Part 19 (1/2)
”Are you going to tell them, Wiggs?”
He sat Upright and ran his fingers through his copse of chromium curls. ”Me? I don't know. I had a fling with messiahhood once. The Caesars tried to crucify me, but they only got one eye. Ha! Still, I wonder if 'twas worth it. If you look this good to me out o' one eye, darlin', imagine how ye'd look out o' two.” As if releasing a pigeon from a cage, Jie freed a sigh. The pigeon was so heavy it could barely fly. Priscilla stroked his jaw. Sensing some pity in the gesture, he brushed her hand away.
”At any rate, 'tis too early to help the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. If I let 'em in here now, they'd only feel ripped off. Just like you, they'd be lookin' around for the laboratories. How could I make 'em understand that / am the laboratory? And not a very good one. I drink too much. And I let me daughter get chubby.
”When I established the Last Laugh Foundation, it was to research the psychological barriers to immortality. Because what I learned from Alobar was that we have to evolve beyond our death consciousness if we expect to claim our divine right to life everlastin'. If we expect to be i-n-g instead of e-d. When I met Professor Morgenstern six months ago and found that he'd become a bloomin' nonstop immortalist, I invited him, at great expense, to take up residency here, not merely because o' the credibility he'd lend to the joint but because I thought he'd be settin' up a lab, and we could run some test-tube experiments out o' here as well. Oh my, and the fairies tricked me on that one! But it all fits together. Do ye know what 'tis called, that jig Morgenstern is always doin'?”
There was no response from Priscilla, Unless ”Zznnphh” may be considered a response. She was snoring.
It was a pretty little snore. A rustling of scarabs in the mummy wrappings. Wiggs listened attentively. Most snoring is composed by Beethoven or Wagner, although a few times Wiggs had heard heavy metal rock performed on the som-nambulate ba.s.soon. But Priscilla's snore, it had a Stevie Wonder sound. A lyrical sc.r.a.p left over from ”My Cherie Amour.” Wiggs tried to hum along.
For a while, he listened and watched, marveling at the manner in which the dawn light seemed to cling to her lashes, at the tiny shadow cast by her Frito nose.
Then he slid gently off of the couch and gathered his tweeds. Huxley Anne would be waking soon, and he must be there. There were nine bedrooms in the Last Laugh Foundation, but he shared a room with his child. Never did he want her to go looking in the morning for a parent who was really a bookend.
Before he climbed the stairs, however, he tiptoed into the dining room and surveyed the centerpiece. Selecting the largest of the beets, a specimen that weighed as much as the skull of a lemur, he fetched it back to the den and laid it upon the cus.h.i.+on next to Priscilla's snore.
Pris slept for about two hours. The length of a Stevie Wonder concert and a few minutes more. When she was awakened by a thud-a-thump on the ceiling, she knew, even before opening her eyes, exactly where she was.
She caught a whiff of Irish Spring cologne. She sensed the presence of a face beside her own. Smiling, she turned toward the face and kissed it.
Blech!
What she kissed was rough and cold and flavored of topsoil.
Her lids popped open. Any morning light that might have been stuck to her lashes fell away like spilled sugar.
For a long time, she sat there regarding the beet, looking at it with optimism, misgiving, wonderment, bewilderment, and slight disgust, like a beginning medical student confronting her first anatomical drawing of a prostate gland.
At that moment, in Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, Alobar was likewise engrossed in anatomical scholars.h.i.+p. He had very nearly reported to sick call that morning, but changed his mind when his ears suddenly cooled. Instead, he decided to consult his library of Penthouse magazines.
As he had pointed out to Dr. Dannyboy, frequent s.e.xual stimulation was essential to a youthful physiometry. And for a heteros.e.xual behind bars, what stimulation was there besides memories and magazines?
On page 83, a young actress was bent over like a map of Florida, affording an un.o.bstructed view of the inland waterway around Cocoa Beach. Sailing in those backwaters would be sunny and brisk. But at the end of the voyage, he'd be searching the horizon for Kudra again.
He was thinking of Kudra, her courage, her character, her crazy wisdom, when a guard rattled his cage. ”Barr! From the warden!” The guard shoved an official-looking envelope into the cell. ”They're gonna hang ya first thing tomorrow. Tough luck. Ha ha.”
”I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” said Alobar, mouthing what to him, from the vantage point of having seen hundreds of countries come and go, come and go, was one of the most shortsighted utterances for which a man was ever remembered.
The letter informed him that his hearing before the parole board was being postponed until ”after the holidays.”
Which holidays? Did they mean Thanksgiving, which was only three days away, or all the holidays, Christmas and New Year's as well as Thanksgiving? He sat down on his bunk with his head in his hands. If they kept postponing parole, they might as well hang him. A lump formed in his throat. It was as large as a beet. It was imperative that he dissolve it.
He ripped up the letter. ”I am immortal,” he said, ignoring the granny's wedding dress smell that streamed from each of his pores.
He returned to Penthouse, opening it to the centerfold. In this photograph, the actress reminded him of Alaska, the centerfold of states: big, beautiful, unrefined, empty-and absolutely irresistible to the type of man who shoots a lot of pool in taverns while dreaming constantly of striking it rich.
”Now, Kudra ...”
The beet reminded Priscilla, rather rudely, that Wiggs had managed to talk until sunup without ever explaining her connection to his obsessions. She rose, dressed (feeling pleasantly sordid as she wriggled into the green party dress), and went searching for her host.
Had she thought clearly about it, she might have realized that it was Monday morning and Wiggs had doubtlessly taken Huxley Anne to school. There remained, however, a yard or two of mummy bandage festooning her brain, so she went about the ground floor of the house calling, none too loudly, ”Wiggs.”
Unsuccessful, she ascended the stairs and repeated the procedure. No response there, either. She did, however, hear a thumping and b.u.mping noise emanating from the master suite and a.s.sumed that it was Wolfgang Morgenstern.
The door to the suite, thrice her age, was graced by an old-fas.h.i.+oned keyhole. In secretive New Orleans, keyholes were always plugged, but this one was as Open and inviting as a prost.i.tute's kimono. She laid a bloodshot peeper to it.
Dr. Morgenstern, fully dressed, was skipping and bounding about the suite in a kind of exaggerated, athletic polka. Every once in awhile, he would stop, execute a little backward and forward jitterbug step; then, necktie flapping, an exultant yelp springing from his heaving breast, he would jump straight in the air, up and down, five times.
Well, she'd witnessed some crazy dances during Mardi Gras and all, but this one took the cake, and the coffee, too. Actually, it looked like fun, although on a morning such as this it would surely put her in the morgue. Nervously, she spied a bit longer, then pulled away. There was an imprint upon her upper cheek that resembled an archway in a sultan's palace.
Downstairs, slipping into her raincoat, she noticed that the beet still lay on the sofa, but now, unless her nostrils were playing games with her, there hung a vulgar odor about it, the familiar beet-delivery stink, which she was positive had not been present earlier.
The genius waitress walked home through sunlit traffic. Puddles shrank before her eyes and she could practically hear the pavement drying. ”The mountains were out,” as they said in Seattle, meaning that the overcast had lifted and snowcapped peaks were flas.h.i.+ng flossed fangs from every quadrant, as if Seattle were the object of some cosmic plea for dental health.
It was one of those glorious days that, had they occurred less rarely, would have led to Seattle being more populous than Tokyo or India. Gulls circled downtown skysc.r.a.pers, derelicts with faces like soup bones luxuriated on jewel-bright park benches, and out in the glittering bay, flotillas of sailboats showed off for watercolorists. Despite her bedraggled condition, or because of her bedraggled condition, men smiled at Priscilla as they pa.s.sed, and she could not help smiling back.
To be sure, she was exhausted; obviously, she was confused; but she was excited, as well. She felt that she was caught up in some chaotic but grand adventure that was lifting her out of context and placing her beyond the normal constraints of society and biology.
The idea of a thousand-year-old convict with a dematerialized wife and Pan for a pal was difficult to swallow, and the goings-on at the Last Laugh Foundation were enough to strain the elastic on the cerebral panty hose. Ah, but then there was the bottle! In the past, the bottle had meaning to her only as a means of getting rich-of getting even-but now . . . now, she sensed that the drop or two of exquisite fragrance in that weird old vessel had greater worth than she had imagined. The bottle seemed charged with omen and portent, it had a mojo working, as Madame Devalier and her black friends used to say. That bottle was a link to something. It could melt the ice on the dog dish of destiny, and it was hers!
She was glad that she hadn't told Wiggs about the bottle. It would give her an excuse to see him again soon. It would undoubtedly elevate her in his view, and, speaking of links, it would serve to hook them up like sausages in this Alobar adventure.
For the first time since she learned the truth about her daddy, Priscilla felt lucky, blessed. Furthermore, unless she was misreading the symptoms, she was in love.
A rat-bite of guilt accompanied the admission of her amorous state, and she decided that she had better call Ricki right away. To that end, she nipped into Market Time Drugs on Broadway and made for the pay phone, which, as reality would have it, was just across the aisle from the perfume counter.
Ricki's phone rang three or four times, and then Pris heard that click and moment of artificial silence that meant she was about to be the recipient of a recorded message.
”h.e.l.lo, this is Adolf Hitler. I'm out of the country right now, but I'll be happy to return your call as soon as I'm back in power. If Aryan, leave your name and number at the beep.”
After hanging up, Priscilla entertained the notion of taking a bus over to the Ballard district for a meeting face to face. She was reasonably certain Ricki was at home. Then, the last strip of mummy wrap fell away from her brain: Hey! It was Monday, there was a meeting of the Daughters of the Daily Special at the 13 Coins at 11:00 A.M. Ricki would be there. Moreover, the waitresses were going to vote that very day on candidates for a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar grant.
She looked at the drugstore clock. Jesus, Mary, and Pepto-Bismol! It was ten already.
Priscilla had been looking forward to fis.h.i.+ng out the bottle and, well, studying it, adoring it, consulting it or something, but she barely had time to soap away (a bit reluctantly) the dried and aromatic frosting of coital secretions, to comb her tangles, apply cosmetics, and change into sweater and jeans. As it was, she arrived at the 13 Coins twelve minutes late.
”They're hiring at that new seafood restaurant on Lake Union,” Trixie Melodian was saying. ”What's it called? Fear of Tuna.”
”Forget it,” said Sheila Gomez. ”I've seen the menu. They're serving Bermuda triangles with shark dip.”
”So what?” countered Ellen Cherry Charles. ”I caught the special yesterday at that pit where you work: 'spaghetti western.' ”
”It actually wasn't bad,” said Sheila.
”Yeah? Well, hang 'em high, honey.”
Priscilla surveyed the room. Ricki wasn't there yet.
”We've got live music now, three nights a week,” said Doris Newton. ”Improve your tips?”