Kathleen Tessaro - The Perfume Collector

Eva pushed him away, horrified. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You smell…’ he murmured.

‘Yes, thank you!’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘I hardly need you to tell me that!’ she hissed. ‘Madame wants to see you…’

‘No, you don’t understand.’ He reached for her again; short sharp intakes now, savouring the notes, rolling them round on his olfactory palette. ‘It’s unique. Completely unique.’

‘Get off!’ Eva swatted him.

Suddenly something shifted in the bed; a body. The person next to him stretched out and rolled over onto their stomach.

It was another man.

Eva recoiled. Stumbling backward, she blundered towards the interconnecting door.

‘Well?’ Madame opened her eyes. ‘You appear to be alone,’ she observed flatly.

Reeling, Eva focused at the floor. ‘He is asleep, madam.’

‘Well then, wake him!’ Madame gasped in exasperation, running her hand wearily across her eyes. ‘I need him!’

This was dreadful, truly dreadful.

Eva tried to stall her. ‘He’s not dressed, madam. I can help you. Would you like me to fetch you something from the drug store?’

With another heavy sigh, Madame forced herself up from her chair and marched into Valmont’s room. Eva hovered in the doorway, watching in shameful fascination.

Madame stopped; she stood in the darkness a moment. Then she turned back on her heel.

And with more moans and sighs, she dug through one of her handbags until she pulled out some loose coins. She shoved them into Eva’s hand. ‘I need aspirin. And some Woolcott’s, please. I have the most blinding headache known to mankind.’

Eva stared at her. Had Madame seen what she’d seen? Did she have any comprehension of what a mortal sin it was?

It was as if her thoughts could be heard aloud.

Madame turned to her. ‘You know,’ she began, ‘there are many stages in a man’s life. Young men especially are very easily excitable. They need more variety, more experiences than girls. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, madam,’ she lied.

‘These little dalliances are merely preludes to the real interludes. They fade over time. Of course,’ she added, returning back to her chair, ‘I do worry about Andre. Gossip is the plague of the idle and insecure. I’m relying upon your discretion.’

‘Yes, madam. Of course.’

‘Then we shall speak no more about. And do close that door.’ She pressed her eyes closed again. ‘I suppose we never should have opened it in the first place.’

Andre Valmont lay on his back, fully awake now, staring into the darkness. Beside him the boy he’d met in the club in Harlem snored softly.

He closed his eyes.

He could see her smell; it glowed against the backs of his eyelids, pure shimmering gold to deep undulating amber. And he could taste each note; savour the melting progression on his tongue, the shocking, perfect combination of contrasts, underpinned by a creamy, intensely carnal core of raw sexuality. He wanted to bury himself deep in her flesh; to consume each molecule of her, one breath at a time.

And that wasn’t the way he normally felt about girls.

He pulled the sheet back. He was stiff; erect to an almost painful degree. Spitting into the palm of his hand, he closed his eyes again.

He imagined peeling off her uniform, each layer of clothing saturated more densely with her warm sweat, until there was nothing between them but skin; emanating, covering them both with the shimmering dark dew of her incredible odour… he trembled, ecstasy surging, shuddering through him.

Here at last was a story he understood. A song of youth; of burgeoning, ripe sexuality; of frustration and longing… of a nymph and a femme fatal, both trapped in the body of an graceless young girl… a mythic parable that could only really be captured in perfume.

And above all, her natural odour radiated. As though it were issuing from the top of a high peak. In its velvet glow, the dim landscape of his creative gifts finally came into focus.

Valmont got up, washed himself; lit a cigarette. Then he woke up the boy from Harlem and sent him home.

He had work to do.

Two days later, Grace found herself standing in the foyer of the offices of Lancelot et Delp, located in a strikingly modern concrete building near Les Halles. They had a sparse, marble lobby with floor-to-ceiling windows, manned by a desk of young women wearing telephone operator headphones. Monsieur Tissot confirmed their appointment and soon afterwards a young man bolted from one of the ten lifts at the centre of the lobby to greet them.

He was wearing a modern narrow-cut suit with a thin, bright yellow tie and thick-framed black glasses. His hair, a mass of dark curls, stuck straight up in the air. As he bounded over to them, hand already outstretched, it struck Grace that he reminded her of a human exclamation mark, with the same emphatic energy.

‘Good afternoon! Welcome! I’m Albert Dubois.’ He pumped both their hands hard. ‘Pleasure to meet you! Would you like coffee? Tea? Have you been here before?’ All the while he was speaking, he ushered them to the lifts, heedless of any answers.

‘How lovely that you speak English,’ Grace commented, as they stepped inside and the doors closed.

‘Oh, I also speak German, Spanish, Portuguese and a bit of Japanese. The one that always trips me up is American!’ he laughed, pushing his glasses further back on his nose.

‘Japanese!’ Monsieur Tissot looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Whatever for?’

‘I’m telling you, they’re picking themselves up – they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with soon.’

‘I seriously doubt it,’ Monsieur Tissot disagreed.

The lift opened again and they stepped out, pushing through a pair of glass double doors.

The din hit Grace first; the sound of a hundred voices all speaking at once. Row after row of desks stretched to the end of the huge office, each desk with at least two phones; young men in shirtsleeves were shouting across to one another and there was a large board mounted on the far wall, where more young men ran from one end to another, making constant adjustments to the numbers.

‘Sorry about this,’ Monsieur Dubois filtered them off to a private side office and offered them a seat. ‘New York has just opened so things are heating up. So.’ He sat down across from them at his desk and took out a file. ‘You’re here about the d’Orsey stocks, is that right? Oh, so sorry for your loss,’ he added, looking at Grace.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, trying not to catch Monsieur Tissot’s eye.

‘Well, I have to say,’ he smiled as he opened the file, ‘one of my all-time favourite clients, Eva d’Orsey. What a nose she had for this game!’

‘What do you mean?’ Monsieur Tissot sat forward, interested.

Monsieur Dubois sifted through the papers in front of him. ‘She came to me about five or six years ago with a handful of Hiver stocks. A gift, she said. She knew nothing about the stock market and wanted someone to advise her. Fine. I made a few conservative recommendations – commodities, gold, bonds, things like that. But before I knew it, she was calling me with suggestions. Did I know that Citroën was building a new suspension braking device? Was I aware that Goodyear were expanding in Mexico? What did I think of the new American rock ‘n’ roll dance craze?’

‘Really?’ Monsieur Tissot laughed incredulously.

‘She was quite extraordinary. She understood the numbers, did research.’ He passed Grace a report from the top of the file. ‘She took that handful of cosmetics stocks and finessed it into a valuable long-term investment portfolio.’

Grace looked down the long list of company names – United States Steel, EMI, Standard Oil, Firestone, Citroën, Le Monde, Amoco… somewhere near the bottom she noticed Hiver. And next to each entry, there was a monetary value in francs. Her mind was swimming; drowning in information. ‘I’m sorry, but what does this all mean, Monsieur Dubois?’