The Show That Smells

by Derek

  She makes herself into mist. Vampires, like perfumes, vaporize.

  “I will have you on the cover of Vampire Vogue,” I say to Carrie. “Circulation will soar. Madame Schiaparelli always sells magazines—her fans are fans forever—undead couture clients never die!”

  I vanish. It’s done with mirrors.

  Jimmie’s flat on the floor. Carrie crouches, comforts him, coos to him, his head in her lap.

  “Hush,” she says.

  “The vampire’s gone,” she says.

  “Here comes the Carter Family,” she says.

  Jimmie Rodgers.

  Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter.

  Sara Carter. A.P. Carter. Jimmie Rodgers.

  Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter. Sara Carter. A.P.

  Carter. Jimmie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter. Sara Carter. A.P. Carter.

  Jimmie Rodgers and Carrie Rodgers and Mother Maybelle and Sara and A.P.—the Carter Family—in a Mirror Maze.

  “Fangs?” Maybelle says.

  “Fancy clothes?” she says.

  “Fancy haircuts?” she says.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Carrie says. “How did you know?”

  “We’re the Carter Family,” Maybelle says. “Down-home singers by day, vampire killers by night!” She cocks her arm like a choir conductor. Carters start to sing. A signature song—“Keep on the Sunny Side.”

  “Vampires love clothes,” Maybelle says. “Vampires love carnivals. Folks dolled up, parading down the midway, flirting in the Funhouse, fornicating on the Ferris wheel—pardon my French!

  “Vampires smell vanity!” she says. “Vampires smell sin!” The Carter Family is not camera-friendly. Sara’s squat. A.P.’s a tent pole. Maybelle’s built like Marie Dressler. She’s gray beyond her years. The reverse of vampires. And movie stars. “We sing our hymns in the opry.” Rag opry is carny slang for a tent show. “We sing, then we—”

  “Stake!” A.P. says. “I see a vampire, I stab him in the heart!”

  “You see a vampire, you poop your pants,” Maybelle says. Sara’s silent. “That’s true,” she says.

  “This is your fault, Jimmie!” Mother Maybelle says. “You stand in here, preening and primping—it’s not natural! It’s not right!”

  “Amen!” Sara says.

  “I don’t always poop my pants,” A.P. says.

  “Stop sulking!” Maybelle swats him.

  “You’re not being fair, Maybelle,” Carrie says. “Jimmie never asked for any of this. Look at him, he’s—”

  “You’re just as bad, Miss Carrie! French clothes and French jewelry and French perfume.” Maybelle’s dress is homemade. Worn out by washboards. Sara’s in hand-medown hose. Runs darned, darned, and darned again. They bulge like varicose veins. A.P.’s suit is second-hand. It shows. “You’ve got Jimmie dressed up like some kewpie doll,” Maybelle says, “smelling like a whore! There’s no place for fashion in country music!”

  Jimmie: Coughs. Coughs. Coughs. Coughs. Coughs. Barfs blood. Blood doesn’t come out of clothes.

  2

  Carrie Rodgers.

  Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers.

  Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers.

  Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers. Carrie Rodgers comes to me in a Mirror Maze.

  “Déjà vu!” I say.

  “Where is Mrs. Schiaparelli?” she says.

  “She’ll be here shortly,” I say. “She’s flying in from France.”

  V.

  Carrie Rodgers. V.

  Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers.

  V. Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers. V. Carrie Rodgers. V.

  Carrie Rodgers and a bat and me in a Mirror Maze. The bat becomes Schiaparelli. Her blouse is batwinged. Becoming!

  “Chérie!” Schiaparelli says.

  Carrie pulls perfume from her pocket.

  Patch pocket. The suit’s Chanel. The perfume: Chanel N°5.

  “Come to kill me?” Schiaparelli says. “You’ll need more than an ounce of that skunky spray. I’m a tough old bat.”

  “I didn’t come to kill you,” Carrie says. “Chanel N°5—my husband loves it. He sniff s it before breakfast. He sniff s it before bed. He sniff s it before shows.” Tears menace mascara.

  “He can’t smell it anymore.”

  “Better sick than Chanel,” Schiaparelli says.

  “Le bon mot,” I say.

  “Le bon mort,” Schiaparelli says.

  “It’s not only Chanel N°5.” Carrie empties out her pockets.

  My Sin by Jeanne Lanvin. “I wore that on my wedding night.” Temptation by Madeleine Vionnet. “Our one-year anniversary.” Jicky by Guerlain. “Valentine’s Day.” Joy by Jean Patou. “Jimmie bought this for my birthday.” Dans la Nuit by Charles Frederick Worth—a black bottle in a black box. Satinwood, tailored with black satin. Comfortable as a casket.

  “Chanel is swill,” Schiaparelli says.

  “Charles Frederick Worth—worthless,” she says.

  “Your husband is lucky that Patou is lost on him,” she says. “Patou? Pee-ew! Jicky? Icky!”

  “Prince Matchabelli?” I say.

  “Prince Smelly!” Schiaparelli says.

  “Jimmie is dying!” Carrie says. “All he smells is blood. And sputum. And pus. He smells his lungs. They smell like bowels. His breath is so bad!” Carrie clutches Schiaparelli’s collar. “You have powers. You have perfumes. Make him a scent to kill the smell. Make him a scent to make him well.”

  “What would the bottle look like?” Schiaparelli says.

  “What would the label look like? What would we call it—Eau de Yodel?

  “What family would his perfume belong to?” she says, circling Carrie. “Would it be an earthy Chypre? A spicy Oriental? A ferny Fougère? Something bold, or bashful? Best seller, or best smeller?

  “The heart note—vetiver or vanilla? Wormwood or worm food? Tuberose or tuberculosis? A million roses must die to distill a drop de l’esprit.” She strokes Carrie’s cheek. Vampires, like perfumes, are room temperature. “What would it be worth to you, Madame Rodgers? What price would you pay?”

  Mother Maybelle Carter.

  Sara Carter. A.P. Carter.

  Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter. Sara Carter.

  A.P. Carter. Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter. Sara Carter. A.P. Carter. Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle Carter. Sara Carter. A.P. Carter.

  Carrie Rodgers and the Carter Family and Elsa Schiaparelli and me in a Mirror Maze.

  “The Carter Family!” Maybelle says.

  “Christian soldiers for Christ!” Sara says.

  “I think I forgot something in the Ford,” A.P. says, turning tail. Maybelle stops him. Swats him.

  “Cartier?” Schiaparelli says.

  “Carter,” I say. “Hillbilly Van Helsings.”

  “We put the sing in Van Helsing!” Maybelle says. “We’ll put the fear of God in you!” She starts into a traditional tune—“Sunshine in the Shadows.”

  “This is singing?” I say.

  “Caterwauling,” Schiaparelli says. “Carter-wauling.”

  “Ha!”

  “Ha! Ha!”

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Schiaparelli and I laugh in a Mirror Maze.

  Maybelle stomps her shoe. “What’s so darned funny!” “Your hair!” Schiaparelli says. “Your clothes! You look like a family of scarecrows! Where do scarecrows shop? Marshall Field’s?”

  “Fashion fiends!” Maybelle says. “You should be afraid!” “We are!” Schiaparelli says. “Afraid you’ll sing again!”

  “In the name of God, the Grand Old Party and the Grand Ole Opry!” Maybelle says. “Go back to France!” She tosses a grenade. It’s not a grenade. It’s a clove of garlic. Strapped to her shoulder—a bandolier of buds.

  “Garlic?” Schiaparelli says, slinking toward her. Sara wears a corsage of wolfsbane.
A.P. carries a sage smudge stick. It shakes like a conductor’s baton. “I’m not Count Dracula, darlings—spices and stinkweed won’t frighten me off !”

  “She’s gonna eat me!” A.P. says.

  “True,” she says. “Though there is one odor that could defeat me—Chanel N°5. Madame Rodgers is holding it in her hands.”

  “Carrie!” Maybelle says.

  “Spray her with it!” Sara says.

  “Don’t let me die!” A.P. says. “Please!”

  “I can’t!” Carrie could cry. She cries on cue.

  “I knew she wouldn’t spray me,” Schiaparelli says. “Madame Rodgers needs me to make a perfume for her. My price? Her soul—a soul for a scent!”

  “I have no choice!” Carrie says. “Sniffing Chanel N°5 hasn’t helped Jimmie at all—and it’s blessed by priests! Mrs. Schiaparelli swears she can cure him with her perfume. She swears.” She sobs, surrenders her Chanel N°5 to Schiaparelli. “A deal with the Devil—may God have mercy on my soul!”

  Her soul is chiff on.

  Soul. Blouse.

  “TB is but a trifle!” Schiaparelli says, rising into the air. “I am TB; I am smallpox; I am the plague!”

  “Sh-sh-she’s floating!” A.P. flees. Slams into a glass wall. Falls.

  “I am the death bed, the abattoir, the boneyard!” Schiaparelli says. Smoke swirls out from a smoke machine, hiding wires holding her. “I am the sewers of Paris, of London, of New York—les fleurs du mal odeur!”

  “Sh-sh-she’s talking French!” A.P. leaps up, dashes down a dead end. He slips on something. Feet fly up. His shoe size: EEE!

  “Chanel N°5?” she says. “I am Charnel N°5!” Smoke is scenic. Studio smoke! Water, sugar, and glycerine. Smokecolored. Smoke-shaped. It snakes through the Maze like it knows what it wants. Sara coughs. A.P. coughs. Maybelle collapses, coughing. “I am the deadliest force in fashion—and there’s not a soul alive who can stop me!”

  “I can,” Coco Chanel says.

  Smoke dies down.

  Schiaparelli floats down to the floor.

  “Merde,” she says, rolling her eyes my way.

  Coco Chanel.

  Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle.

  Sara. A.P. Coco Chanel. Carrie Rodgers.

  Mother Maybelle. Sara. A.P. Coco Chanel. Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle. Sara. A.P. Coco Chanel. Carrie Rodgers. Mother Maybelle. Sara. A.P.

  Coco Chanel and Carrie Rodgers and the Carter Family and Elsa Schiaparelli and me in a Mirror Maze.

  “Who in the blue-belted blazes are you?” Maybelle says.

  “I am Coco Chanel,” Chanel says. “I have devoted my life to crafting comfortable, classy, Christian couture. Demure daywear. Demure evening wear. Demure costumes for the beach. I made sunbathing chic.”

  Coco Chanel plays and wears herself. A skirted suit of taupe tweed, or, as the French say, le tweed.

  “We’re the Carter Family!” Maybelle says. “We’ve devoted our life to singing and stabbing vampires!”

  “We are soldiers in the same battle,” Chanel says, spinning like a ballerina in a ballerina jewelry box. She shines. Cuff s armor her arms. Crosses adorn them. Byzantine. Russian. Greek. Embossed on her buttons—her logo, a C and a C. Back to back. Reflected. “You fight Schiaparelli for the souls of men. I fight Schiaparelli for the souls of clothes.”

  “Clothes don’t have souls,” Maybelle says.

  “Clothes have linings,” A.P. says.

  “Schiaparelli, Schiaparelli, Schiaparelli,” Chanel says to the Carters. “Couturiers whispered her name in terrified tones. She was a legend, a figure feared but seldom seen—a Satanic seamstress who catered to vampires.

  “And then, not so many years ago, she stepped from the shadows,” Chanel says. “She started creating clothes for human clients. Even the names of her collections curdled my Christian soul—the Pagan Collection, the Zodiac Collection!” She crosses herself.

  “Gaud is her God!” Chanel says. “I saw grotesque Schiaparelli gowns in the pages of Vogue. I saw grotesque Schiaparelli gowns at the Opèra, at the Ritz. She’d steal my clients, then slaughter them. I devoted myself to destroying her. I am guarded in my mission by the archangel Gabriel, my namesake. ‘Coco’ is my nickname; my given name is ‘Gabrielle.’ ‘Archangel’ is an anagram for ‘Chanel rag!’”

  Schiaparelli swans toward Chanel.

  “You look old,” Schiaparelli says.

  “You look evil,” Chanel says.

  Lon Chaney creeps up behind Chanel.

  “A Mirror Maze?” Chanel’s shoes stick. The floor is sticky. Pop. Puke. “It’s tacky, even for you, Elsa.”

  “Mirror Maze?” Schiaparelli says. “Mirror maison. My maison de couture—a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison in a maison!”

  Chaney creeps closer to Chanel. Maggots infest his face. Shimmering like sequins.

  “Mirrors,” Chanel says, “are hardly your hallmark. A mirrored staircase is the centerpiece of my maison on rue Cambon in Paris.”

  “Au contraire, Coco,” Schiaparelli says. “The Mirror Maze is my milieu. My smokescreen. A vampire Versailles. It could be crawling with vampires as we speak. You would never know. Until it was too late.”

  “Of course I would, Elsa,” Chanel says. “I smell the rot.” She spins, sprays Chaney. Perfume films his eyes. He sees sandalwood! He sees ylang-ylang! He sees Lily of the Valley! Chaney concocted the coating—collodion and egg white. She sprays again. He crumples like cloth in a cloud of Chanel Nº5. He smells like number two. He drags himself down the corridor. Skin sizzling. Stop time. Blood is makeup.

  “He needs a facial,” I say.

  “He needs a face,” Schiaparelli says.

  “Your perfume is powerful,” Schiaparelli says. “So is mine.” Brandishing a pink box: “Voilà! The latest scent from Maison de Schiaparelli—Shocking!”

  “Shocking how?” Chanel says.

  “The name of it is Shocking!”

  “How shocking could a name be?”

  “Shocking! It’s called Shocking! Sacre bleu!”

  “Behold my bottle!” Schiaparelli says.

  “Your bottle has breasts!” Chanel says.

  “It’s a Frenchie,” Schiaparelli says. “Frenchie, Hula Honey, Sweater Girl, Apache Babe—these are kinds of kewpie dolls. All share a silhouette—Mae West. Kewpies are carnival prizes. Plaster of Paris. Painted. My doll is cut from crystal. The bottle’s Baccarat.” The doll’s head comes off. A neck is a nozzle.

  “Smell!” Schiaparelli sprays the air. Sprays herself. Perfume clings to dead skin. It smells pink. “The top note—sugar. Pink popcorn, pink cotton candy, pink bubble gum. The middle note—sawdust. Pink sawdust!”

  “The bottom?” Chanel says.

  “Blood!” Schiaparelli says, spraying. “The blood of little boys, the blood of little girls. A bead in every bottle.” She sprays. “To the living, it’s undetectable. To the undead, it’s delectable.” She sprays. “From miles away, we can smell it, we can follow it, we can find the women who wear it—the women who wear it, the men they’re with—” She sprays Chanel. “And you!”

  “Monster!” Maybelle says.

  “Murderer!” Sara says.

  “Mommy,” A.P. says.

  “Come, boy!” Schiaparelli says.

  Down the corridor comes a dog.

  “Coco, your parfumeur is Ernest Beaux—an inapt name if ever there was one,” Schiaparelli says. “Meet my parfumeur—Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy.”

  Fur flourishes on his forehead, his eyelids, his lips. I shake his hand. Paw. Dead fleas fall into my palm. A circus’s worth.

  “A freak!” Chanel says.

  “A diseased freak,” Schiaparelli says. “He suff ers from a syndrome! Hypertrichinosis. He’s hairy as a Lab.”

  Jo-Jo whimpers. Jo-Jo licks his snout.

  “All his life,” Schiaparelli says, “he’s been laughed at by the
likes of you—ridiculed, rebuff ed, and rejected. Me? I admire his remarkable gift—his sense of smell. He’s a bloodhound—a born parfumeur.”

  Jo-Jo is a staple of sideshows. He plays himself in this picture. It’s a vampire movie. Bit parts abound.

  “He has a way with accessories.” Schiaparelli points to his flea collar. A silver leash dangles off his neck.

  “And it’s not only him. The Fortune Teller’s turban! The Witch Doctor’s skull stick! The Ubangi’s lip plate! The Snake Lady—her anaconda is a boa! The Alligator Man—what a purse he would make!

  “Freak fashion. Geek chic. It inspired my new haute couture collection for humans—the Carnival Collection! Soon Schiaparelli clients will dress like the Half-Man, Half-Woman and the Mule-Faced Lady. Ostrich girls in ostrich plumes. Lobster ladies in lobster gowns.

  “It’s like I always say: Clothes make the inhuman.”

  “Caveat emptor!” I say.

  “Cravat emptor!” Schiaparelli says.

  “When all the world’s well-dressed women are dressed and perfumed like freaks,” Schiaparelli says, “I will make them freaks—in a carnival, a vampire carnival, a carnival of fashion and death!” She changes. Fangs flower. Pupils pink paillettes. “And freaks are only part of the fun!

  “Men will be rides.

  “Women will be games.

  “Children will be snacks.”

  Schiaparelli’s face is a special eff ect.

  “My husband belongs in a tent show, not an oxygen tent,” Carrie says. “I will wear your perfume, Mrs. Schiaparelli. I will be your freak.”

  Tears trickle down her cheeks.

  Tears are eye drops.

  “For you, Shocking!” Schiaparelli says, showering Carrie. “For your husband, Shocking!—but with a twist. Watch as I transform perfume into prescription. Monsieur!”

  I become a bat. Sit on her shoulder.