The Show That Smells

by Derek

  She plucks me up. Squeezes me.

  I shit into Shocking!

  “Bat feces—rich in saltpeter. As he inhales, Jimmie’s lungs will absorb it. It will leech into his bloodstream, cleansing corpuscles, obliterating bacteria.” She squeezes. I pee. A bat’s bladder is not big. “Bat urine—it will crystallize in his lungs as it cools, shrinking infected tissue. Stopping sputum from spreading.”

  “This isn’t science!” Chanel says. “It’s specious!”

  “Propagation of the specious!” Schiaparelli says.

  “Perfume is life!” Schiaparelli says. “Perfume is death! I am perfume itself—life and death distilled. Flacon de vie—parfum du parfum!”

  “Squeak, squeak, squeak!” I say.

  “Life,” she says of Shocking! “Take it to the Sanitarium, Madame Rodgers. Take it to your husband. Douse his bedsheets. Douse his bathrobe. Douse his bedpan. When he is well, you will return to me.”

  Carrie takes it. Exits.

  “Death,” she says, holding Carrie’s Chanel Nº5. “You will die, Coco. You will die, Carter Family.” She strokes the crystal bottle. Summoning something. A speck. A black speck. Flapping inside the flaçon.

  A bat. Another appears. Another, and another. Chanel NºV. Chanel NºVV. Chanel NºVVV. Base note, heart note, top note—bat. What did the vampire plop into her bath? Bat beads. She unstops the bottle and boom!—bats burst out, blazing through the Maze. Stab bats? Maybelle ducks down. Bats besiege her. Bats as bow ties. Bats as barrettes. Bats dream of being bandeaux. The sound!—Foley artists flapping. Leather gloves slap leather gloves. Leather gloves slap glass. Leather goods? Leather bads!

  Coco Chanel and the Carter Family crawl from the Maze.

  V.

  V. V. V. V. V. V. V.

  V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V.

  V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V.

  V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V. V.

  THE NEXT NIGHT …

  Mirror.

  Mirror. Mirror.

  Mirror. Mirror. Mirror.

  Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror.

  Elsa Schiaparelli and me in a Mirror Maze.

  Sweat, snot, nosebleed blood. Sputum. Mirrors smeared like lab slides. Carrie steps down the corridor. Shadows under her eyes are eye shadow.

  “You look like hell,” I say.

  Pale as powder. “I don’t care,” Carrie says. “Jimmie, he’s—”

  “Breathing better? But of course.” Schiaparelli licks Carrie’s reflection. The mirror smells.

  Mirrors have edges. Mirrors age. “He needs more Shocking!” Carrie says. “How do I know you’ll deliver it? How can I trust you?”

  “Sssshhh,” Schiaparelli says. “I have already delivered another dose of scent to his Sanitarium. I’ve also seen to it that your husband is treated by the most respected respirologist in all of Asheville. His name is Dr. Acula.”

  “He sounds important,” Carrie says.

  Fangs are lifelike. Schiaparelli smiles.

  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.

  Carrie Rodgers and Elsa Schiaparelli and me in a Mirror Maze. Elsa Lanchester plays Elsa Schiaparelli. There’s a resemblance.

  “Am I late?” Schiaparelli says.

  “Fashionably.” I kiss her hand. “You smell divine.”

  “I am divine.” She fans herself. “The latest fragrance from Maison de Schiaparelli. I call it Shocking!—as in freak shows—‘shocking and amazing!’”

  “How do I look?” Schiaparelli’s dress is orange, yellow, and pink. Mostly pink. Sleeves sparkle. Sequins are celluloid. “I cut it from sideshow banners. ‘Valentines,’ freaks call them. Isn’t that quaint?”

  “The sequins!” I say. “Superb!”

  Screen as swatch:

  “Otto is my embroiderer,” Schiaparelli says as the camera pans to …

  Otto, the Octopus Man. He comes down the corridor. An extra arm extends from the center of his chest.

  “He sews like he has three hands,” she says. “Which he does!”

  “Larry is my cutter,” Schiaparelli says. Cut to Larry, the Lobster Boy. Claws for hands. He wears a bib.

  “Pinny is my draper,” she says. Pinny, the Human Pincushion. Pins through his cheeks. Pins through his earlobes. Pinched between his teeth. A stick of French chalk stuck behind his ear. Shears in his hand.

  “Pinking shears!” Schiaparelli says.

  Violet and Daisy.

  Violet and Daisy. Violet and Daisy.

  Violet and Daisy. Violet and Daisy. Siamese Twins in a Mirror Maze.

  “Violet is my première main, my main seamstress,” Schiaparelli says. “Daisy is my seconde main. Violet takes the mock-up of a dress to Daisy, who distributes it to the sewing staff, who complete the finished garments. Daisy, darling, call them in?”

  Freaks file in. From the cast of Freaks. A midgetess. A giantess. Fatty the Fat Lady has an all-day lollipop. She eats three a day. The Bearded Lady braided her beard. To be pretty. A Chicken Lady carries in the Human Worm. The Worm was born without arms, without legs. Born a dress form.

  Freaks.

  Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.

  Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers.

  Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.

  Carrie Rodgers and Elsa Schiaparelli and freaks and me in a Mirror Maze.

  “Who creates clothes for the Human Worm?” Schiaparelli says. “He has to have himself wrapped in burlap.

  “Where does Fatty shop? Not in stores. She wouldn’t fit in the fitting room. She mail orders three dresses at a time. A large, a large, and a large. She sews them together and what has she got? A skintight tent!

  “Does Sears Roebuck have a Freak Boutique? Where does the Half-Man, Half-Woman shop? The ladies’ floor? The men’s floor? Where do Siamese Twins buy twin sets? Where do they buy a ball gown with four sleeves and two collars? They have to sew their own. Simplicity doesn’t print patterns for freaks!

  “The Gorilla begs dead monkeys from the circus. Skins them, cures them. Dry cleaners won’t touch him. Launderers won’t let him in. Freaks—your sad sartorial stories are history. I, Elsa Schiaparelli, the Empress of Satanic Style, the Wicked Witch of the Weft—I will sew your clothes. More than that, I will dress the whole world in your clothes!”

  “Dress like us!” Freaks form a ring around Carrie, chanting: “Dress like us! Dress like us! Dress like us!”

  “The Carnival Collection!” Schiaparelli says.

  Bats beat their way through the Maze. Clutched in their claws: haute couture. Carrie stands on a tailor’s stage. She’s believably scared.

  “The Spidora Dress,” Schiaparelli says.

  Bats drape a dress over Carrie. Cinderella had birds.

  “Spidoras are half women, half spiders,” Schiaparelli says. “The dress is crepe printed with cobwebs. Diamanté dewdrops. A celluloid necklace studded with flies. Gold flies. Diamond eyes. Jean Schlumberger for Maison de Schiaparelli.”

  Bats fly it over to a clothes rack. Bats are hangers.

  “The Geek Gown,” Schiaparelli says.

  Bats bring it over to Carrie. Blood dripping down the collar. “It’s not blood,” Schiaparelli says. “It’s beading. Gore embroidered on the breast. Gores in the skirt.

  “The Girl-to-Gorilla Dress,” she says.

  Bats bring it over. A brown gown trimmed with monkey fur. “Monkey fur bracelet. Monkey fur boots. Stockings are cheetah-p
rint. How fast do they run?”

  Clothes keep coming. “A cape composed of chicken featherss—cape au coq—the Chicken Lady! Flesh-tone fabric printed with anchors, angels, roses, and hearts—a tattooist’s flash—the Tattooed Lady! A dress with a trompe l’oeil oeil pattern—sequined scorch marks—the Electric Girl!

  “Mirrors are trompe l’oeil to me,” she says.

  “Scorch marks?” Carrie shakes her head. “Sequins shouldn’t be scary. Still, they’re so shiny. So sparkly.” She feels the fancywork. “So—ouch!”

  “Blood?” Schiaparelli licks her lipstick.

  “I smell it, too!” I lick my lipstick. Men can wear lipstick in motion pictures.

  “Sequins cut me!” Carrie hides her hand behind her back. With her sleeve she tries to wipe blood from embroidery.

  “You bleed on it, you bought it!” Schiaparelli says.

  “The only thing better than sequins—bloody sequins!” she says.

  “What is your blood type?” She stalks toward Carrie. “Sequins say—‘O!’”

  “Don’t drink me!” Carrie says. “Please!” She stumbles back off the stage. Mirror, mirror on the wall? Mirrors, mirrors are the walls!

  Something stops Schiaparelli cold.

  “That odious odor!” she says.

  “That sickening smell!” she says.

  “It’s her—Coco Chanel!” she says.

  Mirrors reflect mirrors. Carrie reflects forever. Freaks ad infinitum. “Are you certain Chanel’s here?” I say. “Wouldn’t we see her?”

  “I don’t need to see her.” Schiaparelli sniff s Johnny Eck. “Sweat,” she says. Eck walks on his hands. He was born with no legs. No inseam. She sniff s Garvey, the gorilla from the Girl-to-Gorilla Act. “Gasoline,” she says. Fake gorillas soak their suits in gasoline, then soak them in sun.

  “What have we here?” Schiaparelli says.

  Pointy, pointier, pointier, pointiest—pinheads. A family of four female encephalites. Skulls shaped like dunce caps. Disease deformed them.

  “Puzzling.” Schiaparelli swirls around them. “Where in the world would pinheads purchase Chanel perfume?” She strokes their pinafores. Pinheadfores? “And where in the world would they find fabric printed with a Sonia Delaunay pattern, from Chanel’s collection for Spring?”

  “Touché, Elsa,” says the pointiest pinhead—Coco Chanel! She pulls off her pinhead. It’s rubber. It resembles a breast.

  “Curse you, Schiaparelli!” Mother Maybelle says, pulling off her pinhead. “You’ve got a nose like a pig!”

  “Face like a pig,” Sara says, pulling off her pinhead.

  “They made me wear a dress,” A.P. says.

  Freaks.

  Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.

  Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family.

  Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family. Freaks.

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

  “Disguises!” Schiaparelli says.

  “How uncharacteristically clever of you, Coco!” she says.

  “However did you come up with such a devilish idea?” she says.

  “I stole it from you, Elsa,” Chanel says. “From you and your flunky.” She claps her hands, cueing—“Dr. Acula!”

  White hair, white lab coat—the doctor dodders down the corridor, straight from central casting.

  “Doctor!” Schiaparelli says.

  “I didn’t summon you!” she says.

  “Leave the Maze, tout de suite!” she says.

  “Doctor?” Carrie says. “From the Sanitarium?

  “How is Jimmie?” She dashes to his side. “Is he better?”

  Both she and her brooch are en tremblant. “Has he asked after me?”

  “Monsieur le Docteur,” Chanel says, “has been treating Monsieur Rodgers at the Sanitarium. Spraying him with Shocking! Shocking him with sprayings.

  “He might have gone unnoticed,” she says. “But he deported himself like no doctor I’d ever seen. Cursing the Red Cross. Drinking from a blood bag.

  “He’s not a doctor at all!” she says. “He’s not even a man!” She grabs a hank of his hair. Rips off his face. It’s Lon Chaney! He makes a ghoulish grimace. Phantom of the Opera? Phantom of the Opry! “When I threatened him with Chanel Nº5,” she says, “he buckled. Like a belt!”

  Freaks.

  Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.

  Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family.

  Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Coco Chanel. Freaks. The Carter Family. Freaks.

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

  “You?” Carrie picks up Dr. Acula’s face. It’s rubber, stiff with sweat and spit. The mask has bad breath. “You’re my respected respirologist?”

  “A demon!” Mother Maybelle says.

  “A demon in disguise!” Sara says.

  “Look!” A.P. puts on the mask. “I’m Dr. Scary!”

  Maybelle swats him. The mask moves. Eyebrows stick out of eye sockets. Who’s his optometrist? Meret Oppenheim?

  “Renfield, you fool,” Schiaparelli says to Chaney, stretching the mask till it snaps. “I told you to tend to Monsieur Rodgers—and you failed. You betrayed me to Chanel and her hayseed stooges. Et tu, Brutus? Étui, Brutus?”

  Chaney falls to his knees. Mimes misery.

  “Chanel Nº5 frightens you?” Schiaparelli says. “What it does to you is nothing compared to what I will do to you. I will have you baptized a Baptist. I will impale you on a wooden steeple. I will tattoo the Old Testament onto your chest. Kill Chanel! Fang her! Feast on her! Or I shall kill you—again!”

  Chaney charges Chanel. Chanel sprays him. 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 screeches in close-up. He smells like number two. He can’t smell. His nose is mortician’s wax. It drips down his lips. His jaw drops. Off. The things he does with gutta-percha! She sprays again. His body bursts into flames. Blazing blue. Fifth-degree burns. He runs around. No Running, a sign says. Mirror Mazes don’t have fire exits. Heat blackens mirrors. Heat, age, and bats. Mirrors ripple like they’ve been marcelled. Like laughing mirrors. From Funhouses.

  Smoke.

  Carrie Rodgers. Smoke.

  Coco Chanel. Freaks. Smoke.

  Freaks. Smoke. Freaks. Coco Chanel. Smoke. The Carter Family. Smoke. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Smoke. Freaks. The Carter Family. Smoke.

  Carrie Rodgers and Coco Chanel and the Carter Family and Elsa Schiaparelli and freaks and me in a Mirror Maze. Lon Chaney’s charred corpse.

  “You lied to me,” Carrie says to Schiaparelli.

  “Quel dommage>,” Schiaparelli says. “Renfield administered doses of Shocking! to Monsieur Rodgers. Shocking! made Monsieur breathe better.

  “Madame Rodgers, would you rather the Shocking! treatment stopped?” she says. “Would you rather he went back to breathing Chanel Nº5? Would you rather your husband looked like—” She fingers a freak. “Like him?”

  The Human Skeleton.

  “Skelly,” Schiaparelli says. “He used to be a banker.”

  Skelly’s dressed in a diaper.

  “He contracted tuberculosis,” she says. “It started out in his lungs. It spread.” Skelly’s skin and bones. Thin as a woman’s watch.

  “Doctors treated him the best ways they knew how,” she says. “Removed a rib. Collapsed a lung. Pierced his lungs with needles, trying in vain to drain sputum.” A pattern punched in his chest. Like in wingtips.

  “Doctors failed,” she says. “As the disease lays waste to his lungs, tissue turns to sponge. With each cough, he doesn’t only do damage to himself. He spreads disease through the air—droplets of TB, of
tissue, of blood, of pus. He’s a putrid perfume bottle—atomizing itself!”

  “Un atomiseur!” I say.

  “Un atomonsieur!” Schiaparelli says.

  “Dying slowly?” Carrie says. “In strange towns? In a seedy sideshow? Like Mr. Skelly—a laughingstock to be mocked?” She stares at Skelly, then at Schiaparelli. Mists. “I won’t let that happen to my husband. I won’t. I can’t.”

  “It’s a trick!” Maybelle says.

  “It’s a double-cross!” Sara says.

  “Mrs. Spaghetti!” A.P. says. “She’ll eat you!”

  “Schiaparelli won’t save Skelly,” Chanel says to Carrie, “and she won’t save Monsieur Rodgers! She’ll turn the two of you into skeletons—human or otherwise!”

  “I know,” Carrie says, hanging her head. “It’s in the script.”

  She steps up onto the tailor’s stage.

  “The Human Skeleton Dress,” Schiaparelli says.

  Bats beat down the corridor. Drape Carrie in a black jersey.

  “Skelly inspired this ensemble,” Schiaparelli says. “I’m sure, Madame Rodgers, that you can carry it with a certain élan.”

  Clavicles, scapulae, spine—Carrie caresses bones. Soft bones. The dress has a skeleton. The dress has TB. Bones are embroideries. Raised ridges sewn onto the cloth. A technique called trapunto. Ribs on the bodice. Collarbones on the collar.

  “And you thought corsets had boning.” Schiaparelli pins the dress to Carrie. To her shoulders, her arms, her torso, her waist. Endless needles. Steel through skin. Carrie gasps. Black hides blood. Blood soaks her. Trapunto bones absorb it. The bones are stuffed with batting. Schiaparelli licks blood from her own fingers. “Blood,” she says, “tastes like pins!”

  “The Fortune Teller’s turban!” Schiaparelli says. “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,” she says. “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.