Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

Priscilla closed her eyes and slipped into a crack between the bar noise and the movie noise, where, under her coffee-scented breath, she prayed; asking God, in whom she only marginally believed, what to do about the formula, what to do about Ricki's lust and love. She closed, out of habit, with an “amen,” not knowing for sure what “amen” really meant, but suspecting that when God finally ended the world his big boom-boom voice would not bellow “amen” but “Tha-tha-tha-tha-that's all, folks,” à la Porky Pig.

Into the dining room she went, virtually limping with fatigue, screwing up her face with distaste at the diners being shown to their tables. What kind of gourmet would trust a Mexican restaurant where the entrees smelled like ketchup and the waitresses wore sailor dresses? It was a long way from the perfect taco. Five minutes later she was back in the bar, placing her first drink order.

“Two sloe gin fizzes, two fast gin fizzes; three martinis, dry, no starch; twenty-eight shots of tequila, three beers (a Bud, a Tree Frog, and a Coors lite), seven rum separators, five coffee nudges, two Scotch and waters, five vodka and buttermilks, a zombie, a zoombie, four tequila mockingbirds, thirteen glasses of cheap white wine, a mug of mulled Burgundy, nine shots of Wild Turkey (hold the stuffing on three), one Manhattan (with eight cherries), two yellow jackets, fifteen straitjackets, thirty-seven flying dragons, nine brides of Frankenstein, and a green beret made with 7-Up instead of sweet vermouth and in place of grenadine, banana liqueur. Amen.”

The fraud backfired. Before Priscilla had reached the end, Ricki was in full panic, and even after Pris said, “Make that two margaritas, grande; and a Carta Blanca,” Ricki just stood there, up to her elbows in glassware, looking as if she'd had the brain electricity sucked out of her by the black hole, which on the TV, had stopped eating Grand Coulee Dam and was sharing a granola bar with Jeffrey Joshua. There was at least one tear in her eye. “That was a rotten thing to do to you on your first shift alone,” Priscilla apologized. Then she whispered, “Take your break at nine-thirty, if you can. I've got a special treat for us.”

But, of course, Ricki wanted something more than the pinch of cocaine, and Priscilla found herself, during break, in the ladies' stall with her panty hose down around her knees.

“I'm sorry, I guess I'm pretty dry.”

“That's okay,” said Ricki. “I'm like a cactus. I can make maximum use of minimal amounts of moisture.”

A loud rap on the restroom door caused them both to jump.

“Pris. Pris, are you in there?”

Priscilla pushed Ricki away and hurried to pull up her Danskins.

“Pris, there's a delivery for you from Federal Express.”

It was with mixed emotions that Priscilla headed for the reservations desk. On the one hand, she was relieved to get out of Ricki's grasp; on the other, she was afraid of what that delivery might be. She had received mysteriously almost a dozen beets at her apartment. What if they started to show up at work?

The Federal Express envelope contained no raw vegetables, however, but a fancy, engraved invitation, requesting her presence at a dinner party honoring Wolfgang Morgenstern, the Nobel prizewinning chemist. The dinner was to be held at the Last Laugh Foundation. This was even more puzzling than the beets. Priscilla, who had completed but one year of her chemistry major, knew Dr. Morgenstern by reputation only, while, aside from the war room at Boeing Aircraft, the Last Laugh Foundation was the most exclusive turf, the most inaccessible sanctum in Seattle.

“Why me?” she asked.

“The Last Laugh Foundation,” mused Ricki. “That's that immortality place.”

“I know. Ricki, do you believe in immortality?”

“I'll try anything once.”

The cocaine was leaning on the doorbell in Pris's tummy. She was buzzing at the same frequency as the orange auras that had begun to pulsate from the pseudo-Guadalajara wrought-iron light fixtures. Physically, at least, she was primed to return to the dinner trays, freighting what she'd sworn to one diner was “the most authentic Mexican cuisine north of Knott's Berry Farm.”

“You aren't upset with me, are you?”

Ricki looked her over. “No,” she said. “I realize that you're just jealous that I got the barkeep job. They couldn't have put you in there, Pris. You're too scatterbrained and too clumsy.” She turned on her flat heel and walked away.

Priscilla made it through the shift without crying or praying, although, befuddled by the invitation and bruised by Ricki's remark, she concentrated on her duties with difficulty. So badly did she mix up orders that two tables didn't tip her. That was no way to earn three ounces of jasmine oil, let alone to earn three years of omphaloskepsis, which was what the doctor ordered (or did the doctor order the smothered burrito?). Curious , thought Priscilla, promptly pedaling over a steep curb, spilling her bike, ripping her panty hose, and scraping her leg.

Bicycling home at midnight, she pedaled five blocks out of her way to pass the Capitol Hill townhouse in which the Last Laugh Foundation was headquartered. It was a stately old mansion, charming of cupola, angular of gable, a university's worth of ivy clawing the ivory paint from its boards, a high, stucco wall topped with broken glass protecting its grounds. As usual, there were people at its gate, trying, in one manner or another, to get past the security guards. However, whereas a month before there might have been ten people at the gate, now — in the middle of a damp November night — they were lined up to the end of the block.

By the time she reached home, attended to her wound, shampooed, and donned her dirty lab coat, she had put both the invitation and Ricki's insult pretty much out of mind. From the bathroom cabinet, she removed a Kotex box and checked under the pads to ascertain that the bottle was still hidden there. She did not remove the bottle, however. What was the use?

She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang, and the Daughters of the Daily Special had postponed her grant almost as often as she had postponed going to bed with Ricki. With Ricki, her sponsor, turning hostile, Priscilla had to assume that the grant might never come through. “Well, shit,” she said. “Shit shit shit. I've got no choice but to make that call.”

She shoved the Kotex box back in the cabinet, pulled on some stiff jeans, dipped a fistful of coins from the fishbowl, and ran down the hall, not even looking to see if she might have run over a beet. It was late, but she knew that her party had a habit of working into the night. Her finger was trembling, but she managed to dial.

The wall phone swallowed the quarters, Priscilla swallowed her pride.

“Hello, Stepmother,” she said.

There was a pause. Then:

“Where are you?”

Madame Lily Devalier always asked “Where are you?” in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be: New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous.

NEW ORLEANS

WHEN WE ACCEPT SMALL WONDERS, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders. Thus, if we admit that an oyster — radiant, limp, succulent, and serene — can egress from a shell, we are ready to imagine Aphrodite exiting from a similar address. We might, moreover, should we have that turn of mind, imagine Aphrodite exuding her shell, constructing her studio apartment, its valves, hinges, and whorls, of her own secretions, the way an oyster does, although the average imagination, it must be said, probably would stop someplace short of that.

“Oh, no, Miz Lily, Ah not be putting no raw oyster in mah mouf! Ah eats cold soup wif you, Ah eats libber spread wif you, made from goose libbers, but Ah not be eatin' no slime .”