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.
She had worried the entire time her assistant was gone. When the telegram came asking her to meet V'lu's flight, she grew as edgy as a thirty-dollar diamond. But there V'lu was, waltzing through the terminal looking as pretty and composed as Miss Tanzania on a TV beauty pageant, and smiling like the catastrophe that swallowed the Canary Islands. And every time Madame attempted to question her about the trip, she just smiled in that smug but guilty fashion and said, “Ah powerful hungry, ma'am. We talks 'bout it after Ah eats.”
Of course, V'lu wasn't threatened by starvation, it was just that she didn't fancy anything hot and nasty rubbing up against her — unless it belonged to Marcel LeFever. Or maybe Bingo Pajama. By the time the first ounce of rib sauce had slid down her gullet, the beast was slinking away, and she felt safe enough to elucidate. “Dee troof is, ma'am, to answer yo question, no, Ah didn't see her.”
Madame was incredulous. “You didn't see Priscilla?! Wasn't she at the party?!”
“Yes, ma'am, she wuz.”
“Well. .”
“But Ah wuzn't.”
Lily Devalier would have been beside herself except that there wasn't enough room at the table. (Madame D. was carrying more tonnage than any woman to dock in Buster's since Velma Middleton, or maybe Bessie Smith.) “What in God's name are you talking about, child?! You didn't go to the party?!”
“No, ma'am.”
“Sacrebleu!” Lily pulled a handkerchief out of her old-fashioned black purse and mopped her brow. The hankie was scented with something — Bingo Pajama jasmine? Jazz powders? Or worse? — that caused several dark heads to look up knowingly from their beans and rice. “Well, what happened? What went wrong?” She was entertaining visions of V'lu getting lost in Seattle, failing to find this “Last Laughing” place, or being barred at its door.
“Nuffin. Nuffin went wrong.” She let her lips stretch into that infuriatingly mysterious and self-satisfied smile. “Sompin' went right.”
“Merde,” snapped Madame Devalier, who would never permit herself to swear in English. “You better get out with it, right now — out with it! — what is going on?!”
V'lu let the words slide slowly through barbecue-colored saliva and perfect teeth: “Ah gots dee bottle.”
There was scarcely any response from Madame Devalier. She merely blinked once or twice and looked dumb, or stunned, like a baby whale washed ashore on a fashionable beach.
“Ah gots dee bottle,” said V'lu again.
Clearly confused, Madame blinked a few more times. She seemed almost senile. “But that is Pris's bottle,” she protested weakly.
“Not any mo, it ain't!”
“You stole it from her?”
“Ah libberated it,” said V'lu. “Dat bottle belong to our shop, it nebber wuz Miz Priscilla's, you know dat as good as me.”
Madame was uncertain if she knew that or not. Having paid scant attention to the bottle, the circumstances surrounding its arrival and departure were vague to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and sniffed at her hankie, trying to remember.
Yes, it was after Pris's marriage to that old tango-wango fell apart, after her daddy died. Pris had announced, with a certain pathetic bravado, that she was going to become a perfumer after all. Nothing could have pleased Lily more. But the girl didn't want to apprentice in her stepmother's floundering shop, oh, no, she intended to enter college to study chemistry. She had a settlement from Effecto Partido and was going to use it to learn modern fragrance manufacturing. None of that old-fashioned, small-potatoes, storefront Devalier perfumery for her. Lily was a little hurt, but she was aware that times had changed and that to a younger generation her ways were quaint, if not obsolete. In the end, she sent Pris off to Vanderbilt University with her blessings.