Jitterbug Perfume (43 page)

"Screw her!" said Priscilla, slamming down the receiver. "Screw all of "em!" Through the disappointment, the humiliation, the fatigue, and the guilt, there surged a voltage of defiance. "I have the bottle," she said. "I don't need Ricki, I don't need her goddamned educated waitresses, I don't need Stepmother Devalier and her pickaninny. I don't need any of 'em. I have the bottle!"

But, of course, she did not have the bottle.

She made that devastating discovery immediately upon returning to her studio apartment, where the refrigerator made noises at night like sea cows ruminating, where the toilet sounded like the audio portion of a white-water rafting expedition, where fallout from fifty* failed base-note experiments perfumed the peeling wallpaper, and where the Kotex box on the bathroom shelf was empty now, except for a couple of frayed and yellowing pads.

Priscilla did not have the bottle, not anymore, and if she hadn't the bottle, she hadn't hope or dream, and lacking hope or dream, why would she wish to live to be a thousand? Or twenty-five? for that matter. The bottle, once a flagon of fulfillable fantasy, once the repository of ambition and purose, was falling into the category of galloping mind-fuck— and a woman really didn't need more than one "perfect taco" in her life.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Monday afternoon, November 26:
Priscilla Lester Partido traveled to Seattle's Ballard district, where despite pounding, kicking, and screaming that aggravated the murmuring hearts of every old Norwegian in the neighborhood, she was denied admission to the duplex of Ricki Sinatra.

Monday evening, November 26:
Priscilla contacted police, who informed her that they could not interfere without a warrant. The judge on duty refused to issue a warrant directing authorities to search for an old perfume bottle for which there was no proof of ownership, which, by the complainant's admission, contained only a few drops of perfume, and which had been concealed, prior to alleged disappearance, in a Kotex box.

Monday night, November 26:
Priscilla resisted the impulse to call Wiggs Dannyboy, for fear that he might doubt her story.

Tuesday morning, November 27:
Priscilla met with an attorney. The lawyer telephoned Ricki, who assured him that she had no perfume bottle, never wore the stuff, was unaware of the existence of the antique bottle in question (having, in numerous visits to the client's apartment, neither seen nor heard mention of such a bottle), and invited the attorney to personally search her duplex, her car, and her locker at the Ballard Athletic Club. The attorney was convinced.

Tuesday evening, November 27:
Ricki the bartender and Priscilla the waitress got into a shouting match in the cocktail lounge at El Papa Muerta, the waitress calling the bartender "a thieving, vindictive dyke" and the bartender characterizing the waitress as "a liar, a two-timer, and a clumsy slut." They were separated by fellow employees and reprimanded by management.

Midnight, Tuesday/Wednesday, November 27/28:
Priscilla found a note under her door inviting her to Thanksgiving dinner at the Last Laugh Foundation, where the celebrated French perfumer Marcel LeFever was to be feted along with Dr. Wolfgang Morgenstern. The note was typed and quite formal, but was signed, in an eccentric scrawl resembling the markings made by the muddy tail of a water buffalo, "Love and Kisses, Wiggs."

Wednesday evening, November 28:
A second heated exchange at El Papa Muerta, during which the waitress Priscilla repeatedly demanded that the bartender Ricki relinquish a purloined perfume bottle, resulted in the waitress Priscilla being fired. She was escorted from the premises and informed that she was to return her sailor dress within twenty-four hours or face prosecution. The waitress Priscilla offered to doff the uniform on the spot, but the manager, despite a twitch of prurient interest, insisted that it be laundered first, as it was badly dappled with
salsa suprema.
"That's ketchup and you know it," said Priscilla.

Wednesday night, November 28:
Priscilla stopped off at Ernie Steele's Bar & Grill, where she proceeded to get intoxicated enough to forget where she had parked her bicycle (which she then abandoned), but not so intoxicated as to give in to the burning desire to call Dr. Dannyboy.

Midnight, Wednesday/Thursday, November 28/29:
Priscilla, on foot—and wobbling—returned home to find another note, this one imparting the information that Marcel LeFever, upon arrival in New York, had learned of the death of his uncle, Luc, head of LeFever Odeurs, and rushed back to Paris. Thanksgiving dinner was canceled. Wiggs added that he, nevertheless, hoped to see Pris soon. Accompanying the note was a beet. Accompanying the beet was a raunchy aroma. Priscilla hurled the beet the length of the hall. It rattled some innocent tenant's door, 'probably interrupting a Johnny Carson monologue.

Thursday morning, November 29:
Priscilla flopped on the sofa, flopping, further, into a drift of sooty snow; sinking into the placid nightlife of a city of wool, a subterranean Venice flooded by ink, where a language of bubbles was spoken, and misfortunes, like furniture in storage, were draped with heavy blue coverlets.

Thursday afternoon, November 29:
The dying gobble of a

hundred million Thanksgiving sacrifices could not awaken her.

Friday morning, November 30:
Still sleeping.

Friday afternoon, November 30:
Ditto.

Friday night, November 30:
Priscilla was pulled to the surface by a banging at the .door. She stood, stretched, and admitted Wiggs Dannyboy. She greeted him with a kiss. The inside of her mouth was as white as a swamp snake's. He didn't seem to mind, but, rather, prodded her coated, sluggish tongue with his fresh, lively one. He slipped off her panties and nicked her on the floor in her sailor dress. Refreshed now by forty hours of slumber and a spine-shuddering orgasm, she could scarcely believe how well she felt. She lay in his arms, purring like a Rolls-Royce that has learned it isn't going to be sold to an Arab, after all. 'Tell me a story," she said. "Sure and one time in the jungles o' Costa Rica, me voice was stolen by a parrot. For six months, durin' which time I could utter not a syllable, I beat the bushes for that bird ..." "No," said Priscilla, sweetly. "Tell me a story about beets." "Very well then," said he.

Upon his release from Concord State Prison, Dr. Dannyboy had moved to Seattle, where eventually he leased the proper mansion and established his longevity clinic. Some eighteen months later, he traveled to New Orleans, where a perfumer's convention was about to commence. His motives were vague. "I had vowed to devote me life to immortality work," he said, "and me conversations with Alobar had led me to believe, for some peculiar reason, that perfumery was somehow connected to the mystery o' mysteries. I mean, I knew that the sense o' smell played a role in the evolution o' consciousness, and thought perhaps . . . I'm not sure what I thought. Twas just a hunch. I was searchin' for clues. Twas intuition led me there. Intuition being the most reliable instrument in science."

Discouraged initially by the focus on merchandising, Wiggs was about to give up on the convention when he heard a speech delivered by Marcel LeFever.

"Yes, that was some speech," interrupted Priscilla. "Up until that point, I'd always hated perfumery. I'd gotten involved with it again because I had a little understanding of it, and for reasons I won't go into now, I believed I had a chance to make a lot of money from it. But I was contemptuous of it, due to childhood experiences and all. It was simply a means to an end. But LeFever's speech . . . boy, he gave me a whole new attitude about perfumery. He made it sound so magical, so special, so important ..."

"Your man did that, all right," said Wiggs.

After the speech, Wiggs had caught up with Marcel in the corridor adjacent to the auditorium. He had bombarded him with praise and expressions of his own interests. Marcel responded enthusiastically, especially when Wiggs pointed out that the dolphin has no sense of smell. Dolphins have larger brains than humans, and their rudimentary fingers suggest that at one point in prehistory, they might have been the equal of men in more physical ways. Yet, while humanity has gone on to ever more complex achievements in philosophy, athletics, art, and technology, the nonproductive dolphin has apparently swum into an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Could it be, asked Dannyboy of LeFever, that the dolphin failed (in an evolutionary sense) because it neglected to develop an olfactory capability?

" Twas obvious I was on your man's wavelength, and he was invitin' me to dine with him at Galatoire's, when
you
approached. Yes, darlin', that was me standin' there, but you didn't notice me. And after you showed up, LeFever didn't notice me, either. Your man has an eye for fine flesh, or, rather he has a nose for it, because all the time you and him were speakin', I could see him snifBn' you up and down, smellin' you out, as it were. Well, bless you, you mustn't o' been his type. He listened politely, wrinklin' his nose all the while, as you told him that you lived in Seattle and were developin" a great jasmine-theme perfume with a citrus top note, but was lookin' for somethin' a wee unusual in the way of a base, and did he have a suggestion o' bases to explore, bases that might o' been used long ago and forgotten. Yes, and he was tellin' you that 'twas a complicated matter, and some base notes had as many as eighty-five separate ingredients in 'em; not bein' very helpful, I'd have to say, when this lovely young black woman walks up.

"Well, 'twas apparent you and your black woman were on familiar terms, familiar but not especially friendly." (Priscilla nodded, vigorously.) "But your man ignores your frosty exchange, and he begins to sniff
her
up and down, only this time the deeply scalloped wings o' his snout are beatki' like a fat swan trapped in a wind tunnel, flappin' like an archangel on Methedrine,
she
is gettin' through to him on the olfactory level. The comic thing is that she is givin' him almost the same exact story as you. She's speakin' French, and me French is a wee rusty, but I hear her say she lives there in New Orleans and has got a wonderful jasmine-theme perfume brewin", only she's havin' difficulty with locatin' somethin' special and unusual to bottom it out, and the sly devil tells
her
that he's gettin' interested in jasmines again himself, and maybe he can lend a hand. Lend a prick is more like it. Next thing I know, your man is invitin' your woman to dine with him at Galatoire's, only there's no mention o' me, in French or English."

Thereupon, Dr. Dannyboy was on the verge of asking Priscilla to dinner at Galatoire's: "complicate the scene a bit, if you can't get any enlightenment out of a situation, you might as well get some fun." At that moment, however, the handle on a nearby emergency-exit door began to jiggle, as if someone in the alley outside wanted to be let in, so Wiggs opened the door. There was nobody there. But, with the opening of the door, a rank odor rushed in, an odor embarrassing in its suggestion of unwashed genitals and bestial glands. Wiggs recognized the smell.

"One morning in Concord, I woke before me accustomed hour. I came into consciousness holding me nose. There was a bloody rotten smell in our cell, as if the warden had put a herd o' goats in with us. I asked Alobar what was goin' on, and your man said, 'It was Pan. Pan came to visit me during the night.'

" 'No joke? What did he say?" I asked. 'Why, he didn't say anything,' said Alobar. 'Pan can no longer speak. He just dropped by. I suppose to show me that he wasn't finished yet.' Can ye imagine? The smell hung around for nearly an hour. And 'twas the very same smell that blew through the door in New Orleans that day. I turned to remark on it, but you had gone. And a minute later, LeFever was escortin' the black girl toward the main entrance and the street.

"I went out in the alley and looked around, but there wasn't a sign o' anythin'. So I got me hands on a list o' convention attenders—it listed Marcel's address and yours and V'lu Jackson's, too—and took a night flight back to Seattle. There was a lot o' funny business goin' on in this blarney-stone head o' mine."

/
know the feeling,
thought Priscilla. Her relaxed state was giving way to a video arcade of blinking wonderments and beeping forebodings. A chill, like current from a nuclear icicle, vibrated her sex-softened spine.

"Wiggs," she asked, after a while—she was clearly afraid to phrase the question—"Wiggs"—her brain stem was quivering as if it were being prodded by a jewel—"Wiggs, is it ... Pan . . . who's leaving the beets?"

"No," he answered, without hesitation.

Somewhat relieved, Priscilla raised herself on one elbow. In the process, she accidentally struck her worktable, causing lab ware to tinkle and slosh. It was a miracle, she thought, that they hadn't dumped the whole enterprise in the throes of their passion.

"But the smell ..."

"The smell is Pan's, all right."

"It is?"

"Indeed. Though it isn't old Pan who's deliverin' the beets. As a matter o' fact, Pan is tryin' to
prevent
the delivery o' the beets. Pan is tryin' to interfere with the delivery o' the beets. Only your god is weak and limited, nowadays, and there's little he can do but leave a reminder o' himself—and the powers that he represents—to discourage the recipient and him that
is
leavin' beets."

"And that is ... ?" She sounded calm enough, but she was quaking inside.

"Me."

'^You?"

" Tis me left all the homely little vegetables at your door. Tis me leavin' 'em with V'lu Jackson. I've spent a small fortune flyin* to New Orleans and back. Fortunately, I have me royalties. And 'tis a friend o' mine from the acid days been droppin' 'em off for Marcel LeFever. He's a professor in Paris and his son works in the mailroom at the LeFever Building. Were ye aware that Marcel and V'lu have been gettin' beets, as well?"

"Well, no. Hell no, I wasn't aware—"

"I'm sorry, but ye didn't have an exclusive contract, ye know."

"Why, Wiggs? Why the goddamn beets?"

"1 can't tell ye, darlin'. I'd dearly love to tell ye, but I can't. I gave Alobar me word. The fairies would cause me terrible sufferin' if I broke me vow."

"But—"

"Listen. Don't fret. Ye can figure out for yourself. If you think about it real hard and be puttin' two and two together, it will come to ye. Clear as the tap water that spoils your man's whiskey. Just give it some thought."

Priscilla agreed and set into thinking, but Wiggs suggested they chew up some geoduck first. Since she hadn't eaten in a couple of days, she agreed to that, also.

After tidying themselves a bit, they set out by'taxi for Never Cry Tuna, the new restaurant on Lake Union. Sure enough, Trixie Melodian was working there.

"Amaryllis Tidroe got the grant," Trixie said.

Priscilla wasn't surprised. "Oh, goody! I can't wait to see eight-by-ten glossies of Mrs. Masked Marvel."

"You're taking it awfully well," said Trixie.

"Not to mention Mrs. Garp—"

"I thought he wrote books."

"—and the various loving helpmates of the midget tag team."

"I could eat the midget tag team," said Wiggs.

"One order of shrimp with mussels," said Priscilla.

"Jesus," moaned Trixie. "If I'd gotten that grant, I wouldn't be here listening to this."

Priscilla wanted Wiggs to spend the night at her place, but he claimed that Huxley Anne would be needing him bright and early. "But tomorrow's Saturday," said Pris.

"We watch cartoons together," said Wiggs.

Since no invitation to join them appeared forthcoming, she kissed him good night in the lobby and climbed the lonely stairs, stumbling often enough in her ascent to insure exclusion from all future Everest expeditions.

As she lay on the sofa digesting the goeduck, she figured out that beets
must
be the secret ingredient, the elusive base note, in
K23.
Why else would Wiggs be bombarding perfumers with them? Yet, how could that be? A beet had no memorable aroma, and it would turn a perfume the color of Dracula's mouthwash.

It was puzzling. And it might be academic, as well, if she couldn't recover the bottle. The loss of the bottle was one of those "harsh realities" with which she was not unfamiliar. If she was relatively equanimious about it, it was because Wiggs was teaching her that "harsh realities" were not the only realities: that there were many different realities, and to a certain extent, with the proper focus of energy, one could choose which reality one wished to live. One might even outwit the harshest reality of all.

For the third night in a row, Pris fell asleep in El Papa Muerta's sailor dress, its wine-dark ketchup stains now counterbalanced by scrambles of chalky semen. As she drifted into sleep, she had the feeling that she was waking up.

In the week that followed, Priscilla fiddled with her lab equipment, meditated upon the beet, spent the funds that she'd been saving to purchase jasmine oil on a private detective ("I'm positive Ricki Sinatra has my bottle"), and worried, progressively as each day passed, that she'd not hear from Wiggs again. On Saturday, .however, her presence was requested at the Last Laugh Foundation to participate in "the Alobar-Kudra bath ritual."

Out of the frying pan and into the hot tub,
she thought.

The line outside the Foundation walls seemed slightly longer and considerably more agitated than usual. People hollered rude things at her when she was let through the gate.

" Tis the news background," explained Wiggs. "The Middle East is smokin' cigars in the fireworks stand again, and that shallow jackass in the White House is waggin' his nuclear-headed peepee at the Russians. People are nervous."

"I don't get it, Wiggs. I mean, if there's such a universal longing for immortality, if the human race is going bananas because it can't accept any more that it has to die, why do we still have wars? All this military violence seems to contradict your theory."

"Not in the least," he replied, loosening, like an iguana butcher, the spinal column of one of his beloved zippers. "Your common man is willin' to go to war only because he hates death so much."