Jitterbug Perfume (48 page)

At birth, we emerge from dream soup.

At death, we sink back into dream soup.

In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land.

Life is a portage.

That was the way Marcel LeFever had always looked at it. After his encounters with Dr. Dannyboy and Alobar, after the experience with little Huxley Anne, Marcel began to suspect that it might be more complex than that. He went so far as to consider that there might be more than one type of. afterlife experience, that there might be several, that there could be, in fact, as many different death-styles as there were life-styles, and "dream soup" was merely one of dozens from which the dead person might actually choose.

It was pure conjecture, of course. Moreover, he much preferred to think about fragrance. Yet, wasn't fragrance somehow involved? In the case of Huxley Anne, at least it seemed to have played a part. Alobar and Dr. Dannyboy agreed that it had, although the physicians were equally convinced that it had not.

The physicians had no explanation of their own, however, so Marcel was prepared to attribute the miraculous recovery to fragrance, or, rather, an interaction between the powers of fragrance and the powers of human spirit. Why not?

It
was
a miraculous recovery, no one would deny that. The child lay comatose for nearly a month, neither advancing nor receding, just sort of standing hip-deep in the dream soup, connected to shore by, as they say, "artificial means," and then, toward midnight on Saint Agnes's Eve, her eyes popped open, she asked, in a completely normal voice, for SpaghettiOs and chocolate-chip cookies, and demanded to know why there was no television in her room. "Mmm, smells good in here," she said. Within days she was walking the corridors. Were there damaged parts in her brain, they were well concealed.

When he felt that she was strong enough, Wiggs inquired if she had felt at any time, especially during the minutes immediately following the attack, that her soul had left her body. "Oh, Daddy!" she said, "Don't you know that when you die, your soul
stops
leaving your body?"

"Uh, no. What do you mean?"

"Our souls are leaving our bodies all the time, silly. That's what all the energy is about."

"You mean the energy field around our bodies is the soul being broadcast out of the body?"

"Kindalike that."

"And at death this transmission stops?"

"Yes. Can I have some ice cream?"

"In a minute, darling. When your soul stopped leaving your body, what did it feel like?"

Huxley Anne screwed up her face. "Well, kinda like a TV set that wasn't quite off and wasn't quite on. You know, the TV had cartoons in it, but it couldn't send them out."

"But your, ah, TV set, it didn't go completely off?"

"No. That would have been something different, being all the way off. I didn't want to go off without you, Daddy. I tried hard to stay on. I knew where you were because I could smell my
White Shoulders,
but it took a little while to get back on all the way and warmed up and everything. Can I have my ice cream now?"

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.

Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it
looks
to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes—and you'll never catch February in stocking feet—it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.

However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look, February
feels
longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.

February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's Day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.

Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within," February is as useless as the extra
r
in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui, holding both progress and contentment at bay.

James Joyce was born in February, as was Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, which goes to show that writers are poor at beginnings, although worse at knowing when to stop.

If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Were you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

Confined to its usual length, February
still
extracted a toll from Priscilla and New Orleans. On Groundhog Day, a car-

petbagger freeze turned banana plants as black as seminary shoes, and night after night, the Mississippi .exhaled Yukon breath. The small boys who tap-danced for coins on Bourbon Street were forced to compete with their own chattering teeth. Aside from tap and chatter, the Quarter was so quiet it might as well have been in Salt Lake City. Even the bees took refuge from the chill. Where, was anybody's guess.

As for the frost on Priscilla's personal pumpkin, it was neither thick nor withering, but typically Februarian, it was a long time melting.

Once a week, approximately, she received a letter from Wiggs: one paragraph about Huxley Anne (she appeared to be completely healed, but the doctors, "taking no chances," were keeping her out of school); one paragraph about the restoration of the Last Laugh Foundation (Marcel made financial contributions, while Alobar, who had acquired carpentry skills over the centuries, helped with the actual work); a couple of paragraphs alluding to his new ideas about evolution; and a phrase or two of sexual innuendo. All in all, it wasn't enough to get a young woman in love through a lingering funk such as February. Nevertheless, she wrote him daily and practiced a fairly strict fidelity.

About the time the trial began in Baton Rouge, she learned the exact whereabouts there of Madame and V'lu, but made no attempt to contact them lest she tip her hand. When they returned to New Orleans, she'd retrieve that bottle. If they had it, that is. February is the month for doubt.

Because she was no longer up until dawn trying to make perfume, she was rested and energetic, and since meeting Wiggs, she mainly looked at life, even when it was studded with failures and misfortunes, with a subdued, irrational cheerfulness. So, though she had to battle impatience on several different fronts, and though February lay about her shoulders like a cloak of lead, Priscilla stayed afloat.

Then came March.

On the very first day of March, Wiggs telephoned to announce that Marcel and Alobar were heading to New Orleans

for Mardi Gras. Wiggs himself would be joining them in a week or ten days, whenever the doctors gave Huxley Anne the green light. "Take care of them until I get there, please, Pris. Show them the sights. Once V'lu is back in town, you won't have to worry about Marcel, but in the meantime, he and Alobar will need a place to stay and a good spot to watch the parades. You know the city. Alobar's a touch high-strung. Still holding out on the
K23.
If you've got that surprise for him, it might do him good."

"I'll do my best. When you come, will you . . . will you stay with me?"

"Huxley Anne and I."

"Oh. All right. Hurry."

A contrarian, the owner of the coffeehouse made a practice of leaving town during Mardi Gras. He had a three-bedroom flat in the Garden District, and assuming that Marcel would pay, Priscilla sublet it for the first half of March. The master bedroom she claimed for Wiggs and her. And Huxley, damn it, Anne. «

She took a bus to the airport and met the flight from Seattle. Marcel deplaned first. She recognized him from the perfumer's convention. His hair was still slicked back and parted in the middle, his suit was expensive, his cologne turned heads, his Vandyke beard shoveled the air in front of him as if he were digging in it, turning it over, searching for diamonds. Or worms. With an elegant gesture, he kissed Priscilla's hand. Then he wrinkled his sturdy nose as if he didn't quite approve of her smell.

Alobar soon followed. Cocooned in the ill-fitting Robert Hall suit that he'd been issued upon parole from Concord Prison, he was obviously an old man—Priscilla would have guessed seventy-five—yet he revealed not a tremor of the fear or fragility that so often causes us to look with pity, or disgust, upon the old. If he was less arrogant than Marcel, he was no less self-confident. He moved through the world as if he was intimate with it, as if he belonged in it, as if there was not the remotest chance that he would fall down in it and break a hip. His manner was vague, but it was the vagueness of a mind distracted by important issues, not enervated by insufficient oxygen supply. In fact, his breathing was deep and smooth, so rhythmic as to be almost hypnotic, and when introduced to Priscilla, he drew in an especially long breath. And winked.

They collected luggage, rented a car, and drove, bumper to bumper, into the hubbub and jubilee of Carnival.

Technically, Carnival had commenced January 6, with the ball of the Twelfth Night Revelers, and had been underway throughout the downcast days of February, but so far Carnival had been a matter of club parties and society balls, closed to the public and made all the more private, all the more small, by the unusually low temperatures. Now, on the Thursday before Mardi Gras, itself—five days before climactic Fat Tuesday—it was sewing on sequins, dusting off cowbells, and ambling into the streets. On Saturday, ninety-six hours of uninterrupted spectacle and debauchery would begin. The parade of the Knights of Momus would, that very Thursday evening, prepare the way.

Priscilla, Marcel, and Alobar were able to watch the Momus parade from the balcony of the sublet flat, where they sipped champagne and munched Cajun popcorn. For the Friday parade, they had to fight for space on the curbs of Canal Street. Saturday evening, they were back on the balcony for a third parade, and later that night, the three of them,
en costume,
attended a minor but nonetheless ornate ball to which Pris had wrangled invitations. There was something just a trifle unreal about dancing with a thousand-year-old man, Priscilla thought, particularly when the man was dressed as an astronaut chipmunk.

No less than four major parades were scheduled for Sunday. As they sat around the kitchen table Sunday morning, deciding which one they, would attend, Marcel thanked Pris for her hospitality, admitting to her that the festivities in New Orleans were grander in every way than Carnival in Nice.

That statement prompted from Alobar an expression of disappointment.

"New Orleans Mardi Gras is a sham," he said. "So is Mardi Gras in Nice. It's all a sham these days. No, I am not living in the past, but believe me, some things have changed for the worse."

He unbuttoned his shirt, for he was preparing to soak in a tub of hot water. "In olden times, Carnival had meaning. During the forty days of Lent, the forty days before Easter, almost the entire population would abstain from eating meat and drinking spirits. Many of them gave up sexual intercourse, as well, a most unhealthy expression of self-denial, I can attest, after my recent experience behind bars. Anyway, Carnival was a final fling, it was a last indulgence of rich foods and wine and lust before the severe austerity of Lent. When you're facing a forty-day fast, that last spree can be intense. It has physical significance as well as deep psychological penetration. The old Mardi Gras was charged with real meaning. Today ..." He sighed. "It's entertaining, but it's empty. It's just another big party. An opportunity for some to spend money and others to make money. It isn't connected to anything larger than itself. I've been a foe of Christianity all my life, but Christianity gave meaning to the fun and the rowdiness, made it more fun and more rowdy. You can't raise hell when you don't believe in hell."

"Pardon, Alobar," said Marcel, "but Carnival predates Christianity, does it not?"

"Ha ha. I'll say. By fifty centuries. It goes back to ancient Hellas—Greece—to the shepherds who worshipped a certain god named Pan. Pan." He sighed again. "We don't have Pan in our lives anymore, either."

"So you say we have kept the form of Mardi Gras but lost the content?"

"Yes. It's a shallow experience nowadays, and inevitably unsatisfying."