Never had he felt so confined. The crowded hold, the unrelieved ocean. He was totally out of his realm, totally in weird Poseidon's. It was foreign and insubstantial. Were he free to play his pipes, he might set fish to jumping, might roust a mermaid from the deep (if mermaids had not died out like the nymphs). But he dare not pipe. He dare not move about or cause mischief. Even if he were free to do so, he was in no condition. He was seasick.
If that were only the worst of it. . The idea of an invisible leaning over a rail, broadcasting green bile from a stomach nobody could see, is almost comic. Alas, something more insidious than the rocking ship was sickening Pan. He was becoming emotionally ill, as well. And the cause was the perfume.
Pan had hit upon the perfect disguise, all right. He no longer knew who he was. The perfume separated him from him, dismantled his persona. Invisibility itself was alienating. When he drank from a spring, only waterbugs looked back at him, and whose body was that that itched, whose hand that did the scratching? In his invisibility he had become increasingly attached to his odor, occupying it as though it were a shell, a second body, familiar and orienting, home foul home. From the start, the various perfumes had had a confusing effect on him, but his native aroma made short work of them, generally, and it was seldom very long before he was cheerfully, securely stinking again like an old furnace stoked with gonads. K23 was a different matter. It obscured his house of smell the way a mist would sometimes erase his favorite crag; a cloud without pockets, drifting in the direction of the Void.
Ironically, he rather liked the new perfume. The jasmine blew like a soft wind from Egypt across the scruffy pastures of his mind, the beet thumped a dance drum with scrotum-tightening rhythms. Together, they dulled the ache that had pierced his breast since birth. But could it be that that ancient sadness was as necessary to his identity as his odor?
On dry land, he had managed to keep some bearings. The rocks and leaves had seen to that. At sea, however, he was lost. He retched and did not recognize who was retching. Twice a day, Alobar came to anoint him, sniffing him out at whatever rail he clung to or in whatever rope bin he lay groaning. Pan realized that each application of the scent only made him foggier, but, like a drug addict, he was already too foggy to resist further fogginess.
As the Mississippi Poodle approached New France, smelling sweeter by far than any ship ever had after a transatlantic crossing, its crew whistling as it worked, its mates hiding behind some barrels in tender embrace, Alobar on the bow facing the future with a silly grin, Pan was curled in pukey delirium close to dying.
What caused him to suddenly leap to his wobbly hooves? What burst of madness fired his motor? Two things, probably. A gull, the first they'd seen in weeks, swooped low over the mastpole, shrieking loudly. At that very instant, one of the few women aboard walked by the corner where Pan lay. She happened to be menstruating. Perhaps the smell of blood, dark and chthonian, at the precise moment that the bird screamed, awakened something deep and intrinsic in what remained of Pan's consciousness. Perhaps it would have spoken to something inside us, as well, were our barriers down, and perhaps we had just as soon not probe that primal pie. In any event, the god sprang up, possessed. Stumbling and reeling, he rushed through the bulkhead toward Alobar's hammock.
Pan snatched up Alobar's sack, threw it over his shoulder, and, not caring how the sight of a levitating bag might frighten the passengers, climbed the ladder to topside. Heading directly to the rail, over which he'd spewed every morsel Alobar had fed him since Gibraltar, he opened the sack and hurled the jug, the one and only jug, of K23 into the ocean.
Then, as Alobar looked on in horror, Pan pulled out the bottle. He held it aloft for a second or two, as if admiring (or puzzling over) the image of himself piping clownishly, mockingly, sensually, powerfully, in some forgotten time. A sunbeam struck the bluish glass and caromed off the weedy brow of the figure embossed there, the creature that seemed to be laughing, even as it piped a poignant tune; laughing at the puny endeavors of man. A second sunbeam bounced off its stopper. Then it fell.
Whereas the heavy jug had plummeted without hesitation to the bottom, Kudra's bottle, barely half full of perfume, bobbed to the surface. And stayed there. Clinging like lint to the blue serge shoulder of the sea.
Away it bobbed, swiftly out of range of net or hook, floating southward on the current, sparkling, scenting, bumping the occasional whisker or fin, destined to eventually loop the Floridian peninsula, where it would languish in waters well suited to its contents — until the night when hurricane tides would beach it. And bury it. In the Mississippi mud.
SEATTLE
"ORDER IN! Hi, Ricki. I'd like. ."
“Nine Fantasy Islands, six steel-belted radials, one Aztec ceremony with obsidian swizzle stick, twelve makes-you-invincibles, and an emergency landing with a cherry.”
“Whoa! You're in a good mood tonight.”
Ricki leaned across the mahogany, resting her arms on the chrome rails that separated the waitress station from the rest of the bar. It was a fine, old bar, long and curved like a tusk and so solid that the entire membership of the Fraternal Order of Belligerent Drunks of America could not make it budge. Ricki's bare arms, damp and rather hairy, seemed frail against the monolithic bar, but her smile more than held its own.
“Good mood? Honey, my antlers are in the treetops. And yours are gonna be there, too, when you hear the news.”
Priscilla set down her tray. “What news?” she asked.
“Two pieces of news, actually. The first is that the Daughters of the Daily Special are meeting Monday. And I have it on good authority they're gonna approve your grant.”
The brickload of fatigue that Priscilla was carrying suddenly turned into brick soufflé. “You're kidding.”
“Nope.”
Hummingbird soufflé. Cobweb soufflé. “How much? Do you know?”
“Twenty-five hundred is the figure I've heard.”
Nitrous oxide soufflé. “No lie?!” Priscilla didn't require a pocket calculator to determine that twenty-five hundred dollars would purchase three ounces of prime jasmine oil and leave enough to support her for a couple of months while she devoted all her time to identifying, and perhaps acquiring, that enigmatic base note. It would also mean that she wouldn't have to rely on her stepmother for assistance. “God Almighty, that's wonderful!”
“I thought you'd be pleased. Gimme your order and I'll tell you the rest of the news.”
“Three Carta Blancas and a 'rita is all.”
Ricki began to mix the margarita. “That's a 'rita and three Carta Blancas, Pris,” said Ricki sternly, reminding her of the hierarchy of ordering.
“Sorry.” Priscilla sighed. “I'm just excited,” she explained, knowing full well that this was destined to be a shift like any other, complete with dropped menus, spilled cocktails, botched orders, undercharges, overcharges, pinches from the lecherous and insults from the chaste. Ah, but there was relief in sight. A twenty-five-hundred-dollar rainbow with perfume at one end and, who knows, maybe the perfect taco at the other.
“Now,” said Ricki, uncapping the beers and placing them on Priscilla's tray, “the crowning mojo is, the clinic says my infection is totally cleared up. So you and I can stay together tomorrow night.”
Priscilla labored to fake a smile. “Gee, that's great, Rick. But you do remember that I have something going tomorrow night. It's that dinner party at the Last Laugh Foundation.”