Jitterbug Perfume (47 page)

"Ha ha. Indeed. And, say, have ye had a glimpse o' the bees?"

"Well, no, not personally ..."

But just then the swarm rounded the corner, flying in wedge formation, silhouetted against the sunset, screaming like a cutting tool, and a few paces ahead of it, running for his life, his beard and cap flapping-wildly, his belly spilling feathers and his tin cup spilling coins, dashed Santa Claus.

The old pagan festival came and went. Neither Seattle nor New Orleans would consent to strike a seasonal pose. Seattle was mild and rainy and as green as Bing Crosby's royalties. New Orleans was mild and sunny and quite accustomed to stringing lights in banana trees.

Snows and ices decorated Concord, Massachusetts, you may be certain, but Alobar could spy no acre of greeting card tableau from his cell. He could see the famous Star of the East, however, and its gelid twinkle reminded him of his first Christmas, that commoner's winter in Aelfric when he learned, with some astonishment, that the face of an executed Eastern rabble-rouser had been carved in the pagan pumpkin.

Marcel and Wiggs sat before a yule log, in a room in which there was scant necessity for blaze, and night after night, in conversation after conversation, rebuilt "reality" frqni the ruins they'd left it in the night before. They slept late. Afternoons, they assisted Huxley Anne in the greenhouse, where the child was tending, with precocious expertise, an enlarging accumulation of exotic plants. Dr. Morgenstern jumped for something approximating joy.

Priscilla made the rounds of Mexican restaurants, but while there was no shortage in New Orleans of imperfect tacos, she failed to land a job. On New Year's Eve she got drunk and got laid. Upon that, it would be indiscreet to dwell, except to pass along the advice that before going home with a personage one has met in a French Quarter bar, one should make absolutely certain of their gender. Later, she was to refer to the episode, without bitterness, as "Ricki's revenge."

Alobar boycotted the cell block Christmas party, preferring to sit alone in his cubicle and breathe, even though, thanks to his escalated aging, the sterile steel cubicle had begun to stink like a mouse nest or a potato bin.

The "season" crab-walked by in its emotional shoes, then it was over, it was January 2, the Western world blew its nose, took two aspirins, packed pagan ornaments and plaster mangers to the attic, and set about finding ways to finance the recent indulgences. Bing! The clock, after its celestial wobble, was back on mechanical time, and precise, or, at any rate, measurable, or at least, normal things could happen. Alobar was paroled from prison, the hearings got underway in Baton Rouge, Wiggs (with some help from Bunny LeFever) figured out Where We Are Going and why it smells the way it does, and Huxley Anne became the youngest member ever of the Puget Sound Orchid Society.

Upon learning of Alobar's release, Wiggs and Marcel jetted to Boston to greet him. Over bowls of borscht that resembled the steaming blood of Beowulf s monster, Alobar consented to accompany them back to the Last Laugh Foundation.

"He almost looks a thousand," Wiggs said to Priscilla over the wire that night. "He's as wrinkled now as a lemon-suckin' prune, his hair has gone white, his torso has shrunk, and he walks stooped over like a dentist. Ah, but he's got the spirit still, and he claims he can recover his youth if he cares to. I've asked him in private if he won't pass the beet to Marcel, let him in on the K23 and all. He's thinkin' it over."

Again, Priscilla felt an inflation of the green balloon. Striving to conceal her resentment and insecurity, she said, "Wiggs, remember that I said I was going to have a surprise for you? Well, the surprise is for Alobar, too. It's a great big surprise, and it will mean even more to Alobar than to you. It's not quite ready yet, but I think he should see it before he makes any major decisions."

"Sure and that sounds swell to me, little darlin'. Maybe I'll be bringin' him to New Orleans in a week or two. Marcel is headin' there himself. To see V'lu. They've stayed in touch, and it would seem your man is bloody moo-eyed over her."

"Ha ha," said Pris, thinking all the while, /
wish you were bloody moo-eyed over me.

The hearings in Baton Rouge lasted ten days. Hardly a session passed in which the two suspended policemen did not protest that the jasmine bouquet that the late Mr. Pajama pointed in their direction could have concealed a gun.

"Yes, it
could,"
the panel chairman finally agreed. "And the blind man's cane
could
hide a sword, and the wife's chicken and dumplings
could
be laced with razor blades, and the lunch boxes of school children
could
be ticking with bombs."

It was the panel's recommendation that the cops stand trial, although as a compromise, they would be charged not with murder but manslaughter. When news of the compromise reached New Orleans, it did not exactly turn the Mississippi River into diet soda.

Roosters were heard to squawk at midnight in Central City storefronts.

A cross was burned in front of Parfumerie Devalier, blackening its show window and charring its door.

The bees, which except for a daily fly-by of the
Times-Picayune
offices had been little seen of late, attacked in a single afternoon six policemen, five politicians, four whiplash lawyers, three used-car salesmen, and two fast-talking disc jockeys—and put the fear of Beelzebub the Bug God into an agnostic from Dallas.

It was decided by the court that the trial should be conducted in Baton Rouge. The judge scheduled it for the middle of February. Concerned by the cross-burning, he ruled that Madame Devalier and V'lu Jackson be kept in protective custody until after the trial.

With difficulty, Priscilla resigned herself to a wait. Yet she did not stand still. Having exhausted the Mexican restaurants of New Orleans as a potential source of gainful employment, she suddenly spun on her dais of habit and set off in a relatively new direction. Abandoning her long-standing obsession to the same fate as the cottage cheese she'd left in her refrigerator in Seattle, she accepted a job in a coffeehouse near Tulane University, where the clientele played chess, wrote poetry, and debated matters of cosmic import (subjects forbidden to "mature" intellectuals unless they first sign an oath to be dry and dispassionate). Inclined to insert her own opinions, especially when a discussion broached issues of life and death, Priscilla rapidly revived her reputation as a genius waitress. For example, she dazzled a party of students one evening by declaring, "To bfe or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being."

And she almost believed it.

Next thing you know, I'll be drumming on my eyelid with an espresso spoon,
she thought.

Since the spirit of Wiggs Dannyboy was upon her, and since Wiggs contended that longing for the future was as antilife as dwelling in the past ("nostalgia and hope stand equally in the way of authentic experience"), Priscilla decided that she must de-emphasize the role in her life of the perfume bottle and its promise of future financial bliss. She refused, however, to relegate her ambition for wealth to the back of the fridge where she'd shoved the allegedly perfect taco. After all, it was Wiggs who once said, "I love the rich."

Actually, his statement in its entirety was, "The rich are the most discriminated-against minority in the world. Openly or covertly, everybody hates the rich because, openly or covertly, everybody envies the rich. Me, I love the rich.
Somebody
has to love them. Sure, a lot o' rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o' poor people are assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks."

Priscilla was forced to admit that she missed such pronouncements.
The radium-tongued rascal has contaminated me,
she thought.

The radium-tongued rascal who had contaminated her, the windy cyclops who had brought both tornado and calm, fog and clear sky into her life, the defrocked anthropologist whom everybody, including Priscilla, suspected of having a bit too much fun, was on a collision course with death and tragedy.

Disaster struck while he was high above the world and its cares, relaxing aboard a Boeing 747 in the company of Marcel LeFever and King Alobar. Sometime during that flight, as the fields and peaks soaked up sweet darkness beneath them, the crowd outside the Last Laugh Foundation in Seattle went mad.

Somebody had supplied beer, cases of it, and many in the crowd had lost their reason in it. About seven o'clock, as much of Seattle was finishing its dinner, a dense, hot, rustic odor swept through the street, and as if it had one mind, one nose, the crowd spontaneously panicked. Something snapped in it, and it rushed the gate, tearing it from its hinges and throwing the guards aside.

Disturbed and anxious, pursued by the smell, the people ripped loose the fairy door knocker and streamed into the mansion, where they raced from room to room, looking for the divine magic that had been denied them. And when they found nothing—no gurgling test tubes or sparking coils, no vials of purple elixirs or leatherbound books bursting with esoteric information, no files, even, that they might plunder; when they found merely a posh modern residence lacking so much as a hint of scientific activity and occupied only by a red-faced man who'd been skipping and leaping about in a bizarre dance, and a young girl playing with potted plants, then they truly panicked.

They ravaged the furnishings, smashing chairs, coffeetables and lamps, defiling the white immortalist walls, hurling Escher prints through stained-glass windows. As mirrors shattered and food flew, several in the midst passed into further frenzy, went beyond the hot madness of disappointment and longing into the cold madness of fear and loathing, and seizing Papuan war clubs from above the fireplace, they bashed the skulls of Wolfgang Morgenstern and Huxley Anne Dannyboy.

Like a fertilized condor egg, filled with blood and promise, the bald head of Dr. Morgenstern split open. He died instantly.

Huxley Anne was not so heavily damaged, although when police arrived she was exhibiting no vital signs and was believed as dead as the professor. Nevertheless, oxygen and CPR were administered. After twenty discouraging minutes, a tiny birthday-candle flame of pulse began to flicker.

She was taken to Swedish Hospital, a few blocks away, and by the time her father got there, physicians were venturing that she had a twenty-five-percent chance of living, although only a ten-percent chance of having escaped permanent brain damage. Should she survive, which was improbable, she would likely be, in terms most disparaging to the consciousness of beets, "no more than a vegetable."

Naturally, the news traveled swiftly. It involved a famous scientist and the child of an infamous heretic, it involved the "occult" (for that is the context in which the press placed immortalistic research), it involved murder, a guarded mansion, and, probably, drugs. The media snatched it up and streaked with it, galloping toward tons of pay dirt, and Priscilla knew about it almost as soon as VViggs did.

She heard about it at work. When it had sunk in, and that took a minute or two, she set down her tray, tables away from its destination, untied her apron, and walked out of the coffeehouse. "Where are you going?" yelled the fellow who operated the espresso machine. "Seattle," she replied.

Of course, she had practically no money. Within minutes, she was back at the coffeehouse, pleading with the manager for an advance on salary. He refused, but when he saw the tears breaking loose, when he recognized that they were massed in huge numbers and might be expected to march, two abreast, for hours, he allowed her to call Seattle on the office phone.

After hacking through several thousand feet of red tape, she managed to reach Wiggs at Swedish Hospital.

"I'll be there as quick as I can get there," said Priscilla.

"It isn't necessary," said Wiggs. He spoke with hardly any accent at all. "I appreciate it, but it isn't necessary."

"I don't care. You'll need help."

"Marcel and Alobar'are with me. Marcel's left an open bottle of her favorite scent by her bed. To call her back. Alobar has some ideas, too. Bandaloop stuff. I'm confident, Pris."

"You sound pretty good. But I'm sure I can help you."

"No. Huxley Anne's mum will be here by morning. She'd probably be uncomfortable if you were around."

"Screw her comfort! Don't you care about me?" The instant she said it, she regretted it.

"I do care. But right now my energy is totally with my daughter."

"I'm sorry. I understand. You can call me if you need me. Here, or else they'll take a message at the Y."

She hung up and after a heroic belt of the manager's bourbon, returned to duty. If Huxley Anne died, however, she'd proceed to Seattle with all possible haste, even if she had to steal the funds, because she and she alone knew that if Huxley Anne went, Wiggs would go, as well.