Slate (15 page)

Clarisse's midterm grades were posted on the bulletin board in the dim hallway of the third floor of the main building at Portia Law. She discovered that she was fifth in one of the courses—the one she liked least—second in another, and first in the two courses that were judged the hardest of the first-year program at the school. Her grin of astonishment and delight faded a little when she turned and found two classmates glaring at her with ill-disguised envy.

She went downstairs to the student lounge and sat for a few minutes with a cup of coffee; she wanted to savor her victory alone before she went off to the PUMA fund-raiser. Several prominent professors at Portia were well-known supporters of the prostitutes' union. She wondered if they'd be there tonight and if she could somehow drop it into the conversation that she had been first in the class in both Civil Procedure and Torts.

The pay telephones in the student union were both occupied so she could not call a taxi. She decided to walk down to Beacon Street, where she'd be sure to find a cab.

She took her umbrella and headed back out into the rain. On the short distance down to Beacon Street, she lost her footing for a moment on a cobblestone driveway. The umbrella wobbled unsteadily, and rain splashed into her eyes. Clarisse swore under her breath and carefully daubed her face dry with a handkerchief. As she went on a few steps, she realized that she'd either lost or slipped her right contact lens. She tried to keep her mind on her grades and how happy she really was as she made her miserable way over the slippery sidewalks down the steepest side of Beacon Hill. At the corner of Joy and Beacon streets, through the welter of rain, she hailed the first cab that came by. It didn't stop. Two others ignored her frantic signaling. Finally a taxi detached itself from the stream of traffic and smoothly pulled up beside her. She couldn't read the company name until she had her hand upon the door, and by then it was too late. She climbed into the back of Saturn Four.

All the windows of the taxi were heavily fogged, possibly because of the patchouli incense burning in a little brass container nestled on the opened door of the glove compartment. “Where to?” said the driver. He had a long, equine face that he turned to her briefly. His hair was dark, greasy, and longer than Clarisse's. A young woman sat in the front seat beside him. Her hair was dark and greasy and longer than the driver's. She was doing something that made a peculiar noise, which Clarisse realized after a moment was the shuffling of a pack of cards.

“Where to?” the driver repeated patiently.

“Where to?” said his girlfriend, without looking around. She began dealing the cards on the seat beside her.

Clarisse sighed and fished the address out of her pocket. She tried to read what Susie had scrawled on it, but with her lens missing, the address was only a blur, and when she closed the bad eye she could not read it because of the fitful shadows cast by the streaming rain on the windows. She thrust it through the tray in the bulletproof divider and said, “Take me here, please.”

The driver's girlfriend handed the address to the driver, and he briefly switched on the overhead light. The interior atmosphere of the cab seemed to swirl with the incense.

The driver peered at the address and, without a word, swerved suddenly back into the line of traffic. At that moment, he flicked a switch and the speakers directly behind Clarisse roared into life, playing Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at full volume.

“Turn it down!” Clarisse screamed, actually hoping the driver would turn it off altogether. He turned it down.

Clarisse settled back into the seat. It was covered in matted fake fur and it smelled of all the rain-soaked passengers who had climbed into the cab. She took a silver compact from an inside pocket and flipped it open. Relying on the illumination of flickering headlights and streetlamps, she held her eye wide apart and revolved her eyeball in search of the lens.

Just when, at last, the reflection of the slipped lens appeared in the mirror, the cab suddenly swerved around a tight corner, and Clarisse was thrown sideways in the seat. She began all over again, and in another few minutes she succeeded in getting the elusive lens back into place. She blinked rapidly, held her eyes shut for a few moments, then opened them again. Focused sight returned. She put away her compact, sighed, and sat back.

In the front seat the driver suddenly exclaimed, “Gin!” His girlfriend gathered up the cards and began shuffling again.

“Christ!” breathed Clarisse. She took a tissue from her coat pocket, wiped some of the moisture from a side window, and peered out. They were going up a vast ramp she didn't recognize, passing a massive, unfamiliar building. She lowered the opposite window a little and peered out. The cab took a slow curve, and suddenly all of Boston was spread out behind them.

She said nothing for a few moments. They seemed to be on some sort of major highway headed out of the city. She leaned forward and peered up at a sign stretched across the five-lane expressway.

93 NORTH NEW HAMPSHIRE MONTREAL

She didn't know whether to blame Susie Whitebread or the driver. She dismally reflected that her ration of autumnal good fortune may have been crowded into those grades on the Portia bulletin board.

She leaned forward, and screaming only a little louder than Jimi Hendrix, demanded, “Where the hell are you taking me?”

“Where you said,” replied the driver, awkwardly trying to arrange the new gin hand he had just been dealt.

Clarisse sat back and gave herself up to fate.

Eventually the taxi turned onto an exit ramp and Clarisse began to catch glimpses of a few storefronts. Only one was lighted. Half a mile farther, the taxi halted. The fare was a little more than seventeen dollars. Clarisse stuffed a twenty into the slot and quickly got out of the cab. It took off immediately, before Clarisse realized that she didn't know where she was or the name or the number of the place she was looking for. She raised her umbrella and looked around. She had been let off in the parking lot of a discount drugstore. She could see a church up the street a little; behind her, up on a hill, were some old Victorian houses. There was no human being in sight. One car passed, spraying fans of water to either side.

Directly across the street, down which a torrent of water flowed unchecked, was a vast stone building, with only a couple of its large windows lighted. A single yellow bulb dimly outlined a recessed doorway. Above the doorway, carved into a rectangle of gray stone set into the bricks, were the words
Medford Armory
.

A rain-drenched banner hung over the doorway, but Clarisse couldn't quite make out what it said. She crossed the street, and her heart sank as the letters began to resolve themselves. The sign read:

EIGHT O'CLOCK ALL FEMALE TAG-TEAM WRESTLING VERMICELLI TWINS VS. THE HARLEM HELLCATS

C
LARISSE CLOSED THE umbrella as she tried to peer through the small, square panes of glass set in the wooden doors of the Armory. The glass was fogged, and she could discern nothing.

Taking a deep breath, she tried one of the doors. It opened, and she went inside. The foyer was a vast square space of marble and dark wood, lighted by a single gooseneck lamp on a little rickety table at the far side. The light palely illumined the face of a sullen-looking young woman in a rabbit-fur jacket who was counting money in a small black strongbox. Clarisse slowly and carefully made her way across the foyer of the Armory, unthinkingly slinging the rainwater of the umbrella to the right and to the left in the rhythm of her steps.

“You're late,” said the woman at the table accusingly, as she shaded her eyes and peered into the darkness. “Annie Hindle just
stomped
on Bertha the Baltic Beauty.”

“Is this the PUMA fund-raiser?” asked Clarisse tentatively, an uncertain voice in the vast darkness.

“Don't say that!” hissed the woman at the door. “Nobody here is supposed to know!”

Clarisse reached the desk. “It's a
secret
fund-raiser?” she inquired, again with a sinking feeling.

The woman on the desk nodded. “Didn't your invitation say KISS at the bottom?”

“Yes,” said Clarisse vaguely, “I guess it did. What does KISS stand for?”

“Keep It Secret Sister,” the PUMA representative said in exasperation at Clarisse's ignorance.

Clarisse handed over a twenty-dollar bill, signifying that she didn't want any change. “Just a receipt, in case I'm lucky enough to have to pay taxes this year,” she sighed.

“All the good seats are gone,” said the doorkeeper, as if she was glad that Clarisse was to be punished for her tardiness.

“It's all right,” said Clarisse, “I brought my opera glasses. Just point me the way.”

The woman motioned Clarisse around the desk and, with her foot, kicked open a set of swinging doors. There was a deeply shadowed passage beyond, but Clarisse heard crowd noises for the first time.

“Just go straight,” said the doorkeeper. Clarisse pushed through the swinging doors and followed the increasing sound of the crowd. Eventually, she came to a wall at right angles to the passage. Turning the corner, she saw a black door outlined with bright light. She reached it and pushed it open.

She found herself in a room about the size of two gymnasiums. A boxing ring had been erected in the middle with four large tiers of bleachers all around it. Yellow and white spotlights cut through the smoky air, and recorded organ music played loudly in what was evidently an interval between the evening's principal wrestling matches. Through the openstepped bleachers, Clarisse caught a glimpse of the brightly illumined ring and a couple of dark-trousered officials there. Wondering where to go to find a seat, she paused. The place was hot, and she opened her coat. Two teenaged boys sitting at the top of the nearest tier of bleachers had caught sight of her in her fur, and when she opened the coat and revealed the sharply cut dress beneath, they had instantaneously alerted their companions. The entire row of boys turned, leaned precariously over the slender rail, pointed down at her, stomped their feet, and emitted piercing wolf whistles.

Clarisse clutched the coat closed again and moved hurriedly between two bleachers to the walkway around the ring. The crowd of approximately five hundred saw her entrance.

There were more whistles.

“Clarisse!” someone shrieked from across the ring.

It was Mr. Fred's voice. She looked around and saw him directly opposite, in the middle of the fourth row. He was standing up and waving. Two seats over, Miss America was pointing at the empty seat next to her that they seemed to have saved for Clarisse. Beside Miss America sat Apologetic Joe, wearing his Sony Walkman earphones and an expression of intense concentration. He held a felt-tipped pen poised above a small notebook opened on his lap. Clarisse waved and headed toward Miss America and Mr. Fred. As she did so, her coat fell open.

The crowd applauded.

The two officials paused in their conversation and came over to the side of the ring and peered down at her.

With all the dignity she could muster, Clarisse made her way around the ring. Joe caught sight of her and nodded a greeting.

“Why didn't you tell me this was going to be a wrestling match?” Clarisse demanded loudly of Susie, who sat two rows down. Clarisse wriggled down between Mr. Fred and his sister. “I thought this was going to be a smart little cocktail party where everybody goes into the corner between drinks and writes out a discreet check.”

“Well,” said Mr. Fred cheerfully, “you're here.”

“I was all prepared for vermouth and bright conversation with well-known liberals.”

“I don't like wrestling either,” Miss America confided in a whisper. She wore a kelly-green knit dress, kelly-green patent leather pumps, kelly-green hose, and a kelly-green Vermont-shaped glass brooch at her throat.

Clarisse pulled open her coat and began to stretch out of it.

Susie, who had been looking all around at everyone, lurched about and in her fake black accent exclaimed, “Child! These natives are gone get restless again 'less you keep them goods under wraps. You hear me?”

Clarisse pulled the coat back on. “I feel just like Bette Davis in
Kid Galahad
—at ringside in my furs. I'd kill for a cigarette.”

“I wouldn't say that near a cop these days,” said Mr. Fred.

At that moment, Julia appeared and began inching her way toward the vacant seat next to Susie. “There was this huge line,” she said, calling excitedly up to Fred and Miss America. “But I got Annie Hindle to sign.” She waved her autograph book at them and then slipped it reverently into a pocket of her black western-style shirt.

“Hello, Julia,” called Clarisse.

“Yum, yum,” said Julia, pausing to look Clarisse over. “Look at us,” she said vehemently. She sat down next to Susie.

Clarisse tapped Joe on the shoulder, but he was so involved in his music that he didn't respond except with a vague smile. “Is Ashes here?” she asked Mr. Fred.