Jitterbug Perfume (9 page)

"Since I've been working at El Papa Muerta, nothing tastes good to me anymore," Priscilla said.

The holocaustal effect that serving food for a living can have on one's appetite was a subject discussed at the meeting of the Daughters of the Daily Special. "That's why it's preferable to wait cocktails," somebody said. "No, that's worse," responded Sheila Gomez. "Waiting cocktails kills your appetite for liquor."

The meeting was held in the Spotted Necktie Room at the Old Spaghetti Factory. There were about forty women present, twice as many as Priscilla had expected. After they finished complaining about appetite loss, they complained about the neutron bomb that working nights had dropped on their social lives. Then they really got steamed up over having to be nice to people they couldn't stand. It wasn't the men who infuriated them, not even bottom-pinching men (some waitresses, a minority, actually enjoyed having their bottoms pinched), it was the women. "The most unbearable aspect of this job is waiting on rich, crabby, drunk ladies," said one waitress. "Right on!" said another. "Except for the rare one who might have toted trays somewhere in her sordid past, they'll pick the tips up off the table as soon as their husbands' backs are turned."

"How true. A wife is a waitress's public enemy number one."

"Beware of blue hair and T-shirts that say 'World's Best Grandma.' They expect
you
to tip
them."

Next they compared notes on how much their feet hurt and the psychotic states of cooks. Evidently, all restaurant cooks were psychotic, some were just less violent than others. It was all rather depressing. But, then, they began to share stories of the odd mammoth tip they'd received the previous week, the odd offer of booze, cocaine, or a big house in the South of France; the odd, interesting customer, including local celebrities, who the celebrity dined with and what they ate; and before long, drinking Chianti all the while, they got off the subject of waitressing altogether and had a fine old time exchanging reviews and critiques of the solar eclipse.

The meeting was nearly over when they got around to considering Priscilla's application for membership. As Ricki had warned it might, it met with some opposition.

"It's irrelevant that she's had only one year of college," Ricki told the assembly. "She's a genius."

"Says who?"

"Says me."

"Ha ha."

"You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House."

"Well, how about some proof."

"Go ahead," said Ricki, "test her. Ask her a question."

"What's the capital of San Salvador?" asked Trixie Melodian.

"You call that a genius question?" Doris Newton responded. "I've seen retired air force sergeants answer harder questions than that on
Tic Tac Dough."

"Besides," said Ellen Cherry Charles, "San Salvador is the capital. The country is El Salvador."

"Are you positive?" asked Trixie. "Why would the city have a longer name than the country?"

"If she's such a genius, why is she working at El Papa Muerta? Everybody knows Mexican restaurants are the pits for tips."

"El Papa Muerta is about as Mexican as Juneau."

"Does El Papa Muerta mean The Dead Potato or The Dead Pope?"

"What's the difference?"

"I resent that," said Sheila Gomez, glancing at the little crucifix that dangled its gold-skinned heels above her globes.

Priscilla cleared her throat. She spoke for the first time since the meeting began. Her voice was a trifle high and squeaky. "I've worked at five Mexican restaurants in three years. I'm searching for the perfect taco."

That stopped them. Hell, maybe she
was
a genius.

Ricki stood again. "Little Priscilla here is a scientist. She's got her own laboratory. And is she onto something hot! I'm not at liberty to reveal what it is at this point in time, you understand, a slip of the lip can sink a ship, but when the moment comes . . . well, you're all gonna feel like a slow boat to China for hemming and hawing over taking her in. Let me remind you of something. None of the grants that the Daughters have awarded so far have generated a dime of income for the program. Nothing personal, Sheila, I know Third World algebra is important, but it didn't do dogshit at the box office; and, Joan, that little book of poems you printed about driftwood and your mama's melanoma was real pretty, it brought big whopping tears to my eyes is what it did, but, honestly now, the GNP was unaffected. Ditto, Trixie's harmonic tremors. I don't want to sound crass, but Priscilla here is zoned commercial. She's got a million bucks by its long green tail, and if we help her hold on and haul it in, each and every one of us is gonna soak our weary feet in Dom Perignon.

This is not the time to talk about funding her scientific research, we'll come to that a ways down the road, but this smart little goose may be prepared to lay us our first golden egg. All in favor of admitting her to the club say 'aye.

The ayes swept it, and out in the parking lot, Ricki looked at Priscilla and winked. "What's the capital of El Papa Muerta?" she asked. "San Papa Muerta?"

Priscilla grabbed Ricki and kissed her full and wet on the mouth, right in front of a great many waitresses who were pulling out of the lot in various rusted-out VW bugs. The rusted-out VW bug is the national bird of Waitressland. It was then and there that Priscilla made up her mind to go to bed with Ricki. But while her mind was convinced, her body needed encouragement, so they went to the Virginia Inn at First and Virginia and drank a gang of discount champagne. Still, Priscilla's endocrine system was lagging a few laps behind her resolve. "My pilot light has gone out and needs to be relit," she said. Ricki suggested a porno movie. She hoped that a double bill of
Starship Eros
and
Garage Girls
would turn up the thermostat. Priscilla hoped so, too.

Once in the theater, however, the Chianti and champagne began to get to Ricki. They were sitting up close, in the third row, and all of those colossal in-and-outs and up-and-downs made her queasy. It was a classic case of motion sickness. She held her tummy and moaned. Priscilla turned to the row of baldheaded men behind them. "Would you mind not smoking, " she said. "This woman is having a religious experience."

"If they jiggle one more time, I'm gonna spew," said Ricki.

Priscilla helped her to her feet and led her down the aisle. A couple of the bald boys followed them. "My friend has a chronic allergy to heterosexuality," Priscilla told them. "We brought her here in an attempt to activate her body's natural immune system, but it didn't work." The men laughed kind of nervously. "Don't mock the afflicted!" Priscilla screamed at them. The Don Juans returned to their seats.

It had been a while since Priscilla had driven a car. She shifted gears jerkily. Ricki groaned. They had to make three pit stops between downtown and the Ballard district, a distance so slight that octogenarian Norwegian crones had been known to walk it, their shopping bags loaded with lutefisk. At

Ricki's duplex, Priscilla washed the victim's face and tucked her in. She appeared to have passed out, but as Priscilla was tiptoeing to the door, she called in a weak voice, "It was wonderful, Pris."

"What was, honey? The meeting? The champagne?"

"The eclipse," said Ricki. "It was probably the most real thing I've ever seen, but it was also like a dream. You know what I mean? Real and unreal, beautiful and strange, like a dream. It got me high as a kite, but it didn't last long enough. It ended too soon and left nothing behind."

"That's how it is with dreams," said Priscilla. "They're the perfect crime." She thought then of the elusive exudate, the living emerald she Hunted in the forests of olfactory memory, the dream she lived in her nose. She felt her laboratory pulling her like a tide, and it taxed her strength to resist.

With effort, she drove Ricki's car to the waterfront and sipped a cup of bivalve nectar at Ivar's Clam Bar (it was a walk-up, fast-fish stand where she needn't worry about being served by a waitress who might have been at the meeting that day). Then, having resolved on her last birthday to complete every task she began, she returned to the moviehouse and watched the ending of
Starship Eros.
Everything considered, it had been the most relaxing and entertaining two days off she'd enjoyed all year. "All work and no play makes Priscilla a dull genius," she lectured herself on the way home.

It was after midnight when she arrived at her building. There was an odor in the hallway more funky than a cabbage pot, and on her doorsill there sat in certain firepluggian splendor, like a dropping from the eclipse, like a disembodied bulb that had been beamed to Earth from Starship Eros, another beet.

LOUISIANA IN SEPTEMBER was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air—moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh—felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even
sounded
like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.

The only way to hang up on the obscene caller was to install air conditioning. The Parfumerie Devalier never had been air-conditioned, however, and unless it lifted from its current economic slump, it probably never would be. As a consequence, both Madame Lily Devalier and her maid and assistant, V'lu Jackson, held old-fashioned lacquered paper fans, with which they stirred the humid respiration that Louisiana panted into the shop. They were sitting on the lime velvet love seat at the rear of the retail area, watching television and fanning away. On the six o'clock news there were scenes of a total eclipse of the sun as photographed from atop the Space Needle in Seattle and the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the path of an eclipse is one hundred and sixty-seven miles wide, allowing Seattle to catch the southern edge of this one and Paris the northern edge: in New Orleans, the sun had burned on as was its habit, undimmed except by a late afternoon shower).

"Whooee!" exclaimed V'lu as she watched first Seattle and then Paris go from broad daylight to supernatural darkness in a matter of seconds. "Whooee! That done beats hurricane drops all to pieces."

"I see it as an omen," said Madame Devalier.

"Say whut?"

"An omen. A sign. Paris is eclipsed, New Orleans basks in light. The perfumes of Devalier have always been as good as any in France, and now they are going to be better. Parfumerie Devalier is going to prosper, and Paris—proud, arrogant, pompous Paris—is going to play second fiddle." Madame touched the avalanche of her bosom with her fen, nodded three times, and smiled.

V'lu giggled. "Seattle, too, ma'am."

"What about Seattle?"

"Seattle eclipsed, too. So we don't have to worry none 'bout Seattle."

"I wasn't worried in the least about Seattle. Why would I worry about Seattle, of all places?"

V'lu hesitated before replying. The young woman and the old woman stared at each other, fanning relentlessly.
"She
in Seattle, ma'am. Last anybody heard."

"So? What difference does it make where 'she' is? Not that I don't have feelings for her, but her whereabouts has nothing to do with our business."

Again V'lu hesitated. Her brown eyes opened as wide as the mouths of baby birds. "She got dee bottle," V'lu said.

"The bottle! Bah! Poof! You and that bottle. Forget that bottle, it means nothing.
Rien.
Even if it had value, what on earth could
she
do with it?" Madame's fan whirred like a sewing machine. Her fan seemed to generate static electricity. A halo of heat lightning formed around it. "Even if that bottle is all you say it is, we don't need it. We have right here in this shop the most fabulous boof of jasmine the human nose has ever tasted—"

"Bingo Pajama!"

"I beg your pardon. Is that more vulgar slang from your vulgar generation?"

"Bingo Pajama, ma'am. That he name. He be back from dee island nex week wif mo' flowers."

"And we haven't tamed the last batch yet! Tangerine seems to work okay as the top note. It aerates rather quickly, but it rides the jasmine and doesn't sink completely into it. With a middle note of the vigor of that Bingo Pajama jasmine—my Lord in heaven, girl, is that actually his name?-\what we need is a base note with a floor of iron. It can't just sit there, though, it has to rise up subtly and unite the tangerine somehow with that bodacious jasmine theme.
A.
very special base note is what you and I must find." Madame Devalier's fan fluttered wildly, and V'lu fanned hard to keep up with her.