Jitterbug Perfume (45 page)

"We deserve a break today?"

"We do."

"Dying is a bad habit?"

"Yes, and must be broken."

"Good luck, Wiggs."

"Thanks. You know, there is one condition under which I might willingly die. Might even take me own life."

"You're joking?"

He shook his head as somberly as an elephant. "If anything ever happened to Huxley Anne, I think I would choose to die, too, just on the chance that we could be together."

"Oh."

Wiggs was quiet for a while. A tear bubbled up, like a syllable from a flounder, in his single eye. It hung upside down from his lower lid, like a transparent sloth from a ledge, until gravity finally pried it loose, sending it plunging, silently, headlong, salt and all, into the anonymity of the steaming tub.

"One last thing about death," said Wiggs.

"What's that?" Pris asked rather morosely. She was still staring at the spot where his teardrop had hit the water.

"After you die, your hair and your nails continue to grow."

"I've heard that."

"Yes. But your phone calls taper off."

Once more, they climbed out onto the tiles to cool. Then, another hot soak and a final cooling. They toweled and slipped into their underpants, his as crisp and green as a shamrock, hers a faded, indeterminable color ringed with sagging elastic. They donned their pants, his of tweed, hers of denim, and, with the hands of miracle workers, restored to wholeness the golden salamanders that held the pant fronts together.

He'd made it clear she was not to stay the night. Seemed he and Huxley Anne had plans for early morning. So she embraced him at the door, feeling a trifle, well, vulnerable, insecure, and was steeling herself for the walk home when he asked, "Well, how's it comin' with the perfume?"

She hadn't wanted to speak of perfume for fear she might blurt out something about the bottle. She dare not tell him of the bottle, but, rather, must show it to him, must hold it up to that gleaming orb of his and watch the silver hairs stand on his head like the bristles of a robot's toothbrush. How she looked forward to that moment!

"I've come to the conclusion," she said, "that beet is the bottom note in
K23.
Am I right?"

Hesitant to respond, he eventually nodded in the affirmative, trusting that the fairies, that the Salmon That Fed on the Nine Hazel Nuts of Poetic Art, that his ex-wife's knickers would not regard a nod a breach of promise.

"I thought so. But how in the world is it used? I really can't figure out ..."

"You're the perfumer."

It was Priscilla's turn to nod in agreement, but to herself she said, "Ha! I'm an unemployed waitress without an ounce of first-rate jasmine to my name. And if I don't get lucky, and feist, this time next week I'll be hustling nachos at someplace like Gourmet de Tijuana."

The way she backed through the door, waving good-bye, sort of burdened and flustered, you'd have thought that she had suddenly and inadvertently cornered the world market in refined beans.

In truth, Priscilla felt a twinge of resentment that she had to return to her little studio apartment. Certainly there was plenty of room for her at the Last Laugh Foundation. Why, Christ and all twelve disciples could have dwelt in the Last Laugh Foundation, although Judas would have had to sleep on the sun porch.

She walked down the path feeling like three-fourths of two pieces of slug bait. As she passed the letter box at the guard gate, she had an urge to stick a stamp on her forehead and mail herself to the Abominable Snowman.

On the street, it was worse. The crowd of aspiring immortalists was restless and surly. They glared at her as if she were a piece of modern art at a county fair. A hostile sneer here, a puzzled laugh there, and not a blue ribbon in sight.

Apparently, there recently had been a provision run, because many in line were munching on fast-food hamburgers. They were old enough to know better. Some of them were old enough to remember when old McDonald had a
farm.

People used to die from germs. Now they died from bad habits. That was what Dr. Dannyboy said. Heart disease was caused by bad personal habits, cancer was caused by bad industrial habits, war was caused by bad political habits. Dannyboy believed that even old age was a habit. And habits could be broken. Priscilla felt like lecturing the crowd on its habits and sending it home, but, of course, she did not.

Toward the end of the line, she thought she heard a white-haired guy on crutches remark that it was December 7, "the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Bailey." He was wrong. It was then December 8.

Five days later, on December 13, Pris gave Wiggs Dannyboy a call. She was in a funk about their "relationship," a snit compounded by the detective's lack of progress, and was desperate enough to try to force a talk.

"Pris, me darlin', 'tis happy I am that ye called!"

"Really?"

"Sure and I couldn't be happier was I to learn that God and the Devil had settled out o' court, endin' once and for all the ridiculous notion of a struggle between good and evil that has provided the religious o' the world with a pious excuse to kill and plunder and has spoiled the plot o' many a novel. I couldn't be happier was I to grow another eye, one that shines in the night like a wolfs eye and can twist on its stalk to look up a lassie's skirt. I couldn't be happier was Alobar to be released from the nick, which, indeed, he may be next month, if it's not too late. As fortunate as I am to be born an Irishman and thus possess a license to broadcast this brand o' pseudolyrical bullshit, that's how fortunate I am that you—I mean, ye—called. I would have called ye but ye haven't a phone."

"Don't mock the afflicted."

"Or I would've dropped by, except I've been to New Orleans to deliver a certain vegetable. Ye know what I mean?"

"All too well."

"I do have good news. Marcel 'Bunny' LeFever has successfully buried his Uncle Luc and has aimed his wondrous nose again in our direction. Dr. Morgenstern and I—he sends his regards, by the way—are planning another dinner party, if we can coax the university scientists away from their research for the CIA. A week from tonight, I think, and ye must come. Only this time ye must sit next to me; to me left, would be proper, so's I can rest me left hand on your tender thigh while I am liftin' a sociable glass with me right."

"Wiggs?"

"Yes, love?"

"You've had me to dinner, and now Marcel LeFever is coming. I'm curious why you haven't had my stepmother or V'lu."

"Oh, I invited them. As a matter of fact, I just learned on this trip to New Orleans that V'lu actually flew to Seattle to attend the last dinner. I have no idea why she didn't show up."

"Wait a minute. V'lu was in town the night of that party?"

"Yes. Stayed overnight and returned home the next day."

Adrenaline welled in Priscilla with such pressure it was practically shooting out of her major orifices.

"Wiggs," she said, "I have to make a trip to New Orleans myself."

"When?"

"Right away."

"Will ye be back in time for the party?"

"I hope so. If I am, I'll have a surprise for you."

"Goody. I love surprises."

"Good-bye then."

"Bye-bye, Pris. Have a lovely trip and watch out for the bees."

After she hung up, she thought,
Watch out for the bees? Whatever did he mean?

She would find out soon enough.

The Chinese discovered gunpowder by accident while trying to invent a potion that would alchemically lengthen life.

It is unclear what the Chinese were trying to invent when they discovered spaghetti. Perhaps the spaghetti noodle, too, was a byproduct of longevity research, of an effort to live a won, won ton; a futile attempt to avoid facing the question, "Who's going to chop your suey when I'm gone?"

No matter. It may be prudent, however, for would-be immortals to bear in mind the Chinese experience. Seeking prolonged existence, they ended up with gunpowder, the elixir of death, not life; the propellant of history's innumerable tragic bullets, including the ones that felled Gandhi, John Lennon, and Bambi's mother—and the one that left Bingo Pajama facedown on Royal Street.

Figuratively and literally, New Orleans was buzzing. It was an angry black buzz in counterpoint with a terrified white buzz: historically typical of that city where slaves liberated themselves long before Lincoln, where a black aristocracy flowered to rival the only true white aristocracy in America, where a black voodoo queen once ruled as completely (if covertly) as any Catherine of Russia; where African mystery, large, organic, and powerful, has provided a soundtrack of primeval rhythm against which all metropolitan life—stodgy white -commerce as well as fierce black pleasure—has had to unfold.

Even in slavery, the blacks called the tune. Proud and virtually fearless, they danced in Congo Square in such a graceful abandon, in such harmony with unseen forces, that their owners acted to outlaw African dancing lest it escalate into rebellion. And all the while, even as the owners drafted proclamation after proclamation of wiggle prohibition, their white toes tapped in their shoes. White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated
fete champetre
with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

Due to their poverty, anger, and moral imperatives, some New Orleans blacks were disposed to create a jazz of robbery. Due to their insecurity, fear, -and religious philosophy, some New Orleans whites were disposed to compose hymns of brutality. The thieves tooted out of the federal housing projects—they were young, spirited, and pessimistic. The cops lumbered out of the bayous—they were paunchy, insensitive, and easily manipulated by authoritarian dogmas. On the one side, playground slam-dunkers, jive-talkers and second-line parade dancers with an easy propensity for redistributing wealth; on the other, good ol' boys who, up until getting their badges and patrol cars, went slender-pole fishing by day and slammed each other around by night. Clashes were inevitable, but the white boys had the law on their side.

Umm, but the air here is getting thick with sociology. We are discussing New Orleans, after all, the city Louis Armstrong said "has got that thing." (As for the identity of "that thing," Louis said, in the most Zen statement ever made by a westerner, "If you have to ask, you'll never know.") Perhaps it is time for a riff.

"New Orleans"

She went to the school of Miss Crocodile

Where she learned to walk backwards

And skin black cats with her teeth.

Soon she could wear the loot of dead pirates

Cook zee perfect gumbo

And telephone the moon collect.

But it took sixty-six doctors to fix her

After she kissed that snake.

New Orleans was buzzing. A Jamaican flower peddler and street singer named Bingo Pajama had been shot and killed by two off-duty policemen who claimed they were trying to make an arrest. Pajama, a suspect in the bizarre death of a fellow officer, made a threatening move, according to the cops. They pulled down on him with their .38 Specials.

The black community was not swallowing that trash. Too often, in Louisiana, blacks suspected of having killed policemen were themselves slain by their arresting officers. It smacked of revenge by execution, and it had become routine. Also routine were the hearings in which the cops were cleared of any wrongdoing. It was the sort of situation that turned a second-liner's bile a dangerous hue, the sort that could build into a "race riot."

Although Bingo Pajama was from out of town, a foreigner with a funny accent, a bum who kept bees but had no hive; a mysterious, clownish figure known well by none, the blacks of the city adopted him posthumously. They went so far as to send him off with a jazz funeral.

Mourners poured out of the projects, out of the shotgun

houses below Canal Street, out of barrooms and gumbo parlors, out of the Baptist church at Liberty and First and the Hoodoo church on Rampart, and with a mighty brass band leading the way (horns wailing in the modes of both Satchmo and Bird, drums recreating the phantom energies of the Congo), with umbrellas twirling (although the day was dry), feathers flashing, joints smoldering, bottles gurgling, and fingers snapping, they strutted and stomped, rambled and hooted, all the way to the French Quarter, through the Quarter, and back to the Central City again. A horse-drawn hearse bore the coffin, but there was no corpse in it. The police had the corpse and wouldn't release it. Inside the coffin was a bouquet of jasmine branches, crushed and faded but so potently sweet it perfumed the length of the parade.