Jitterbug Perfume (19 page)

"About that time the shop started to lose money. I went to Paris with my formulas and was brutally rejected. LeFever showed interest, but eventually it, too, turned me down—"

At the mention of "LeFever," a blush actually did seep through V'lu's protective pigmentation, spreading upon her

carob complexion like an oil slick on the muddy Mississippi, and even though her nervous system was, by hurricane drops, entertained, she flinched.

"—after stringing me along, and with not so much as a franc for my time and trouble. I should never have left New Orleans. I was depressed after that, I admit, but Priscilla was worse. At least I kept a roof over our heads, dealing in items I had rather not discuss. Priscilla wouldn't turn a hand, just talked about her papa all the time, how he was going to come and give her this and that, buy her a sports car, pay for ballet lessons, move her into a big house with a yard, until finally I had to tell her the truth about the Reverend Wallet Lifter and his Mexican fortune; I had no choice, V'lu."

V'lu was still recovering from the dent that the reference to the French fragrance house of LeFever had kicked in the fuselage of her midnight airship. She perceived that her mistress needed comforting, but "She believe you?" was the extent to which she could respond.

"No, she didn't believe me, but she never forgave me, either. Oh, I suppose deep down she may have believed me. In any case, Wally's next visit was a stormy one, and did little to improve our financial situation. Six months later, she ran off and married that accordion player."

"How old her be den?"

"Sixteen." Madame shook her head and clucked. "Sixteen."

"He hab plenny money."

"He had
some
money. Priscilla imagined that it was plenty. And money was what she wanted. I mean, he was pushing forty, not exactly your dashing Latin lover, and she was such a pretty little thing—and so smart in school! His band, it was one of those South American tango fandango bands, was fairly popular for a while. They traveled all over, from Puerto Rico to the New York state mountains, playing in resort hotels. He claimed he was going to train her to dance with his troupe. I can't fathom how either one of them could have believed that for an instant.
Man Dieu,
the girl has two left feet!"

"Him go he home, though. Overseas."

"Yes, his band eventually folded, and he returned to Argentina alone, but I believe she had already left him by then. She left him right after Wally passed away."

"Her come watch she daddy die?" V'lu knew perfectly well that Priscilla had been at her father's deathbed, she'd heard the story more times than there were beets rotting under her cot, but she was disposed to hear it again.

"Pris was there at the end. Wally took sick in Mexico and had the decency to come back to New Orleans to expire. He was rather far gone when Pris and I got to Charity." Madame crossed herself, ringed fingers flashing like UFOs over the summits of her mountainous breasts. "The second we walked into the ward, though, he opened his eyes. His eyes were heavy and feverish, rather like yours are right now. He stared at Priscilla for quite a while before he spoke."

"Whut he say?"

"He said, 'You're startin' to turn out like your ol' daddy, darlin'. A novelty act.' That hit her like a brick.

"Then he recognized me and winked. He was only fifty, but he looked sixty-five. 'Stay in touch,' he said to me. 'Have you ever . . . ?'

"He closed his eyes and folded his arms on his chest; you could almost see the life ticking out of him. He sighed, kind of sweetly, and a contented smile softened his face. He muttered something. Then he was gone."

"Whut he mutter?"

"He said, "The perfect taco.' That's it, those were his last words. He sighed, 'Ahhh,' and said, 'The perfect taco.' "

The two women were silent for some time, maybe meditating upon the mystery of it all—the life, the death, the goofiness—maybe, in V'lu's case, in communion with a private totem. The oysters, those tender masters of sequestrable engineering, apparently had given up the ghost, perhaps to be reborn, in distant times, in distant foams, as Aphrodites. When finally V'lu spoke, the abruptness caused Lily to accidentally jettison the last remaining bubbles of champagne.

"Whut Miz Priscilla call about?"

"Pardon? Oh. Well, Miss Priscilla is seeking help, monetary or otherwise, in obtaining some—are you prepared for this?—some premium jasmine oil."

"Jamais!"
snapped V'lu. She caught herself. "Never," she repeated in English, catching herself once more and amending her response to: "Nebber."

"Chorie, I am surprised at you. Don't look so upset." With a yellowed linen napkin, Madame dabbed at the champagne spots on the love-seat velvet. "The Parfumerie Devalier has extracted eight ounces of the most magnificent jasmine essence the world has ever known. When we establish the proper base note, we shall own a boof that will have Paris crawling here, to
me,
on its knees. It could ruin us if our extract fell into the wrong hands, but still, Pris has some rights. It took a lot of heart for her to turn to me after I rejected her three years ago, pushed her away in favor of
you,
when she asked to come back into the shop—"

"But—"

"I am aware of what you are going to say: she refused to help me when I really needed her. Well, I refused to help her when she needed it, too."

"You hep her she whole life."

"I could have helped more."

"How?"

"I could have told her the truth about Wally. Years before I did. I could have squelched her silly fantasies." Madame paused. "But then, perfume business is fantasy business, is it not?" She draped her napkin over the shellfish platter like a shroud. "Don't fret, cher. I didn't even mention our jasmine to Priscilla, and since we have no assurance that the Jamaican will supply any more, we may not be able to afford to share with her. Yet, what harm if we did? I can't imagine how she might use it. To be frank, it would please me if her recent interest in perfumes proved sincere. But she is far from expert in the field."

V'lu sat upright, her countenance uncharacteristically grim. "Her hab dee bottle," she said firmly. "Her hab dat dadblasted bottle!"

The older woman seemed about to protest but changed her mind. The two of them just sat there, as if they were mourners sitting the night with the shrouded oysters. It was early in the week, so no bellows of alcoholic gaiety drifted in from Bourbon Street, nor any screech from a tourist having her purse snatched over on St. Ann. They might as well have been on the plantation; indeed, they could make out crickets rubbing their patent leather hooves together in some nearby

courtyard. A tomcat wailed. A foghorn Mark Twained on the river. Then, directly above their heads, there was a single soft thud or plop, followed by the softer sound of something rolling across the floor.

"Hmmm," said Madame D. "Maybe our Bingo Pajama has returned."

"Yes, ma'am. Or else it be somebody else all dee time be throwin' dem beets."

That, at any rate, was what V'lu had intended to say. At precisely that moment, however, the hurricane drops hit her with full force, and, instead, she exclaimed, "Ui zeh! Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch."

LATE ONE FOGGY AFTERNOON in November, just as he was snapping shut his attache case and calling it a day, Claude LeFever was summoned to the offices of his father, Luc, president of LeFever Odeurs. He arrived to find the old man wearing a whale mask.

"Papa! What in the world . . . ? Take that off!" Although more accustomed to giving the orders, Luc did as he was bid. When the mask had been removed, it was easy to see why Claude reacted as strongly as he did. There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong. A tall man, shoulders only slightly rounded by seventy years of nagging gravity; a powerfully built man, whose torso the blind might mistake for a home freezer; a handsome man, nose structurally sound enough to support what might have been the heaviest pair of horn-rimmed spectacles in Europe; a dignified man, despite a residual patch of snow-and-rust hair that resembled a wad of stuffing from a wino's mattress, Luc LeFever was so staid of bearing that on those rare occasions when he forged a smile, his body treated it as an infection, tripling its output of interferon in a frantic attempt to repulse the alien life form that had invaded it. This is not a portrait of your average whale-mask man.

(Of course, Marcel LeFever was also a distinguished-looking gentleman, sober in his selection of tailor, barber, and facial expression, but in Marcel's eyes were telltale squadrons of milkweed seeds, eager to fly to faraway places upon the first cooperative breeze; whereas Luc's gaze was sedentary, a clump of briers that scratched with severity anything careless enough to brush against it.)

"I wished to experience, for just five minutes, what it must be like being
him,"
said Luc. He smoothed his hair. He lit, with a gold-plated lighter, a Romeo y Julieta Presidente, handmade in the Dominican Republic with Cameroon wrapper: a foe of socialism, Luc had long maintained a personal boycott of Havana cigars.

"I wished to experience what it must be like to be ... unstable." He blew a smoke ring. It was square.

Claude was more than a little surprised. "What brought this on?"

"Death."

"Pardon?"

"I was examined by physicians this morning."

"Oh, no."

"Relax. My blood pressure has escalated, but if I submit to their damned medication, it will come back down. Other than that, 1 have a faint heart murmur, and a slight swelling of the big toe that could herald an attack of gout. Nothing to be alarmed about, but it underscores the fact that I'm getting to be an old, old man. I mentioned this in passing to one of the doctors, and he said, 'Nobody lives forever, Monsieur LeFever.' "

"An astute observation. For once, the medical profession has issued a statement with which I can agree."

"Can you now? I suppose you haven't heard of the Last Laugh Foundation?"

"Yes, Papa, I
have
heard of the Last Laugh Foundation. What a farce. You know who operates that place? Wiggs Dannyboy, the drug addict and jailbird. Insane Irish—"

"Yes, it's true that the notorious Dr. Dannyboy founded it, but do
you
know who's cast his lot with him? Wolfgang Morgenstern. I attended the Sorbonne with Morgenstern, he was in my elementary chemistry classes, we knew one another. Splendid fellow. He went on to win two Nobel prizes. Two, mind you."

"Yes, but—"

"Morgenstern wouldn't be involved if there wasn't something to it."

"Yes, but—"

"I can tell you, Morgenstern is not the sort to join forces with a charlatan."

"Papa, are you considering having yourself admitted to the immortality clinic?" Disapproval was as thick in Claude's voice as fog was thick in the Parisian streets.

With his fingertips, Luc slowly twirled the cigar. He examined its ash. The higher the quality of the cigar, the longer the ash it will produce. Eventually, however, every ash must drop. And the drop usually is as sudden as it is final. Did Luc detect a metaphor in the cigar ash? Might he muse philosophically about the nature of the Eternal Ashtray? Might we?

"No," he said, after a puff or two. "I must confess to having experienced a twinge of temptation, knowing Morgenstern as I do. But in the end"—he sighed—"immortality is not for me. Did I make a pun, there? No? Good. In any case, dying is a tradition, and I am simply not the type of fellow who defies tradition."

"Unless there is profit in it."

"Eh?"

"You've always been willing to break with tradition if there was a profit in it. That's the secret of your success in business."

"Um. That may be. But I see no profit in struggling to live beyond one's natural limits. There's something greedy about that, and I've taught you to distinguish between the profit motive and greed. Sooner or later, the greedy lose their profits. Profiteering is honorable and healthy, greed is degrading, perverse."

"Life's not the same as money."

"Thank God! Life ebbs away, but money, properly managed, grows and continues to grow, lifetime after lifetime. Life is transitory, money is eternal. Or it could be, if the damned Americans would lower their interest rates." Luc picked up the whale mask and blew a stream of blue smoke through its eyeholes. "This small talk about death, money, and, last but not least, perversity, cannot help but bring us back to
him."