Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

“No,” he answered, without hesitation.

Somewhat relieved, Priscilla raised herself on one elbow. In the process, she accidentally struck her worktable, causing lab ware to tinkle and slosh. It was a miracle, she thought, that they hadn't dumped the whole enterprise in the throes of their passion.

“But the smell. .”

“The smell is Pan's, all right.”

“It is?”

“Indeed. Though it isn't old Pan who's deliverin' the beets. As a matter o' fact, Pan is tryin' to prevent the delivery o' the beets. Pan is tryin' to interfere with the delivery o' the beets. Only your god is weak and limited, nowadays, and there's little he can do but leave a reminder o' himself — and the powers that he represents — to discourage the recipient and him that is leavin' beets.”

“And that is. .?” She sounded calm enough, but she was quaking inside.

“Me.”

“You?”

“'Tis me left all the homely little vegetables at your door. 'Tis me leavin' 'em with V'lu Jackson. I've spent a small fortune flyin' to New Orleans and back. Fortunately, I have me royalties. And 'tis a friend o' mine from the acid days been droppin' 'em off for Marcel LeFever. He's a professor in Paris and his son works in the mailroom at the LeFever Building. Were ye aware that Marcel and V'lu have been gettin' beets, as well?”

“Well, no. Hell no, I wasn't aware—”

“I'm sorry, but ye didn't have an exclusive contract, ye know.”

“Why, Wiggs? Why the goddamn beets?”

“I can't tell ye, darlin'. I'd dearly love to tell ye, but I can't. I gave Alobar me word. The fairies would cause me terrible sufferin' if I broke me vow.”

“But—”

“Listen. Don't fret. Ye can figure it out for yourself. If you think about it real hard and be puttin' two and two together, it will come to ye. Clear as the tap water that spoils your man's whiskey. Just give it some thought.”

Priscilla agreed and set into thinking, but Wiggs suggested they chew up some geoduck first. Since she hadn't eaten in a couple of days, she agreed to that, also.

After tidying themselves a bit, they set out by taxi for Never Cry Tuna, the new restaurant on Lake Union. Sure enough, Trixie Melodian was working there.

“Amaryllis Tidroe got the grant,” Trixie said.

Priscilla wasn't surprised. “Oh, goody! I can't wait to see eight-by-ten glossies of Mrs. Masked Marvel.”

“You're taking it awfully well,” said Trixie.

“Not to mention Mrs. Garp—”

“I thought he wrote books.”

“—and the various loving helpmates of the midget tag team.”

“I could eat the midget tag team,” said Wiggs.

“One order of shrimp with mussels,” said Priscilla.

“Jesus,” moaned Trixie. “If I'd gotten that grant, I wouldn't be here listening to this.”

Priscilla wanted Wiggs to spend the night at her place, but he claimed that Huxley Anne would be needing him bright and early. “But tomorrow's Saturday,” said Pris.

“We watch cartoons together,” said Wiggs.

Since no invitation to join them appeared forthcoming, she kissed him good night in the lobby and climbed the lonely stairs, stumbling often enough in her ascent to insure exclusion from all future Everest expeditions.

As she lay on the sofa digesting the geoduck, she figured out that beets must be the secret ingredient, the elusive base note, in K23 . Why else would Wiggs be bombarding perfumers with them? Yet, how could that be? A beet had no memorable aroma, and it would turn a perfume the color of Dracula's mouthwash.

It was puzzling. And it might be academic, as well, if she couldn't recover the bottle. The loss of the bottle was one of those “harsh realities” with which she was not unfamiliar. If she was relatively equanimious about it, it was because Wiggs was teaching her that “harsh realities” were not the only realities: that there were many different realities, and to a certain extent, with the proper focus of energy, one could choose which reality one wished to live. One might even outwit the harshest reality of all.

For the third night in a row, Pris fell asleep in El Papa Muerta's sailor dress, its wine-dark ketchup stains now counterbalanced by scrumbles of chalky semen. As she drifted into sleep, she had the feeling that she was waking up. Out of the frying pan and into the hot tub , she thought.

In the week that followed, Priscilla fiddled with her lab equipment, meditated upon the beet, spent the funds that she'd been saving to purchase jasmine oil on a private detective ("I'm positive Ricki Sinatra has my bottle"), and worried, progressively as each day passed, that she'd not hear from Wiggs again. On Saturday, however, her presence was requested at the Last Laugh Foundation to participate in “the Alobar-Kudra bath ritual.”

The line outside the Foundation walls seemed slightly longer and considerably more agitated than usual. People hollered rude things at her when she was let through the gate.

“'Tis the news background,” explained Wiggs. “The Middle East is smokin' cigars in the fireworks stand again, and that shallow jackass in the White House is waggin' his nuclear-headed peepee at the Russians. People are nervous.”

“I don't get it, Wiggs. I mean, if there's such a universal longing for immortality, if the human race is going bananas because it can't accept any more that it has to die, why do we still have wars? All this military violence seems to contradict your theory.”

“Not in the least,” he replied, loosening, like an iguana butcher, the spinal column of one of his beloved zippers. “Your common man is willin' to go to war only because he hates death so much.”

Having successfully filleted his own trousers, he seized the triangular viper-head of Priscilla's fly and rib by rib, pulled it apart. “Don't you see? The enemy represents Death to 'em. The government propaganda mills paint the enemy as an unfeelin', devourin' monster. So, when we go to war we go on a noble mission, a life-affirming mission, whose object is the destruction o' death. And 'tis precisely because we hate death so much that we're too crazed and irrational to see the irony in it. We hate death so bloody much that we will kill — and die — in order to try to halt its march.”

In unison, they stepped out of their pants. Their gap-toothed zippers, split like the vertebrae of a temple sacrifice, made a tiny clink when they hit the tiles of the tub-room floor.

“As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion — usually both at the same time — as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife.”

At their feet, the zippers shuddered.

They lowered themselves into the steaming water, tensing at first from the shock of the heat, then relaxing until they were as buoyant as sausages.

“Ahhh. How many can you get in this tub?”

“Ahhh. Six, as a rule. You can fit eight, but 'tis rather crowded.”

“If it wasn't for death, the world would be eight in a tub.”

“Uh?”

“Overpopulation. If nobody died, pretty soon it would be standing room only.”

“That's one o' the standard arguments in favor o' death, but it doesn't hold water. Or whiskey, either. We don't have an overpopulation problem, we have a land-use problem. We're sprawlin' out all over the place, like hogs in a rose garden, takin' up a thousand times more space than we need. If we were to stress vertical growth instead o' horizontal, if we were to build tall apartment complexes instead of acres o' one-story ticky-tackies, there'd be more than enough room. If we built tall enough, and we have the technological capability, we could double the world's population and still fit every single one of us into the state o' Texas. Comfortably , I might add. The rest o' the planet could be given over to agriculture and recreation. And wilderness. We could have elephant herds again. Buffalo on Main Street.”