,” Ashes maintained. “The whole floor should be black.”

  Clarisse shifted her books from one arm to the other.

  “Well,” said Valentine, “what do you think, Clarisse?”

  “I think that it’s almost ten o’clock, and the law library closes at midnight. That’s what I think.”

  “Come on, Lovelace, we’re serious. This is an important decision.”

  Clarisse stood very still, and said, “The gray.”

  The three men glanced down at the tiles.

  “All over?” asked Valentine. “No border?”

  “White border,” said Clarisse.

  “I don’t know,” said Ashes. “I have this gut feeling about black.”

  “Black would be perfect,” said Clarisse, glancing through the one-way mirror. The lights in the bar were on, casting pools of garish white light here and there amid the construction. Joe wandered about, looking the place over.

  “The burgundy’s awfully nice,” Linc mused.

  Clarisse brushed a wave of hair off her forehead. “Burgundy would be spectacular.”

  “You’re not even looking at them, Clarisse,” said Valentine.

  “Use all of them,” Clarisse said flatly. “Go for a confetti effect. It’s ten o’clock. In exactly twelve hours I’m taking an exam with the toughest professor at Portia. My entire life is on the line, and you want me to play pick-a-tile?” She turned on her heel, and said huffily, “I’m going to the library.”

  Clarisse swept out of the office, banging the door in her wake.

  Forty-five minutes later Clarisse was seated disconsolately in a dim corner of the library of the Portia School of Law. She stared blankly out the plate glass window at the only twenty-five feet of Mt. Vernon Street that wasn’t faultlessly picturesque. She had shut her law text and made a neat pile of the several fat volumes she’d dragged out of the stacks. She checked her watch—the library would close in just about an hour—then glanced out the window again. There was Valentine, staring in at her. His black toque was pulled down over his ears. His leather jacket was unzipped, and a red woolen scarf was draped about his neck. He motioned for her to come outside.

  She gathered her things and went out to the sidewalk.

  “How about a drink and a reconciliation?”

  Clarisse smiled warmly as Valentine helped her on with her coat. “I thought you and Linc were going dancing.”

  “Priorities,” said Valentine shortly. “I sent him home.”

  “I want to get pie-eyed,” said Clarisse.

  Valentine raised an eyebrow. “What about your exam?”

  Clarisse shrugged. “What I really need is a night off. That’s what will do me the most good tomorrow morning.”

  They walked to Buddies, a bar on Boylston Street near Copley Square, where they alternately danced and downed Black Russians until the lights were brought up at two o’clock. Clarisse, feigning a torn ligament in her right leg, dragged herself in a grotesque limp from the door of the bar to the front of the line waiting for taxis at the curb and commandeered the next cab that swung by. When they had tumbled into the back seat of the taxi, Clarisse hiccupped, looked at Valentine, and whispered, “Oh, God. I feel a confession coming on.”

  “I can take it,” said Valentine, reeling slightly against the door.

  Clarisse looked at him soulfully, with a frown of anguish. “I haven’t given up cigarettes,” she blurted. “I know I promised, but I can’t do it. I smoke every chance I get. Out on the fire escape, out the bathroom window. I go into McDonald’s and order a Diet Pepsi just so I can sit there and smoke. I walk to class so I can smoke on the way. For lunch, I have a peach yogurt and seven cigarettes. Oh, Val, I feel guilty every time I light a match!” In one swallow, she finished off the drink that Valentine had smuggled out of the bar beneath his jacket.

  Valentine stared out the window and then back at Clarisse. He stifled a hiccup.

  “You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?” said Clarisse, despairingly.

  Valentine looked out of the window again and said quietly, “While you were leaning out the bathroom window, I was hiding in the cellar…”

  “Smoking?” Clarisse shrieked. “You can’t smoke. You’ll die! You’ll get pneumonia again! Where are your cigarettes?” she demanded.

  He guiltily reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a package of unfiltered Camels.

  She snatched them from him, said “Ugh!” and flung them out the window. “If I had brought any with me, I’d throw them out too. I promise, I’ll stop right now, for good”

  The taxi pulled up before the building on Warren Avenue. Valentine paid the driver and helped Clarisse out. She would have forgotten her law text and notebook had he not retrieved them for her.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned as Valentine fumbled with his keys. “It’s two-thirty in the morning, and I’m dead drunk.” She turned around, facing the street, and fell back against the brick wall. “I’m a disgrace to my intended profession. Why don’t you just leave me out here in the gutter? That’s where I’m going to end up. In Girl Scouts, they taught us how to make a mattress out of old newspapers. I’ll be fine.”

  Valentine got the proper keys into the proper locks and pushed open the door.

  “You need a little sleep, that’s all. I’ll make you some hot milk—”

  “I’ll throw up.”

  Valentine led her up the stairs. As they passed the two doors on the third-floor landing, Clarisse arched her head and screwed up her face, as if listening intently. “I guess Susie and Julia made up. All’s quiet.”

  On the top floor, Valentine turned Clarisse’s key in the lock, but it wouldn’t move. He tried again and then realized that the door was already unlocked. He pushed the door open, sighed, and shook his head. “You’ve got to be more careful, Lovelace.”

  She shook her head. “I am careful,” she said. “I always lock my door.” Then she shrugged, as if it were not worth the trouble of arguing the point.

  They went into the apartment.

  “See?” she said, throwing her fur coat over the back of a chair. “No bur-gu-lars. I don’t have any milk,” she added. “I hate milk. Make me a drink.”

  “Why not?” said Valentine, going into the kitchen.

  Clarisse stumbled toward her bedroom. She first kicked one shoe into the room and then the other. Then she went in.

  Valentine poured two snifters of brandy and held them in his hands to warm. He went back to the living room. In a few moments, Clarisse came out of the bedroom.

  In a low, weary, and surprisingly steady voice, she announced, “It is now a quarter to three in the morning. In the next seven hours, I have to go to sleep, get up, make breakfast, wash my hair, put on my makeup, pick out a suitable outfit, and get halfway across town.”

  There was something in her voice that made Valentine say, “And…?”

  “And,” said Clarisse significantly, “there’s a strange man in my bed.”

  Valentine stared at her.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s dead,” she added. “I wish you’d go check.”

  Valentine swallowed the brandy from both snifters, carefully put down the glasses, and then rushed past Clarisse into her bedroom.

  The room was dimly lighted by the streetlamp in front of the building. On Clarisse’s bed, with the covers turned down beneath him, lay a fully clothed man. Valentine stepped to the edge of the bed. In the man’s left temple was a fairly clean hole nearly the size of a quarter. Dark blood crusted on the pulpy rim of the opening and trailed down the side of the face to a small, coagulated pool in a fold of the pillow. Valentine touched his fingers to the man’s wrist but j
erked instinctively away from the cold flesh. He went out of the room, avoiding looking at the corpse’s swollen, purple face.

  “Well?” Clarisse prompted.

  “You were wrong.”

  “He’s not dead?” Clarisse said with animated relief. “Well, let’s call an ambulance. Maybe—”

  “He’s dead all right,” said Valentine quickly. “But he’s not a stranger. That’s Sweeney Drysdale II.”

  Clarisse took a moment to digest this and then hiccupped. “Oh, damn,” she breathed.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Seven

  IT WAS NEARLY NOON on Saturday. Thirty-two hours had passed since Clarisse and Valentine had discovered the corpse of Sweeney Drysdale II. Clarisse felt as if she had aged a month for every one of those hours. Not only had she dealt with the police all the rest of Thursday night, she had gone directly from District D station to her exam at Portia. She had been so flustered with the discovery of the corpse in her bed that she filled five blue books in three-quarters of an hour, and wondered, at the end, what she had written. When she looked back over it, however, the analysis of the case the professor had presented looked pretty good. She made a few minor changes, then handed the blue books in, well satisfied. She returned to Warren Avenue for another bout of questions from the detectives across the street. On Friday afternoon, she was able to nap for a few hours on Valentine’s bed. The police had taken over her own apartment. That was just as well, since she had no stomach for going back there yet. She hadn’t liked Sweeney Drysdale II. Nobody else had either, apparently. Still, it wasn’t pleasant to find even an enemy sprawled across your bed, cold and lifeless.

  She now stood at the door of Valentine’s apartment, her knuckles raised to rap on the wood. For a few moments, however, she remained still, her head cocked toward Susie and Julia’s place across the hall. Beneath the noise of what sounded like a hockey game, she detected the voices of the two women raised in argument. Unable to gauge the severity of the fight, she shrugged, then knocked several times quickly and lightly on Valentine’s door. She turned the knob as he called out to her to come inside.