Jitterbug Perfume (44 page)

Having successfully filleted his own trousers, he seized the triangular viper-head of Priscilla's fly and rib by rib, pulled it apart. "Don't you see? The enemy represents Death to 'em. The government propaganda mills paint the enemy as an unfeelin', devourin' monster. So, when we go to war we go on a noble mission, a life-affirming mission, whose object is the destruction o' death. And 'tis precisely because we hate death so much that we're too crazed and irrational to see the irony in it. We hate death so bloody much that we will kill-—and die—in order to try to halt its march."

In unison, they stepped out of their pants. Their gap-toothed zippers, split like the vertebrae of a temple sacrifice, made a tiny clink when-they hit the tiles of the tub-room floor.

"As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion—usually both at the same time—as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife." At their feet, the zippers shuddered.

They lowered themselves into the steaming water, tensing at first from the shock of the heat, then relaxing until they were as buoyant as sausages.

"Ahhh. How many can you get in this tub?"

"Ahhh. Six, as a rule. You can fit eight, but 'tis rather crowded."

"If it wasn't for death, the world would be eight in a tub."

"Uh?"

"Overpopulation. If nobody died, pretty soon it would be standing room only."

"That's one o' the standard arguments in favor o' death, but it doesn't hold water. Or whiskey, either. We don't have an overpopulation problem, we have a land-use problem. We're sprawlin' out all over the place, like hogs in a rose garden, takin' up a thousand times more space than we need. If we were to stress vertical growth instead o' horizontal, if we were to build tall apartment complexes instead of acres o' one-story ticky-tackies, there'd be more than enough room. If we built tall enough, and we have the technological capability, we could double the world's population and still fit every single one of us into the state o' Texas.
Comfortably,
I might add. The rest o' the planet could be given over to agriculture and recreation. And wilderness. We could have elephant herds again. Buffalo on Main Street."

"That would be nice," she said. "Speaking of vertical development, I thought hot water was supposed to take the starch out of this." She slipped her fingers around his half-hard penis. It immediately grew taller. Were it an apartment building, they could have moved another hundred families in.

"Love, little darlin', defies the laws o' physics. Or, rather, it breaks the habits."

As she stroked him, he tapped his moisture-studded eye patch and, with some difficulty, continued to hold forth on his favorite theme.

"Besides, not everybody is goin' to give up death. The death wish is very strong, and a lot o' people prefer to die. You'd be surprised at the number who say their lives are so miserable they couldn't bear the thought o' lengthenin' "em."

"Speaking of lengthening ..."

"Alobar says you aren't supposed to do this until
after
the soak."

"Sorry. You know, my daddy used to say, 'Life is rough, and then you die.' "

"Bad attitude," said Wiggs.

"Then he'd wink and say, 'But, meanwhile, there's Mardi Gras.' "

"Your father was willin' to enjoy some crumbs, but not the whole cake."

"But his life was short and rough. Maybe most lives are. I read once that it takes a chicken-plucking machine barely forty seconds to complete the job."

"Indeed. But remember, at that point the chicken is only naked, not dead."

"Speaking of which ..."

"Okay, darlin'. Okay."

Wiggs placed his palms beneath her reddening buttocks and, assisted by the water, lifted her up, centered her, then lowered her slowly onto the length of his shaft. When she struck bottom, she emitted a primitive cry, coming almost immediately. He lifted her off again. The entire procedure occurred in the span of time it would have taken
a.
chicken-plucking machine to defeather a drumstick.

When she could speak, she said, "If we did die—you and me, I mean—you could come back as a lily pad, and I'd be a very happy frog."

"A pleasant arrangement, but let's not be countin' on it."

"I'm surprised you don't believe in reincarnation."

"Why? 'Tis probably just another rationalization. Reincarnation—or the transmigration o' souls—was an idea spawned in one o' the most rigid social systems humanity has ever devised. Your ancient Hindu was stuck like a gnat in amber. Durin' his lifetime, he was obliged to live in a prescribed place with a prescribed family and practice a prescribed occupation. The possibility o' mobility did not exist. The hand you were dealt at birth was the hand you played. Everythin' was predestined, and you couldn't change a bleedin' dot o' it. Since they had no chance o' change in life, 'tis only natural they fantasized about change in the afterlife. Reincarnation was simply a fantasy your Hindu perpetuated to keep his rigid reality model from drivin' him mad.

"That's why Kudra, by the way, was such a remarkable figure. Can you imagine the odds against a tenth-century Hindu, especially a woman, breakin' out o' those fetters? When it comes to liberatin' the Indians, Kudra's example is worth a barrel o' Gandhis."

"I can appreciate that. But how can you be positive we don't reincarnate?"

"Oh, I can't. You can't be positive about
anything
regardin' an afterlife. There's not a dot o' proof anywhere."

"Well, now, what about those people who die temporarily on the operating table? They seem to have very similar experiences. Leaving their bodies behind with relief, feelings of great tranquillity and love, reuniting with deceased friends and relatives. And most of them describe an encounter with some kind of light ..."

"Who knows? Maybe it signifies that the best is yet to come, which suits me, I guarantee. On the other hand, we know that the brain remains electrically alive for up to thirty minutes after the heart and other vital organs have ceased to function. So these 'heavenly' experiences o' the temporarily dead may be merely an archetypal drama unfolding upon the stage o' departin' consciousness, a farewell performance of a powerful mythological allegory. And when the brain turns the juice off a half-hour later, boom, the curtain falls once and for all; the show is over, and there's no waitin' up for the reviews. Ultimate solitude. As for the light, well, all o' matter is condensed light. We came from light, each of us, so where's the wonder that we return to it in death?"

"So, you're saying any way we slice it we're doomed."

"Not at all, Pris. I'm sayin' that we don't know what the afterlife is like, we absolutely do not know. Therefore, until we do know, we ought to do our best to go on livin'."

"But how will we ever know?"

"Should your man Alobar make contact with Kudra, we'd learn a lot, we would. "Tis a long shot, but I believe it might still be done. Part o' the secret lies in the perfume."

They climbed from the tub to allow their blood to cool. The tiles pressed like frozen petals against their flesh. Their bodies gave off a painterly glow. An Old Master glow.
Still Life With Boiled Beets.

"Amazing, Wiggs."

"What's that?"

"Amazing. After all that talking, your pole is still up."

"I'm not Gerry Ford, ye know. I can do more than one thing at a time."

Grinning, she hovered over him. Then, like a fist closing around a doorknob, her grin closed around him. With her lips, she turned the knob first one way and then the other: left, right, open, shut; left, right, open, shut. The knob did not squeak. In fact, Wiggs was unusually quiet.

Now, falling into rhythm, she sucked the knob from its axle, sucked the axle from its door, the door from its hinges. Out onto the lawn, tempo increasing, she sucked up the flagstone walk, the rosebushes, the petunia bed, the sprinkler, the driveway, and the small Japanese car parked in the driveway: Oh, what a feeling! Toyota! Wiggs moaned as the neighborhood disappeared.

The towers of the city began to sway, and soon, the planet itself fell victim to the force, swelling at its equator, throbbing at its poles. It wobbled violently on its axis, once, twice, then exploded. The Big Bang theory, proven at last. Continuing to impersonate a black hole, she pulled in every drop and particle—she'd never had a man in such entirety—and it wasn't until the final spasm had subsided and the cosmos was at peace that she loosened her grip and, lips glistening like the Milky Way, looked up to see—the legs of a third party standing there.

"Ach! I am-fery sorry."

Wolfgang Morgenstern, nude except for a towel about his hips, turned stiffly and strode, with steps of Prussian exactitude, from the tub room. Dr. Morgenstern was red-faced, sweaty, and breathless. Presumably, his condition was due to his jumping—his immortalist dance, his solo jitterbug—and not to the effects of the cosmic spectacle that he had stumbled upon.

"God! I'm mortified. I'm so embarrassed I could die." Priscilla covered her face with her hands, surreptitiously wiping the corners of her mouth.

"Did you hear what you just said? 'Mortified. I could die.' Pris, ye must never use such expressions. They are unconscious manifestations o' the death wish. You're signaltn' the universe that death is not only acceptable but deserved."

"Oh, Wiggs!"

"And as for your Nobel laureate, 'tis high time he had a taste o' quality entertainment. He
does
seem to be gettin' younger, to tell the truth, but I don't know what good 'tis doin' him, cooped up in his room."

Wiggs pulled her hands away from her face and kissed her. "Darlin", ye were magnificent."

"I was?"

"Truly. Ye must promise me now, no more expressions such as, 'I'm so embarrassed I could die' or "The suspense is killin' me.' "

"I'll try. But how will I ever face him?"

"With pride," said Wiggs. "With pride."

They slid back into the Jacuzzi.

Minus the extra heat of desire, the water seemed cooler now. They submerged to their chins in the tropical broth, the pot of doldrums, the horse latitudes that modern landlubbers had domesticated and miniaturized, wrapping themselves willingly in its enervating ripples.

"You know, Wiggs," she said, her voice softened to near inaudibility by the sultry climate, "it seems like with you everything leads back to the subject of death."

"Sure and show me the person's road that does not lead to death. We try to divert our attention, to pretend 'tisn't so, but the very air we breathe is vulture's breath. Please don't be insinuatin' your man is morbid. I dwell on death in order to defeat it."

"But suppose death is necessary to evolution. What if we have to give up our bodies so that we can evolve off the earth plane, move on to a higher plane? It might be foolish and regressive to cling to our physical bodies."

"Might be. Although life on the astral plane has always held a minimum o' charm for me. No whiskey, no books, no Frederick's o' Hollywood. And if it should turn out that there
is
no astral evolution, where does that leave your poor dead self? Tis a gamble I'm not willin' to take."

"After the gambles you've taken with vision root, all those psychological deaths and rebirths, how could you still be afraid of regular old dying."

"Sure and I'm
not
afraid o' dying. Never have been. Death can't do anything to us because death is dead. What's dead can't hurt ye. Fear is not the issue. Like your man Alobar, I'm less scared than resentful. We've got ourselves stuck in a cyclic system that makes true freedom, true growth impossible. In the arts, a period o' classicism is followed by a period o' romanticism. Then 'tis back to the classical again. 'Tis as simpleminded as a bloody pendulum, and for me, at least, it robs art of any real meaning. Same thing in society. A conservative cycle, a liberal cycle, then a conservative cycle again. Action and reaction, back and forth, like the tides. As long as we're trapped in these cycles, we can't expect much in the way o' liberation, we can't even expect fundamental change except the awful slow variety where each step takes a million years or more. For most of our history, we were trapped by the seasonal cycles, the weather cycles. Now, however, we can at least move south for the winter, north for the summer. The seasons still operate cyclically, but we don't have to submit to 'em. All I'm askin' is for that kind o' mobility in life as a whole. I'm askin' for the opportunity to break out o' the birth-death cycle. Ye see what I mean? 'Tis far too rigid and predictable to suit me. Cycles take the meaning out o' life, just as they do in art. Me hope is this: certain individuals have always managed to break out o' the artistic and social cycles—that's why I love and respect your individual more than I love and respect humanity at large. Maybe, maybe, the time is ripe for certain individuals to escape the birth-death cycle, as well. And I don't mean by vaporizin' into the void o' Buddhist Nirvana, either. Maybe Alobar has done just that. Maybe I can do it, as well. And maybe—as long as I'm into the maybes—some cycle-buster will come along to rescue mankind from the hollow tides o' mortality."