She spotted Brenda at the elbow of the maitre d’, advancing toward her table. Short ebony hair, pale skin. Slender and fluid in a black sleeve of a dress, with mood to match. Their eyes met, and by her sickly smirk of recognition, Cassie could guess the other woman’s thoughts. What does Nick Dixon see in you?You’re all wrong for perfume. Commercial real estate, maybe, or travel agent, but never the high-stakes arena of bottled allure.
Cassie fought the nausea. If only so much weren’t riding on her performance. If only they had not agreed to meet in so public a place. She made a mental note to put poison back on the list.
She rose and greeted Brenda with extended hand. “Ms. Gelasse, how kind of you to come.”
Brenda had agreed to this meeting with good reason. Azure World, the Dixon perfume company, had two things she wanted.
After today there might be a third.
The women shook hands warily and were seated. A gin and tonic materialized in front of Brenda. Another iced lemon tea appeared in front of Cassie at the same time but went untouched. She glanced nervously about, took a deep breath, and began.
“Ms. Gelasse, I know you’re busy, and I won’t waste your time.” She hoped the woman would interrupt and urge the use of her first name. She didn’t. “We’re about to release a new line that — and you’ve probably heard this before, but trust me, this time it’s no hype — a new line with more promise than Gucci, Opium, and Obsession combined. We have isolated the natural flora oil of a blossom so rare and of a fragrance so enticing that it will be the most socially compelling aroma this millennium. And here’s the best part.” She leaned forward, betraying her excitement, as if to impart directions to the Fountain of Youth. She looked around once more before saying in a low voice, “Never has its scent been inhaled before!”
Brenda’s nostrils quivered ever so slightly in an otherwise unyielding mask of professional detachment. Is she cataloging me? It was well established in the trade that Brenda analyzed the scent of an adversary before pinning the hapless creature to a display card and adding it to her collection. What does she think of our Cosmos? Probably that the rose and vanilla are vastly understated, as forgettable as yesterday’s poached egg. And God help me if she catches a whiff of the Strawberry Soda I bathed in. She’ll have me committed to the Jelly Belly factory for life.
“Never?” Brenda wet her wide coral pink lips with the gin and tonic. Cassie felt as vulnerable as a kitten on the interstate. Everyone, most especially Brenda, knew the buzz in the industry. Azure World was about to slip in red ink and fall on its corporate backside.
Brenda sat back in the chair and crossed long smooth legs. She placed both hands on her knee and gave Cassie a penetrating look. “Mrs. Dixon — ”
“Cassandra, please.”
“Cassandra . . .” Brenda drew the name out as if it were a blended scent and she were separating each essence. “I don’t need to tell you that Mother Earth’s olfactory repertoire is all but exhausted. We must cease these fantasies of finding a pristine aroma. The future of perfume lies in the combining of food, spice, and forest scents. I know you’ve heard that the Costa Rican rain forest contains an insect that when crushed emits the aroma of ambergris, but those prospects are mere oddities. We have a crew down there now burning up a thousand dollars a day, but the fickle little bugs aren’t cooperating.
No, dear, I have better things to do than to sit here when all you offer is another garden bouquet. Candy and flowers are for blue collar schmoes with the imaginations of dust mites.”
Cassie fought an extreme dislike for the woman, focusing on Brenda’s long pink nails rapping an impatient tattoo on the tablecloth. The woman’s head tipped forward on its slender, pale pedestal, and heavy-lidded eyes considered Cassie with studied indifference. “Mrs. Dixon, I don’t mean to be curt, but we both know that I am no trend chaser. When Elizabeth Taylor’s Black Pearls backfired, you could have smelled the stink a thousand miles at sea. Print ads featuring Ms. Taylor immersed in a lagoon couldn’t draw fleas. Twelve million precious advertising dollars in the toilet. Enough surplus scent strips to paper Manhattan. The rocket scientists at Elizabeth Arden couldn’t find a hole to crawl into. No, I’ve smelled your line and frankly, it lacks the heart to make it in the universe where I operate.”
Cassie stiffened and narrowed her eyes. “Look, Ms. Gelasse, I’m not talking about a nostalgia wave here, or some fleeting infatuation. Without advertising, celebrity endorsement, or additives of any kind, we have created the most stimulating fragrance since Adam first sniffed the rose. Teenage girls, women over forty, and everyone in between will snap this up by the gallon. We’ll market it on television during commercial breaks in Insomniac Theatre if we have to, but we are going to introduce this aroma. What we want is for deBrieze to have exclusive in-store rights. California test market, then coast-to-coast and international distribution. How about it?”
How about it? Is that the best closing line I can find?
Cassie held her breath, then let it out slowly as Brenda glared at the accursed ceiling speakers and ordered a second gin and tonic. “Ugh, this sugar music is so bourgeois. What I wouldn’t give for some virile Rachmaninoff.”
She fixed Cassie with a look only slightly more nuanced than the one she’d launched at the ceiling. “I didn’t become head buyer for five hundred high-fashion emporiums nationwide by allowing just anything into the deBrieze aromalariums. We’ve spent an obscene amount constructing those biospheres of glitz and glass and manning them with bare-chested body builders named Max or Stefan. Every one of their fragrance belts is equipped with atomizers that propel only the finest — and most expensive — scents on earth. Surely you are aware that The Boys of deBrieze created a heat wave from Sunset Boulevard to Madison Avenue. You’re asking me to jeopardize my boys and my reputation on a whim.”
Cassie wasn’t about to react. A second gin and tonic meant at least a faint ripple of interest. She waited.
Brenda’s expression turned sour. “You lost me back there when you said everyone will clamor for your virgin fragrance. Surely you’ve read Perfume for Dummies. No scent ever made appeals to everyone. Besides, I thought marketing was your husband’s domain. You are still married to the handsome Nicky Dixon?” The tongue wet the lips.
Cassie ignored the question, but not without difficulty. “My statement of this scent’s mass appeal should clue you to how convinced I am we’ve found what we all — you, me, Ms. Taylor, and Calvin Klein’s masseuse — have been after for decades!”
The last was said too loud, catching the embarrassed attention of two nearby diners. Cassie drained her tea and forced herself to calm down. “Shall we order?”
The suggestion went unanswered, as if beneath comment. Bad sign. Although her researchers had found no one who had ever seen Brenda — slender as a spiked heel — consume so much as a Triscuit.
Brenda arched finely etched eyebrows and fixed Cassie with a wicked, penetrating stare. “Nick?”
The name from her lips sounded raw, perverted. Would Nick’s one moment of weakness stalk them forever? The look in Brenda’s eyes was nothing short of triumphant. Cassie wanted to hurl the iced tea in the woman’s face.
“News flash, Brenda. As much as you’d like Nick in your stable, he’s not available.” If a knife fight was what Brenda wanted, Cassie could stab with the best of them. She watched the woman’s face for any hint that the direct approach unsettled her in the least. None showed.
Brenda held her drink close as a microphone and spoke over the edge of the glass. “I plan to attend the launch of Nick’s new shower soap for men Saturday next. It was generous of you to include me, though the invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail.” She set her glass down and smiled with all the warmth of a python. “If you don’t mind a little advice from a war veteran, dear, your puritanical approach to marketing has cost you millions. In my hands, the launch of Block & Tackle would invite the vice squad. I’d suspend a shower stall right over the main floor and l
et the soap fly. And when the police arrived, we’d have a lively discussion over freedom of expression.”
Cassie bit her tongue. She would not be drawn in. There was nothing to be gained by filling the trades with the gory details of a catfight.
Another sip and Brenda shot her a self-satisfied smirk. “Without something sensational very soon, word on the street is that Azure World is just one case of aftershave shy of Chapter Eleven.”
“You need to pay your informants more, Brenda.” Even as she said it, Cassie knew with sinking heart that her adversary’s intelligence was sound. “Swirl for women and Jamaican Bark for men were a solid double-release that earned us a sizeable piece of the Neiman-Marcus perfume real estate, going on six seasons.”
“Bravo!” Brenda feigned applause, the fingers of her right hand fluttering the air just above the palm of her left. “You are to be credited with building a quiet, if small, business model.” She made it sound no more significant than a couple of sidewalk carts. “And for bringing a handful of perfectly serviceable little fashion fragrances to the forefront, not to mention conducting yourselves with saintly diligence.”
“Cut to the end, Brenda.”
The woman jerked forward, planted elegant elbows inelegantly on the table, and trapped Cassie’s gaze in a scathing stare. “Very well. I am personally authorized to buy your controlling interest out at seventeen million. Furthermore — ”
“You’re joking. Plus you’re about eighty million shy of a serious offer. I didn’t come here to play charades.”
“And why did you come? Surely not to dangle some preposterous fiction in my face in the hope of delaying the inevitable? Frankly, I could let them foreclose on you and pick up the remains at auction, but Nicky deserves better than that.” Then, as if suddenly finding her appetite, she said, “The alder-smoked salmon is superb here. Shall we?”
Nicky deserved better? Cassie fought the urge to scream. The woman was a vulture in a French-cut dress. “I came here to tell you that not since earth, wind, and fire has there been something so elemental, so captivating, as this natural scent. You know full well your Night Tremors line ran its cycle long ago and has been treading water for five years. Word on the street is you’re desperate for something new, something to give the public a good hard shake. I say that something is within grasp. I’m talking of an unlimited future, and all you can think of is making a corporate kill?”
“I prefer to think of it as a mutually beneficial acquisition. You could finally have time for your circus lessons, plan for retirement to a sun-drenched villa in Martinique, and pay off the Miata. Very, very tidy.”
Cassie rose with a jerk, tipping the vase of fresh flowers. The maitre d’ turned to glare. “How dare you?” Cassie hissed. “What do you know of our personal affairs, and what business is it of yours?”
Brenda gathered her handbag and stood, looking down on Cassie. The maitre d’ hovered nearby, looking as distressed as if he had a table fire and no extinguisher. Behind him, other diners had stopped their conversations to watch. “I almost regret having offended you,” Brenda said. “But you are foolish to turn down my offer and to chase after phantom fragrances when all you have produced thus far is little more than mediocre toilet water. And you are quite clumsy on the attack. Don’t you have someone on payroll who can do that for you?”
Cassie wondered how many years she would get for forking someone to death.
“The offer remains for seventy-two hours. My card.” Brenda held out the business card between two long fingers. Cassie refused to take it. Brenda set it next to her glass and walked away. She called back, loud enough for the other diners to hear, “I apologize for dinner, but neither of us have the stomach for it,” and was gone.
Cassie felt weak in the knees and sat. Had she oversold their situation? Said too much? What if Nick couldn’t find the flower? What if he failed to . . . ?
She squeezed her eyes closed and forced away dark thoughts and rising panic. He has to succeed. Has to, dear God! She’d stayed away from St. John’s too long. Fr. B would have some light for her. He knew God’s mind, God’s will. She hadn’t been to see him in ages, had skipped the last two appointments without calling. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day. And Beth . . . She hadn’t even had a good heart-to-heart with her daughter since . . . when?
Cassie shook her head and steeled herself. Pay attention to business. Even a no-deal meeting with Brenda was good for two inches in Brandon Kirk’s “Eye on the Bay” in the Chronicle. That buzz, plus tomorrow’s interview on Midday by the Bay, was sure to set the stage for the bombshell about to detonate upon Nick’s return with Cream Base #6 — code for The Mother of All Fragrances.
She looked around the restaurant for Brandon’s paid eyes, but no one seemed to fit the description. Around Cassie the murmur of conversation resumed. She caught the eye of the maitre d’ and fumbled in her purse for money to cover the drinks.
“It is not necessary, madam,” he said with a cautious smile.
“Your, um . . . friend . . . already paid.”
At the San Francisco School of Circus Arts in the Haight, Cassie Dixon pulled on leotard and T-shirt. Shivering, she strode into the cavernous gym, cold as an abandoned warehouse, and rolled onto a trampoline to warm up.
All around her, stockbrokers, cable car operators, airline pilots, interior decorators, and work-at-home moms bounced, bent, and flew to overcome phobias, bad marriages, assorted addictions, and predictable lives.
Cassie soared higher with each bounce to keep from taking a cab downtown and strangling Brenda Gelasse.
Her mind too intent on the frustrating conversation, Cassie gained too much altitude too fast. Dizziness came in a wave and she felt herself tipping backward. Arms pinwheeling forward to compensate, she landed awkwardly and pitched headlong over the metal springs and frame into the muscled arms of an experienced spotter.
“Whoa, Mrs. Dixon, easy does it!”
She felt foolish, as much the amateur as the day six weeks previous when she’d chosen flying with the greatest of ease over a class in oriental wok cooking. She had to do something or have an aneurysm worrying about Nick trekking through the New Guinea jungles on his quest for the orchid celerides. Their ticket to the stars!
She sat on a bench, head between her knees, and felt a strong hand knead the muscles of her back and neck. “You’re tighter than a Scottish banker.” Gentle as the familiar voice was, years of cigarettes gave it a husky rasp. Nick labeled it “maple sugar and gravel.”
“Mags!” Cassie didn’t look up. Her neck started to feel loose and rubbery. “I thought you were in Shanghai at the world congress of the ICCACS.” Margaret O’Connor had treated herself to the International Conference of Chinese Aesthetics and Cosmetic Science for her sixty-fourth birthday. The Asian market was set for a hydrogen explosion in Western perfume and cosmetics. Mags, grande dame of modern fragrance and the genius behind the rocket ride at Regina-Floria, let it be known she was entitled to light the fuse.
“Was,” Mags said. “But when you get Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, and Yves Saint Laurent in the same room, those honey boys are too smooth for me. You forget I grew up with Ralph Lauren and Christian Dior, who are at least capable of growing beards if it came to it. Nor do they mask the body’s natural musk as if it were somehow too nasty to admit. No, you give me the real men of fragrance, doll, and let the kids tinker with their toys.”
“Maggie May O’Connor!” scolded Cassie, coming up for air. “That tart talk’ll get you blackballed.” They hugged affectionately.
“Listen, cutie, if I haven’t been harpooned for wearing this leotard in public, no amount of trash talk’s gonna do it. Now what’s got you committing hari-kari off the tramp today, may I ask?”
Cassie hesitated. Mags had aged in the aroma wars despite a still-trim body and loads of energy. Once considered the celestial rose of New York perfumers, she had been midwife to some of the world’s most revered scents, including White Should
ers, Obsession, and Oscar de la Renta.
Mags, just over five compact feet and still pretty despite the gathering lines of battle, eyed Cassie suspiciously. “Tell me what’s up,” she said. “You’ve got something going on that’s tying you in knots.” She pulled her silvery brunette hair into a purple scrunchie and slid her feet into a pair of scuffed dance slippers. When Cassie said nothing, Mags stood, threw a towel about her neck, and made no effort to disguise the hurt in her voice. “Don’t worry. Waggy Maggie’s tongue is in the upright and locked position.” She turned and walked off in the direction of the twenty-six-foot ladder that would take her to the top of the trapeze rig.
Cassie sighed. If the orchid did not exist, if she proved inadequate to run Azure World in Nick’s absence, if Brenda decided on a more devious course of action, Mags O’Connor might be her last friend on earth. Besides, if they were going to catch each other today, they needed to be emotionally connected.
“Maggie, wait. Let me help you tape up!”
Cassie bent over the older woman’s graceful hands, took them in her own, and ran her fingers over the newly formed calluses. “Those were hard-won,” she said, bringing the tape around to begin wrapping.
She received an answering squeeze but no reply. Cassie glanced up. Maggie’s lips were pressed so tightly together, they were nearly drained of blood. A merry twinkle shone in pale green eyes.
Cassie laughed. “Okay, Sherlock, I know my secrets are safe with you. Let’s finish taping and get our fannies up there. I always spill my guts easier when I’m terrified!”
Chapter 3
Who are they to call us yawningly unoriginal?” Skip Lyons, Azure’s comptroller, sat across from Cassie in the tastefully appointed company boardroom. The rest of her staff was seated on either side of the dark oak conference table.
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