Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

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.