Canary (10 page)

Clarisse closed her eyes, shook her head, and then opened them again. The Captain swept past with the condom wobbling behind, valiantly trying to keep his footing on the slope. “Guess what we're going to see on the television news reports tonight,” Clarisse said as she watched the departing couple. “Guess whose picture is going to be on the front page of the
Herald
tomorrow morning.”

“Not those two you won't. The reading and viewing audiences of the greater Boston area are definitely not ready to look at a living, breathing prophylactic over their morning coffee. I've been watching them, and even the photographers from the gay papers are bending backward not to get them in frame.” Valentine glanced at his watch. “We promised Niobe we'd be back at the bar by five, and we have to get the keys to the truck back to Sean.”

“Didn't he come to the parade?” asked Clarisse as she stood up.

“I called him while you were sleeping. He said he was still working on his tapes.”

They made their way down the knoll through the mass of people, crossed Charles Street, and ambled into the Public Garden. On the bridge spanning the duck pond they leaned against the railing for a few moments. Small groups of people reclined on the grass about the perimeter of the pond and beneath the thriving willows and dying elms. Tourists milled in protective groups along the pathways among the vibrantly colored flowerbeds. The elegant swan boats glided lazily about the circumference of the pond. The noise from the rally on the nearby Common was surprisingly muted and vague.

They strolled on, out of the Garden and down the tree-lined mall bisecting Commonwealth Avenue, until they reached an apartment building at the corner of Exeter Street. They went up the stoop. Clarisse pressed the buzzer beneath the mailbox with Sean Alexander's name taped to it. They waited but got no reply. Valentine hit the button again, holding it for a long moment. Again they got no response.

“He's probably got the music cranked way up,” Valentine said discontentedly. “And he said he had to have the key by six.”

“Leave this one to me,” said Clarisse, lightly nudging him aside.

She pushed the button at the end for a top-floor apartment. Receiving no reply, she immediately pressed the next button in line.

A scratchy voice came through the intercom speaker. “Yeah?”

“Sorry,” Clarisse said into the speaker. “I pushed the wrong button. Sorry.”

“Lovelace, what are you doing?”

Clarisse pressed a button for an apartment on the third floor. This time no voice came over the speaker, but the main door buzzed as the latch was released. Smiling triumphantly, Clarisse turned the knob and pushed open the door. “It never fails. There's always one tenant in every building willing to buzz anybody in, sight unseen. It's why there are so many rapes, robberies, and murders in these places.”

They crossed the small foyer and went up the wide carpeted steps to the second landing. Sean's apartment was at the back of the building. As they approached his door, they glanced at one another. Quiet music was playing inside. They could even hear that Sean was whistling along with the melody. Valentine knocked on the door. They heard footsteps inside, but no one came to the door. Valentine knocked again and called out, “Sean!” Inside the apartment the telephone rang. Sean answered it, and they heard his voice and after a moment his laughter. Clarisse rapped her knuckles on the door. “Sean?” she called out.

Inside, Sean continued to talk on the telephone.

“I don't get it,” Clarisse said to Valentine. “I know he hears us.”

“Maybe he doesn't answer for anybody who doesn't call first.” Valentine took the truck keys out of his pocket. “What do I do about these?”

“Give them to me,” said Sean, coming up the stairs of the building with a bag of groceries.

Clarisse and Valentine turned around quickly. She glanced at the apartment door and then back to Sean. Clarisse's features were streaked with questions.

“My guard dog,” Sean offered with a grin.

Valentine was about to ask Sean to explain. Then he and Clarisse saw that Sean wasn't alone. A tall man wearing a Boston Gas Company uniform was coming up the stairs directly behind him. The man was broadly built, with severely short dark hair and a dark trimmed mustache. His uniform overalls were unzipped nearly to his navel, displaying thick hair curling on his chest.

“How you been, Daniel?” said the gas man.

“Hello, Bander,” Valentine answered coolly.

“Bander,” Sean said, “this is Clarisse.”

“Hello,” Clarisse replied politely.

“I ran into Bander over at DeLuca's,” Sean explained, pushing his apartment key into the lock and turning it.

“We dropped by to give you the Toyota keys,” Valentine said. “It's parked on Charles by the Common.”

Sean motioned for them to come inside. “How'd it go today?”

“We'll tell you all about it later,” Valentine said hesitantly. “Niobe's holding down the fort alone. As soon as the rally starts to break up, half the South End'll head over to Slate. I hate to strand her.”

“Oh, come on, Val. Just for a few minutes,” Clarisse said. “Besides, I've never seen Sean's apartment.”

Valentine said nothing, but his silence was clearly a reluctant acquiescence.

“My guard dog,” Sean said again once all four of them were inside. The sound of his voice talking on the telephone was on tape, playing through two speakers.

He crossed the room and snapped off the taped conversation. He leaned to another tape machine and turned it on so that music filled the room.

“I recorded a typical evening at home. Whenever I leave the apartment, I play it back. Sounds just like somebody's in here. I can't afford a real security system, but this seems to work—I've never been broken into.”

“Very clever,” Clarisse said, genuinely impressed. She looked about the room.

Sean went down the connecting hallway and disappeared into the kitchen.

The apartment was a spacious one bedroom, with high ceilings and polished bare oak floors. The walls of the living room were nearly concealed by recording equipment—various sizes and makes of tape decks, amplifiers, and speakers. Several sets of headphones were lined up neatly on a counter, next to several piles of audiophile magazines. Wires and cords ran all around the room, at baseboard and at nearly ceiling level, as well. The only furniture was an overstuffed oatmeal-colored sofa and two comfortable-looking wingback chairs grouped about a massive glass coffee table. In one corner of the room was a large video receiver, three videocassette recorders, and four high stacks of cassette tapes on a small table beside it. In one of the barred windows overlooking the back alley hung a withered and dust-covered spider plant.

As soon as Sean was out of the room, the gas man made himself at home. Before he dropped into one of the wingback armchairs, he turned the music up louder. “Anybody want to share a joint?” he asked, pulling one out of his pocket.

“No, thank you,” Clarisse said amiably.

Valentine simply shook his head
no
without looking at the man. He was studying the titles on the videocassette tapes. After a moment he walked over and turned down the volume of the music.

“Long time no see, Daniel,” said Bander, lighting the joint.

Valentine looked around at the man but remained silent. Clarisse watched both men with growing curiosity.

Sean came in, bringing with him a tray bearing four glasses of iced lemonade.

“Many thanks,” said Clarisse, taking a glass before she seated herself on the couch. “It looks to me as if you could open your own recording studio right here in this apartment.”

“That's exactly what I plan to do within the next year if I can swing it, but not here, of course.”

Valentine, with a little groan, sank onto the end of the sofa opposite Clarisse. “Does this mean I'm going to have to search for another bartender?”

“No.” Sean handed Valentine a glass of the lemonade. “I like working at Slate. I wouldn't want to give that up. Not unless Warner Records comes after me with a multimillion-dollar contract for my services.”

Clarisse watched the gas-company repairman as Valentine and Sean talked. The man seemed at ease, though he didn't make the least effort to join in the conversation. He drank off the lemonade in one long swallow and returned to his joint. He kept time to the music with one bobbing foot thrown over the arm of the chair. Bander turned suddenly and caught Clarisse off guard, evaluating him. “Is this talent show your bar's sponsoring tonight going to be another tired drag show or what?” he asked. “I hate tacky queens who get done up in gold lamé and cheap wigs and lip-sync ‘I Am What I Am' for the two hundred zillionth time. It makes me want to—how do you say?—puke.”

“Then don't come,” snapped Valentine.

“Last time I went to a talent show,” Bander went on, “it was emceed by this big fat drag queen wearing earrings made out of VISA credit cards and a red-glittered toilet seat for a necklace. You getting something like that to emcee your show? Some fat tacky drag queen who wears earrings made out of credit cards?”

“I am emceeing the show tonight,” Clarisse replied coldly, “and I will not be wearing credit cards or a toilet seat.”

Bander shrugged, unperturbed. He looked at Valentine. “You think you'll draw a crowd tonight? Lots of talk about your bar around town. Lots of people not going there anymore.”

“What talk?” Sean asked.

“You know. People saying you ought to rename the place ‘The Terminal Bar.' Have a new advertising slogan—‘Drop In/Drop Dead.' Start selling T-shirts with ‘I Tricked Out of Slate and Lived' printed on 'em.”

“Our business,” Clarisse said tightly, “is fine.”

Bander grinned, one eyebrow arched. “So gay men like to live dangerously. So what's new?”

“Anybody for some more lemonade?” Sean offered suddenly.

“No,” Valentine said. “We have to leave.”

“My condolences to your customers,” Bander said.

Sean walked Valentine and Clarisse to the door and stepped out into the hall with them. “I don't know what all that was about in there, but I'm sorry. But, well, I like Bander.”

“It's all right, Sean,” Valentine said. “Bander and I go back a few years—that's all. Thanks for the lemonade.”

“See you at eight,” Clarisse added with a parting smile.

Once on Commonwealth Avenue again, Clarisse asked Valentine, “What's the story?”

“Bander and I go back a long way,” Valentine repeated ruefully. “In fact, Bander goes back a long way with most of the gay men in Boston.”

“Does he really work for Boston Gas, or was that uniform just a costume?”

“You know that old fantasy about making it with the man who comes to repair something?” Valentine said. “Well, for several thousand men in Boston, Bander has made that a fantasy come true.”

“Is that how you met him?”

Valentine nodded.

“So why are you on such bad terms now—other than the fact that he's one's of the most unpleasant people on the East Coast?”

“A few years ago Bander went home with a friend of mine named Gary. Gary was into mild bondage and discipline.”

“Mild bondage?” Clarisse asked skeptically. “Is that like getting tied up with rubber bands?”

“Just about. He liked to be tied up, but he always made sure he could get out of it in two seconds flat. He also liked to get slapped around, but no marks. It was just fantasy for him. Anyway, he went home with Bander once. They did some sort of drugs, and Gary ended up tied to the kitchen table with a black eye, a broken front tooth, and two cracked ribs. His landlady found him like that the next day.”

“What did Gary do? Did he press charges?”

“No. But one night he did confront Bander in the Ramrod. Bander just said, ‘Hey, man, that's what you said you were into. And when you kept saying, “No, no, stop,” I figured that was just part of the scene.'”

“That's a pretty rotten attitude,” Clarisse said quietly.

“That's Bander all over,” Valentine said.

They turned up Berkeley Street in the direction of the South End and walked on in silence.

A
LTHOUGH VARIOUS POLITICAL
organizations were sponsoring events on the evening of Gay Pride Day, it was the talent show mounted by Slate that attracted the largest crowd of the evening. The $350 prize for the night's best act, to be determined by audience applause, had proved to be a wise crowd-drawing strategy on Valentine's part.

In the back area of the bar a small dais had been constructed before a red velvet curtain across the back wall. Behind this were concealed doors to the small kitchen and the ladies' room, both areas being used as changing rooms for the various performers. Sean had persuaded two friends who were theatrical lighting technicians to donate their talents and equipment for the evening. A small portable stereo unit was set up to one side of the staging to accommodate those performers who'd brought their own music on records and cassette tapes. A woman friend of Niobe's, who went by the name Regular Ethel, was stationed by the machine to make sure the right recordings were played at the right times. She was a sharp-featured young woman who wore a red sequined strapless minidress, black hose, and black heels. Her black hair formed a helmet about her head. She chewed gum and cracked it to irritating effect.