Nick dropped to all fours, fighting for breath in the oppressive heat. For one horrifying moment, he feared air had gone the way of sound. Then, one small sip at a time, he extracted from the smoldering jungle a little oxygen, and a little more.
When he could again connect his thoughts, he stood and faced the enigma of the flower.
The enchantment was gone. Bells, sirens, and car alarms aplenty sounded in his head now. Arms crawling with goose bumps, palms slick with sweat, Nick removed the pack and flipped open the top. Hastily jettisoning socks, insect ointment, miner’s lamp, a damp paperback, a dozen foil-wrapped granola bars, a waterproof box of matches, another of Band-Aids, the mosquito netting, a change of walking shorts and underwear, he came to that which occupied the bottom half of his pack. The headspace analyzer.
From the pack and out of its protective sleeve came a small, rectangular metal box, a length of clear plastic tubing, and a domed glass container. In the essentials, it was a vapor analyzer or electronic nose. By extracting the odorous, volatile molecules exuded by the flower and trapping them in a series of filters, he could leave the orchid in the field unharmed. Back in San Francisco, the Azure lab staff would flush the molecules out of the filters and inject them into a gas chromatograph for analysis and duplication of the floral essence. As rain forests evaporated under human assault, it was the only responsible way to conduct business.
Royce Blankenship, the purest, would have a sharp commentary on real versus synthetic, but it was a sermon he’d given before. One whiff of the celerides and Royce would come around.
Carefully, hands trembling, Nick slipped the glass dome over the orchid bloom. This close to the source, he fought a woozy sensation and at least twice feared he might black out from the flower’s potency. He could see the marketing department having a field day with “a fragrance so captivating, he’ll melt in your arms.” Azure’s chemists would seek the proper intensity, of course, before ever bottling and shipping to market. If they didn’t mind their beakers, melting man would be stone unconscious.
“Where is the wildlife? This doesn’t feel right.” The words came out like a whisper in church. While keeping a reasonable distance, the arboreal residents had been his constant companion until a short time ago. It didn’t make sense for them to disappear.
Uneasily he activated the pump, which pulled the air from around the bloom through a tube and a chemical collection trap connected at opposite ends to glass dome and metal box. Another filter on the side of the dome removed contaminants so no alien chemicals entered the equation.
The process completed, Nick carefully removed the glass dome and marveled again at the celerides that emerged splendid and unscathed from its trip to the chamber. “Little vixen,” he scolded, “thank you for sharing your secrets so willingly and saving the farm in such brilliant style. You have my undying gratitude.” He did bow this time.
Nick packed away the equipment with its precious knowledge now captured and stored inside, before permitting himself a solitary celebration. He pumped a fist in victory. “That,” he said aloud, “was a multimillion-dollar extraction!” He could not wait to see Cassie’s face when he told her they were on top. Or Beth’s when he told her to up her hair appointments to two a week. Or perfume hunter Grayson Kent’s when he informed him he could stop mucking about in northern Madagascar in search of moss or resins or whatever the devil he thought contained something sufficiently pungent to pique the interest of a Faberge or an Elizabeth Arden. Nothing else would ever compare with what Nick had just captured. Grover Magnin would need an entire floor of his department store devoted to the perfect perfume by Azure World.
And Brenda would be begging for a distribution contract but would find them painfully difficult — and expensive — to come by.
He hated to leave the flower that was clearly queen of the glade. He removed a small disposable camera from a side pocket of the pack and photographed the prize from several angles and distances. Satisfied that his work here was done, Nick turned to make the triumphant journey home.
His heart jumped.
Twelve tall and deadly looking warriors blocked his way. Their long, razor-sharp spears glinted in the sunlight, tips stained dark with blood.
Chapter 5
Studio Nine at KSF-TV bustled with organized chaos. Technicians, gofers, camera operators, and the frizzy-haired producer of the region’s top-rated show Midday by the Bay moved in a last dance of lighting, sound, and set prep before show-time. A boisterous studio audience laughed at the warm-up announcer while on-air personality Barbara Silverman settled into one of the uncomfortable maroon-and-gray wingbacked chairs designed to force host and guests to sit up straight, lean forward, and look earnest.
Behind her, a stunning photo mural of San Francisco Harbor and the Golden Gate Bridge filled the entire back wall of the set.
Cassie watched all this on the TV monitor from the greenroom, where she received a final fluff and brush. The woman attending her wore a headset with a short stick of a mouthpiece, into which she barked updates between swift brush strokes of Cassie’s hair and powder puffs to the face.
A disembodied voice emerged from speakers in the wall. “Three minutes and we go live, people. Three minutes!” Everyone’s pace quickened.
Cassie’s daughter Beth stormed to her mind. The row that morning had once again been over the hairdresser. Andrew —no, some more foreign name. Andre, that was it. French, dear heaven, French! Worse, five years older than Beth’s tender sixteen and, Cassie suspected, full of R-rated moves. Whatever happened to mother and daughter arguing over finishing a helping of peas?
“Two minutes to air!” The woman with the headset had a thin, pinched mouth that looked predisposed to bite, perhaps explaining why the mouthpiece was so short.
“Greenroom ready!” headset woman barked into the stick. She gave Cassie a sharp, appraising review and did not seem pleased.
“Red provokes,” she said with a sniff, shading furtive eyes with a black clipboard. “The perfume you’re wearing — ” She waggled long, slender fingers, indicating that a large, invisible mist of fragrance had followed them into the room like a cloud of doom.
“Free Spirit.” Cassie’s stomach butterflies crowded the sesame bagel she had wolfed down on the cab ride over.
Headset woman nodded vigorously. “You could stand to cut back. It’s not a bad fragrance in small doses. Too many women, too much perfume.”
“They can see that on TV?” Cassie said with as much innocence as she could muster.
The irony was lost on the makeup person. Ignoring the question, she turned to give a short, stocky redheaded woman a quick, calculating inspection while consulting the clipboard. “You the gal who balances a poodle on her forehead while twirling plastic rings on each wrist?” The stout-shouldered poodle juggler gave a cool nod and patted a tiny black dog that peeked out from her sweater pocket. The dog shivered and bared its teeth at Cassie.
“Which would make you the — ”
“Perfumer,” finished Cassie, taking inordinate pleasure as the woman suddenly began shuffling papers on her clipboard.
She held out a perfectly manicured hand. “Cassandra Dixon,” she said. “CEO of Azure World. Always glad to receive customer feedback. That’s Flamingo you’re wearing, one of our most popular from last fall’s line. Subtle citrus with a tease of thyme. Good choice for the hectic world you’re in.”
The makeup person, still busying herself with the clipboard, gave Cassie’s hand one downward shake.
“Thirty seconds, people, thirty seconds!” warned the control room.
Cassie smoothed her dress and smiled wanly at the woman with the dog. Never mind. Controversy, breaking scandal, and the occasional carnival act were mainstays of Midday. Corporate CEOs across the city were known to end international trade meetings early so as not to miss the spectacle or a single sentence of Silverman’s sassy commentary. For that matter, the big-screen TV in Cassie’s office was almost always tuned to KSF
Channel 7 because the one-hour midday show was about the only program she ever watched. KSF had a regional viewer-ship in the hundreds of thousands who, from cafe to auto body shop, from San Jose to Sausalito, had to have its daily fix of MDBTB-TV.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . .” The screen in the greenroom filled with a swooping overhead camera shot that panned 180 degrees from Silverman’s right, swung out over the audience, and sped dizzyingly toward the ending mark at Silverman’s left.
“And now, live from Studio Nine, high atop the Hotel Oceana in the heart of downtown San Francisco, it’s your modicum of mayhem, your nitro at noon, the one, the only Midday by the Bay, with your host, Bar-bar-a Sil-verman!” The studio audience gave another convulsion of adoration before they whistled and hooted themselves quiet.
The face known to half the West Coast turned to look into the camera. “You can have your Cirque du Soleil,” Silverman said with her trademarked pout and dramatic pause, “just give me my Cirque by the Bay!”
“Olé!” screamed the studio audience, aided by three giant cue cards. The scene instantly switched to a camera with a head-on view, zooming in for close-up. Silverman locked eyes with her viewers. “You may find it hard to believe, as do I, that my first guest has never before appeared on Midday. She is Cassandra Dixon, one-half of the leadership team of Dixon and Dixon. Together, Cassandra and her husband, Nick, direct Azure World, a scrappy little perfume manufacturer that the industry says is on the eve of destruction!”
The studio band broke into ten seconds of the rock classic of the same name before Silverman laughed it to a halt.
Cassie’s stomach did a crazy gyration. Was it a mistake to come here? Why welcome public ridicule? The greenroom felt suddenly as inviting as a mausoleum.
“But ever the mavericks of fashion fragrance, the Dixons have defied their critics, first by thumbing their noses at the New York fashion world twenty years ago when they set up operations in San Francisco, then by deliberately snubbing the high-class perfume market to target instead our middle class, Wal-Mart sensibilities. That is, until now.”
Silverman paused momentarily, wet her Botoxed lips, and pushed them forward ever so slightly in what every man at every bar stool, lube rack, and television sales department in umpteen counties took to be a kiss.
“For her, the smell of success comes in a bottle, and she tells me she has an exclusive announcement to make on this show that will sock us right in the senses. Welcome, please, mom, wife, determined businesswoman, and gutsy boardroom broad, Cassandra Dixon!”
The band played “Eye of the Tiger” to match the pugnacious flavor of the announcement, and for a fleeting moment Cassie toyed with the idea of shadowboxing out to her seat at Silverman’s right. Instead she walked her “First Lady walk,” as Nick called it, graceful but not stuffy. Assured. Safe. Unlikely to make her trip and end up facedown in the artificial shrubbery.
Applause and unintelligible shouts followed her. It seemed to take forever, and by the time she reached the chair, she had barely resisted breaking into a run.
Everyone sat and Barbara lost no time. “Where’s Nick? With Azure on the ropes, it hardly seems the time for him to go AWOL.”
Cassie almost blanked. She prayed for strength. She had decided in the cab that she was not going to allow Silver-man — who had to be from the same pit bull litter as Brenda Gelasse — to steal the show.
She struck a hesitant pose, as if wrestling with private thoughts, then leaned conspiratorially forward. “Can we talk?”
Barbara flashed the camera an amused smirk. “Why, dawling, of course we can talk. Tell Barbie everything.”
Cassie laced her beautifully manicured fingers together, positioning them so her scarlet nails and hammered brass bracelet reflected the bright overhead lights. “Then before I answer your question, Barbie, let me speak to the person who wants to shut down Azure World.”
Before the startled host could react, Cassie, heart thudding, looked into the camera and said, “At about nine o’clock this morning, a paid industry stooge invaded my office with one thing in mind — to steal our secret for a competitor’s gain. The thief failed. In fact, he came close to losing his life for that inglorious cause. Someone’s playing nasty and someone almost died. Well, hear this. Nothing can stop us and nothing will!”
She unclipped a small vial from the inside cuff of her dress and sprayed the inside of Barbara’s right wrist. She fanned the dampness dry, then held it close to the host’s nose. “Sweet Amber Waves,” she said, “with strong, exotic, spicy bass notes of cloves and nutmeg, floral middle notes predominantly tuberose and iris butter, and top notes largely patchouli and jasmine. Verdict?”
Barbara nodded agreement. “Lovely. Sensual. Hardly the little blue-collar bouquets you’re known for,” she said in tones both wicked and smooth.
“Does Sweet Amber Waves smell like the funeral fragrance of a dying company?”
“Not at all,” said Barbara, ignoring a signal to go to commercial. “Nor does it smell like a truly great perfume in the French tradition. If this is your grand announcement, I’d say we’ve been duped. Nor have you answered my first question.
Where is Nicholas Dixon?”
The shrew. Cassie recrossed her legs, rested her elbows on the arms of the chair, clasped her hands, and pointed both index fingers at the host. She took a deep breath, banished all second thoughts, and said, “My husband is out of the country, harvesting the most sensual and evocative scent since Cleopatra seduced her paramours with exotic pomades and powders paid for from the pharaoh’s treasury.”
The audience members buzzed. Some laughed cautiously, unsure how to take the brazen announcement. Silverman pursed her lips and laid a light hand on her guest’s arm, girlfriend to girlfriend. “Come now, Cassandra. Did someone stay five minutes too long under the heat lamp?” A big laugh from the audience. Barbara’s sarcasm was familiar ground.
The host rushed on with blood-in-the-water urgency. “Casssss,” she hissed, “you’re saying he’s found a fragrance that surpasses anything created by the house of Guerlain, more than Molinard, more than Lancome, more than Chanel?” On each exaggerated and signature more, she was joined in unison by gleeful audience members familiar with the Silverman style.
“More,” Cassie said quietly, locking eyes with her.
The floor technician, signaling commercial break to no avail, was by now apoplectic, arms waving frantically.
Silverman looked annoyed. She turned to the camera. “When we come back, the boss lady of Azure World reveals the name of her sensational knockout scent, and we learn just how stinky the perfume business can really be. Then we go to your questions. Stick around!”
An advertisement for the newest Gucci fragrance filled the monitors, causing Cass a grim smile. No opportunity was ever lost to grab the advantage in her business. Azure did not have the three hundred thousand dollars the station charged per sixty-second Midday spot.
While the makeup woman — who, Cassie detected with satisfaction, had freshened her Flamingo — fiddled and fussed, Silverman eyed her guest appraisingly. “You’ve crawled out on a mighty tiny limb,” she said. “Should I hand you a saw?”
Startled to see a sympathetic smile accompany the question, Cassie said, “None required, thanks.” Inside she fought nausea. Without a single word from Nick, she’d told the world she had Cleopatra beat in the perfume department. She’d stuck a thumb in the eye of the dirty competitor who had ordered the thief into her office. And, judging from the knowing glint that had suddenly replaced any trace of sympathy in Barbara’s piercing eyes, she was about to be forced to apply a few distasteful tactics of her own.
Silverman was handed some papers. She looked them over, and as the countdown to air was repeated, she straightened and stared into the camera. “Is she heir to the throne of the six-billion-dollar perfume dynasty, as she claims, or the manufacturer of one last desperate attempt to save the farm? My guest is Cassandra Dixon, CEO of San Francisco’s own
Azure World, who says she and Azure cofounder, husband Nicholas Dixon, are about to unleash the most irresistible aroma since theater popcorn. She will now reveal the name of this amazing aroma, exclusively here on Midday. Drumroll, Mickey!”
The band conductor pointed to his drummer, who responded with the appropriate cadence. At the same time, Silverman pointed to Cassie, as prearranged.
Cassie felt suddenly overheated and dizzy. She fought the urge to faint. Why in the world had she thought this was a good idea?
She paused dramatically and humbly lowered her shoulders. And just as Mark Butterfield had coached, she smiled directly into the camera, a smile that made every man at every bar stool, lube rack, and television sales department in all surrounding counties pledge in his heart to wear Azure products for men.
Ten seconds. Twelve seconds. Thirteen. Drumroll. “We present Azure’s gift to every woman who ever dreamed of being the focus of someone special, the very breath of beauty, Cassandra!”
To loud applause, the curtains at stage left parted, and out glided a giant gilded box of pale rosy pink iridescence, the name Cassandra in flowing gold script, framed by twin pink pillars of marble shot through with veins of gold. Two statuesque blondes, dressed in tight, sleeveless black gowns, black opera-length gloves, and thousand-watt smiles, turned the eight-foot box left, then right, to catch the studio lights. The shimmering graphics shifted and glowed like sunset-tinted clouds. Though the one-off box had cost her a fortune, just the towering, gorgeous sight of it settled Cassie’s stomach.
The audience was standing, their whistles and shouts all Cassie’s.
Even Barbara clapped for the artistry on display. Cassie wished she had enough left in the Azure account to give the design department a raise. But no, every last cent was there on stage, and then some.
Nicky, please come home with the contents of that box!
When calm finally returned to Studio Nine, Barbara deadpanned, “It’s the story of my life when a container gets a better hand than I do.” Cassie knew they were laughing in the Laundromats, the barbershops, and the arrival and departure gates of San Francisco International Airport. That Silverman, what a crack-up.
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