Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

  Priscilla failed to notice the beets right away. Her gaze was concentrated upon Dr. Dannyboy. That a one-eyed man of fifty could be so handsome! Dannyboy was slender, svelte, and nimble, a tanned, athletic man with an Airstream nest of silver curls, teeth like the spots on dominoes, and more twinkle in his single eye than most men have in a pair. A high-voltage blue, the eye color was in aesthetic contrast to the patch that he wore on the right side, the patch being white vinyl with a painted green shamrock in its center. Priscilla had seen photographs of him, of course, taken both before and after he lost his eye, but they had barely hinted at the charm that spilled out of him like foam out of an ale mug.

  Of his background, she knew a little. Brilliant young anthropologist who left his native Dublin to teach at Harvard, where he experimented with mind-altering chemicals beyond the call of academic duty. Lost his professorship, journeyed to the Amazon to munch vision vine with the Indians, returning to the United States as a self-styled psychedelic prophet, or “electronic shaman,” as he called himself, appearing on TV talk shows, lecturing on campuses everywhere, promoting with considerable flair the notion that certain drugs can raise consciousness and that persons with elevated consciousness are less apt to be violent, greedy, fearful, or repressed. Since it was hardly in the best national interest to relieve citizens of their violence, greed, fear, or repression, the government acted to silence Dr. Dannyboy by arresting him on a phony marijuana charge and checking him into the steel hotel. Escaped, only to be nabbed two years later on a Costa Rican orchid farm, and imprisoned again. Paroled after nearly a decade, during which time he lost an eye to a sadistic prison guard and impregnated his wife by smuggling out his semen in a dinner roll. Turned up in Seattle a couple of years back to quietly (for him) found an institution devoted to “immortality and longevity research.”

  All this Priscilla knew, but it seemed to have nothing to do with the attractive man who sat at the head of the table in Irish tweeds, sipping red wine, tapping from time to time his garish eye patch with his salad fork, and holding forth on a variety of topics. “England!” she heard him bellow with distaste. “How can a country that cannot produce ice cubes in abundance be hopin' to palm itself off as a major civilization?” Moments later, he had turned his attention to grammar: “There are no such things as synonyms!” he practically shouted. “Deluge is not the same as flood!” After each of these pronouncements, he erupted with laughter, almost as if making fun of what he'd just so passionately proclaimed.

  At the other end of the table, acting as hostess, was Dannyboy's young daughter, Huxley Anne. Priscilla sat to Huxley Anne's left. The place directly across from Priscilla was vacant. “There was a colored woman supposed to eat there,” volunteered Huxley Anne, “but she didn't come. Maybe she's late. She lives long away.” The place to the right of Dannyboy was likewise unoccupied. “That's Dr. Morgenstern's dish,” explained the little girl. “He'll be downstairs soon as he finishes jumping.”

  “Jumping?” asked Priscilla.

  “Uh-huh,” said Huxley Anne, giggling. Before she could say more, Professor Morgenstern entered the room and made to take his place. A tall, thickset German, gray-suited, bespectacled, bald as a bomb, the noted chemist might have appeared the epitome of the cold, clear-eyed, methodical, reasoning man were he not panting like a Saint Bernard on avalanche patrol. His face was as red as a Christmas sock, and his heart was pounding so hard that his bow tie was bouncing.

  Despite the fact that the guest of honor was obviously and oddly out of breath, the others at table were relieved to see him. They were, for the most part, members of Seattle's scientific fraternity—department heads from the University of Washington, Boeing Aircraft physicists, research chemists at Swedish Hospital, mayoral advisers on medicine and technology—and they had been ill at ease in the company of Wiggs Dannyboy, what with his careless pronouncements and boisterous laughter. Wary of Dannyboy's reputation, the good academics probably believed their host loaded on some arcane substance, though Priscilla had been around both French Quarter trippers and Irish Channel blarneymongers long enough to recognize that this particular brand of bullshit was not artificially induced.

  At any rate, the guests were visibly relieved when Dr. Morgenstern joined them, and they applauded when Wiggs lifted his much-consulted wineglass and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let us be welcomin' to Seattle, to the Last Laugh Foundation, to our pleasant company here on this rainy November eve, the world's only double Nobel laureate, your Dr. Wolfgang Morgenstern.”

  As the applause died out and the chemist sat down to analyze the minestrone soup, little Huxley Anne leaned over to Pris and whispered, “Wolfgang, show us some tricks on your Nobel lariat. That's what my daddy says. Hee hee.” Priscilla laughed at that. Wiggs must have heard her laugh, because he grinned approvingly in her direction and waved at her with his soup spoon.

  The salmon linguine was tasty, and Huxley Anne, who was edging toward roly-poliness, got seriously involved with it. The seat across from Priscilla remained vacant. The other guests attempted to converse with the rather taciturn Dr. Morgenstern. Most of their questions were fielded by Wiggs Dannyboy, who, after a rational sentence or two, would issue some immortalist epigram, such as, “If you can't take it with you, don't go,” or “Death is a grave mistake,” followed by a jolly roar from deep within his tweeds—and pained smiles from the polite diners. Eating in silence, Priscilla was mildly amused by it all—until she spotted the trio of raw beets in the centerpiece.

  Could Dannyboy be behind the produce deposits at her doorsill? And if so, to what possible end? She sank into a swamp of spooky speculation, from which she emerged with a start when a maid inquired if she wanted chocolate mousse or apple slices for dessert. “Uh, er, beg your pardon?” mumbled Priscilla.

  “How do you feel about calories?” asked the maid, displaying the dessert tray.

  “Well, there are more of them than there are of us,” said Pris. She selected the mousse.

  Huxley Anne squealed at this, and for the second time during the meal, Wiggs wagged a utensil at Priscilla and regarded her warmly.

  After coffee, the guests thinned out rapidly. They had obviously come solely to meet Wolfgang Morgenstern, and having accomplished that, to greater or lesser degrees of disappointment, they made for the exit. (Exit, not egress. There are no such things as synonyms.) “Interesting,” thought Priscilla, “these people wanting out so badly and all those others on the street wanting in.” She elected to join the small, brave group that gathered in the front room for brandy and tobacco. She thought perhaps there might be a tour of the laboratories later. Mostly she wished to inquire about those beets on the table.

  “I have to go to bed now, Miz . . . ?”

  “Partido. Miz Partido. But you can call me Priscilla.”

  “I have to go to bed now, Priscilla. It's after ten and the cigar smoke makes me dizzy.”

  “Goodnight, Huxley Anne. It's been totally awesome.” She shook the child's chubby hand. “Say, do you think your daddy will let us have a peek at his laboratories?”

  The little girl looked puzzled. “What labbertories?” she asked.

  “Hmm,” said Priscilla. “No labs? Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Can you show me where you hung my raincoat? Cigar smoke makes me dizzy, too.”

  She downed her cognac in a single gulp, causing evidence of alcohol trauma to roll down her cheeks as she donned her yellow vinyl slicker. She waved goodbye to the blurry figure of Huxley Anne that was ascending the stairs, and somewhat timidly, despite being three-quarters drunk, approached her host. He was stationed in front of the fireplace, pointing out some feathered skinning knives to an academic-looking couple that was trying its best to get away in order to speak to Dr. Morgenstern. “Your cannibal gourmet is partial to the palm o' the hand,” Wiggs was saying, “but his piece de résistance is the testicles. Tried them myself once. Bloody delicious!” The woman gasped.

  “Excuse me, please. Dr. Dannyboy . . .”
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  Wiggs turned to face Priscilla, his good eye, so bright with intelligence and rebellion, swinging like a beacon. The shamrock patch followed in its wake. “You're not leavin'?”

  “Yep. I don't know what I'm doing here in the first place. But thanks for dinner. Bloody delicious.”

  The couple fled. Dannyboy grinned. “Sure and go on with you. The likes of you is a wee bit o' delicious, as well.” O' delicious is what he said and o' delicious is probably what he meant, o' palatable, o' savory, and o' delectable being unacceptable synonyms. “Do you have to be runnin'?”

  The glint in his eye! The lilt in his voice! Her estrogen level accelerated from zero to sixty in one-point-nine seconds. The gravity force was so great it snapped her pelvis back and stiffened her nipples. It was with difficulty that she replied, “I do. I have a date.”

  “A date, eh? You're actin' none too happy about it. As a matter of fact, darlin', if I may say as much, you strike me as an unhappy woman overall. And I say as much even though you were the only guest here this evening with a sense o' humor. Which is to say, you were the only guest with any wisdom about you.”

  Priscilla was rather taken aback. She didn't know whether to feel insulted or flattered. “I'm fine,” she said. “I've been kinda tired. You're jumping to conclusions. Besides, unhappiness is natural. I'm not one of those bubbleheads that spend all their time trying to avoid the normal misery of life.”

  She moved toward the front door, but none too swiftly. He followed.

  “Sure and life is a lot o' misery, all right, and death is more misery, yet. Dread, fear, anxiety, guilt, even a bit o' neurosis, are perfectly natural responses to a life that promises such an unacceptable end. The trick is not to take such responses too seriously, not to trivialize your all too short stay in your carton o' flesh by cooperatin' with misery.”

  “Seems to me,” said Priscilla, snapping and unsnapping the collar of her slicker, “that the so-called happy people are the ones who are trivial. Avoiding reality and never thinking about anything important.”

  “Reality is subjective, and there's an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as 'important' only if 'tis sober and severe. Sure and still you're right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they're not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o' self-indulgence.”

  Did he think she was an audience or something? Couldn't he tell that she was an off-duty waitress full of mousse and booze, and stuck on a collision course with the lips of a pretty Italian bartender? “Jesus,” she said. “You talk like a book.”

  “That's not surprisin'.”

  “You mean you read too much?”

  “There's no such thing. Unless it's prissy academic novels that you're readin'. No, I mean that when I was a wee lad, I used to climb into my parents' bed of a morning early, crawl in between my mum and dad, and each o' them would immediately roll over and turn a back to me, just like they were a pair o' bookends. It's only natural I grew up thinkin' I was a bloody volume.”

  “Parental rejection, uh? There's a subject I know inside out. It doesn't appear to have slowed you down.”

  “Would you be likin' to discuss it?”

  “No,” she said. She saw her opening and went for it. “I'd be liking to discuss beets.”

  A laugh went off in his throat like a rat-bomb, sending the last of the guests scurrying for their bumbershoots. His eye closed and then slowly opened, a process that took so long that by the time his iris was up to full glint, the house had been cleared of Seattle scientists and Wolfgang Morgenstern was halfway up the stairs. “Beets, you say?”

  “Right! I want to know why I was invited here tonight and why the center of your dining room table bears a striking resemblance to my doorjamb.”

  Her tone was so firm that he could have set his brandy on it.

  “Ah. Indeed. Yes. Well, to be perfectly frank, Miss Partido, darlin', there was a ration o' beets on my table tonight because there has been beets at your very own door—but, alas, I'm not sure o' the connection myself. Except that it has something to do with the thousand-year-old janitor and his perfume.”

  She looked him over pore by pore. He was slightly sloshed and terribly flaky (and cute in that daddy way that always made her heart roll over), but he wasn't surfing the psychedelic billows, she was reassured of that. Moreover, he seemed sincere. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Sure and what am I talkin' about, indeed. I was hopin' we could get into that tonight, but only one o' you showed up. Actually, I've known all week that Marcel LeFever wouldn't be here until next Sunday, but I really was expectin' the other—”

  “Wait a minute. Marcel LeFever? The perfumer?”

  “The one and the same.”

  Priscilla had heard Bunny LeFever speak at a perfumers' convention. It had been quite a speech. It had, in some crazy way, changed her life. She unsnapped her slicker. “I think we need to sit down and talk,” she said.

  “All right, then,” he said, helping her out of the coat. “I'll be gettin' us a splash o' something. And, say, Miss Partido, though I know it's an affront to the Virgin Mary to be mixin' business with pleasure, pleasure is my business—the extension o' pleasure, indefinitely, eternally—and my immortal soul is warmed by the loveliness o' you, you're a sight for sore eyes, so to speak"—he trapped his shamrock patch with his empty snifter—"and I deserve to be chained by night in a church basement without company o' cassette player if I am not man enough to ask you for the teeniest, slightest brush of oral-muscular affection.”

  Jesus, she thought. I bet the son of a bitch does believe in fairies. But she couldn't help herself. She kissed him.

  Meanwhile, a dozen blocks away, Ricki, carrying a pound of gift-wrapped chocolate, had let herself into Priscilla's apartment. There had been no trick to that. The door wasn't locked. It had been slightly ajar, in fact. Ricki shook her head. “Where is that girl's mind at?” she wondered.

  In addition, the apartment was in the worst state Ricki had ever seen it. True, no gnarled old beets were in evidence, and it smelled as if it had been recently scoured—the odor of ammonia cut right through the floral fragrances in the makeshift laboratory—but drawers were out of the dresser, the kitchenette cupboard looked as if it had been rifled by a starving ape, and possessions were scattered everywhere. There were sanitary napkins all over the bathroom, that's how bad it was.

  Ricki rolled up her sweatshirt sleeves and set to putting the place in order. It took her the best of two hours—lucky it was only a studio apartment—but her Virgo exactitude finally prevailed. “Won't Pris be surprised,” she said. “It's after midnight. I hope she gets home soon.”

  NEW ORLEANS

  THE MINUTE YOU LAND IN NEW ORLEANS, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get the aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky filé z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po'boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week—yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars.

  You would
think that the natives would be immune, and to a certain extent they are, but even a lifelong resident of New Orleans must do his or her share of Creole consumption or suffer consequences. The cuisine is glorious, of course, and the fact that the people of New Orleans are compelled to dine out so often should not be considered a hardship in any sense other than financial. Ah, but there are underlying motives about which southern gentry will not speak. Even riffraff are hesitant to acknowledge the disgusting specter that haunts their city. They feed the loa and make the best of it.

  When citizens have been out of town for a while, they know by instinct that no matter how well they may have dined on their journey, they must fend off the beast immediately upon their return. Thus, V'lu Jackson stepped off the jetliner from Seattle to find herself craving a fancy platter of Arnaud's daube panée, accompanied by a glass of Bichot Chass-Montrachet (with maybe a squirt of hurricane drops for the zoom that was in it). However, to Lily Devalier, who met her at the airport, she said, “Mmm, ah sure would lak to stop by Buster Holmes, git me a mess a ribs 'fore we goes home.”

  And Madame Devalier said, “Gracious, cher, I dropped everything and spent a small fortune to dash all the way out to Moisant Field"—she still called New Orleans International by its original name—"to meet you, and now you want me to sit around that hole-in-the-wall while you slop and slather over ribs. Didn't they give you a meal on the plane?” She complained, but she ordered their taxi to Buster's because she secretly understood.

  What Madame did not understand was why V'lu requested that she come to the airport. Indeed, she didn't fully understand the circumstances that had led to V'lu traveling to Seattle in the first place. She had ignored the card inviting the staff of Parfumerie Devalier to a dinner party at some Seattle place that sounded like a comedy nightclub. She suspected it was a publicity stunt for a dump where Priscilla was working. “Dr. Wolfgang Morgenstern” was probably one of those loud Jewish boys who got paid for telling dirty jokes in public. Then an envelope arrived containing a round-trip plane ticket, and a guest list that included scientists, perfumers, and, yes, Priscilla Partido. Very curious. Still, Lily refused to consider attending, but V'lu began pestering her to allow her to go, and while the idea of V'lu sitting down to dinner with gentlemen of science seemed ludicrous to her, curiosity, concern for Priscilla, indigestion or something else got the better of her, and she let that poor simple bayou girl go jetting off to make a fool of herself—and the shop—in a distant city that as far as Madame could tell was barely civilized.