Scent

by Kelly, Clint L.

  “Oh no, don’t bother. I require a quick trip to the powder room first. Just show me on the seating chart where I need to go, and I’ll find my own way. Remember, I do know my way around these things.”

  He nodded. They shared an intimate understanding of “these things.”

  Brenda, familiar with the layout of the Fairmont, bypassed the ladies’ room and made straight for the ballroom.

  She slid inside as Mark Butterfield concluded his acceptance speech. “. . . the collaborative effort of so many . . . Thank you to all the Guild for this grand honor.”

  Brenda couldn’t stop to think about what she was doing. The hopelessness of it. Whether she should convince security to detain her suspect. There wasn’t time to convince bureaucracy. She scanned the room. John talked of a distant cousin who worked at the Fairmont. Rocky something? No, not Rocky, more like Ricky or Richie — that was it, Richie. Worked his way up from dishwasher to food preparer to waiter. To hear John talk about it, Richie was only a couple heartbeats away from hotel manager.

  If he was distant, he might not bear a lot of family resemblance. Think, Gelasse, think.

  “Esteemed members of the Guild and members of the fragrance profession, invited guests, and television viewers,” Safi began in her formal way, “you have paid us so large an honor, and we do not receive your approval lightly. You have our gratitude and our pledge to uphold the highest ideals of our profession in the never-ending search for beauty. Thank you very much.”

  Brenda surveyed the tables and tried not to think of John’s broken body lying lifeless in the street. He was a menacing jerk at worst. At best . . . a horrifying image of a twisted corpse and a face crushed beyond recognition squeezed past her defenses. Nobody deserved those few seconds it took to go from the sixty-fifth balcony to sea level. Maybe they could have had some kind of life. Now her life would consist of instant replays of his plunge and that unearthly scream of pure, irreversible terror. Something as awful was about to play out, and John’s unannounced visit was all the warning she would receive. It was time to act.

  She would deal with the police later.

  She waved at several diners who recognized her, but refused their overtures to join them. She watched the few waiters allowed, now that the tables were cleared, to enter the room to refill coffee cups and water glasses. More than one of the white-coated males making the rounds was swarthy and might be related to John. Given his excesses, they probably were.

  Montague was back at the dais. “Our next Silver Rose is for Most Creative Use of Mixed Media.” This one went to Oscar de La Renta for Volupte, an established scent of floral bouquet. The lights went down, and tribute was paid on-screen for the clever use of TV ad buys and “random acts of flowers,” in which giant bouquets were delivered arbitrarily to office workers. The recipients’ shocked reactions had been filmed to great effect.

  Brenda pressed back into an alcove, between the wall and a coffee cart. Maybe she should be looking for the Nose. Convince dear Richie to shoot him instead for all the times he refused Brenda’s offers to treat him as he deserved. Stubborn loyalist. And where was Mags? Probably in the wine cellar trading war stories with the steward. “The year I drank Italy dry . . .” Brenda forced herself to focus on the reason she was there at all. This was no time to aggravate old wounds.

  She waited through the interminably long acceptance speech for the lights to rise. When they did, along with the applause, she spotted the floor captain instructing two waiters and headed her way.

  “Brenda!” hissed someone at her elbow. A soft-gloved hand steered her to a halt. It was Angelina Croix, plump heiress to a sizeable portion of the Dichter-Lowe intercontinental fragrance dynasty. She was forever hounding deBrieze to load up on every product DL carried, a considerable inventory, much of which was too understated for Brenda’s tastes.

  “Not just now, Angie dear,” Brenda purred, taking back her arm. “I want to be seated by the stage steps when the Crystal Decanter is awarded.”

  Angelina raised a questioning eyebrow. “Really? Isn’t there bad blood between you and Cassie Dixon?”

  Brenda leaned in, wrapped Angie and her seven tablemates in a sweet zephyr of Cassandra, and gave a chummy laugh. “When Mrs. Dixon trips, I’ve been asked to catch the Crystal Decanter before it puts out someone’s eye.”

  She left them laughing, the men clearly befuddled by pheromone overload.

  The leggy starlet now onstage pressed on. “The Silver Rose for Most Improved Sales of an Established Brand goes to Given-chy for Eau de Givenchy! Accepting for Givenchy is Director of Sales . . .”

  When Brenda arrived at the floor captain’s station, the woman had a radio handset pressed to her ear. She gave orders, then quickly terminated the call. “How may I help you?” she said in a concerned tone. “Is everything all right?”

  “Lovely,” Brenda said. “The dessert was a subtle mouth-pleaser.”

  The captain beamed. “I will let Chef know. And the service?”

  “Stellar. I’m here from out of town and understand that one of your waitstaff is the son of a dear friend. Could you point him out for me? His name is Richie.”

  The captain beamed a little less. “Richie Marin. Yes, Richie. A bit distracted, a lot going on. I suppose the same could be said for all young people today. There he is, right there near the stage. If you go around to the right, you won’t get caught up in the TV cameras.”

  Brenda slipped the woman a twenty-dollar bill and a look of sympathy. “I hear you. It’s not enough you have to serve a room big as a football field. No, they make you babysit a bunch of media brats as well. What are they thinking?”

  The captain leaned close. “You have no idea. Still, it’s quite an affair!”

  “Most affairs are,” said Brenda, zeroing in on Richie. There was a black-sheep family resemblance. Her stomach fluttered. She wished she had at least let the broad-backed security guard find her a breadstick.

  She was a third of the way to the target when Perry Montague spoke again. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the evening’s piece de resistance. It is time to award the Crystal Decanter for Outstanding Achievement in the Fragrance Arts. With the World Series of baseball now settled” — some groaned, some cheered — “we are here to acknowledge that two among us have hit the ball out of the park.”

  The emcee peered down from the dais, and that’s when Brenda spotted the Dixon table and its boatload of dignitaries. She had to admit that Cassie was striking, the reigning queen of fragrance, all smiles and sparkle. Gone was the soccer mom persona, the strawberry fizz. In their place were beauty and elegance. But it was Nick at Cassie’s side that made Brenda’s knees weaken. How had she allowed someone that robust and good-looking to walk away? Perhaps the things people said behind her back were true, and she was a shrew. How else to explain an uncanny ability to repel the most important people in her life?

  “Permit me a brief history lesson,” Montague continued, eliciting a groan from the assembly. “No, hear me out. This will help frame for us and our TV viewers why this achievement above all others is as momentous as it is.”

  As he droned on about the use of scents in the tenth century BC, Brenda observed Richie methodically moving into position closer to the stage. At the moment, he was serving the Dixon table. His proximity to the bright and happy couple made Brenda anxious. Anxiety turned to alarm a few moments later when he walked to a serving cart, glanced furtively about, then slipped a hand into the right coat pocket and felt for something.

  With racing heart, she knew what that something was.

  “It was Queen Cleopatra, of course, who used the powers of perfume to seduce her many lovers and was probably the first to invent pomades from bear grease. Ever versatile, perfume was used both to appease the gods and to embalm the dead.” Montague went on and on, covering 350 BC and the Greeks, followed by the Romans, who allowed it for ceremonial use.

  He paused and looked directly into the camera. “With the spread of Christi
an ity, perfume use declined. With the rise of Islam, it thrived. By the twelfth century, the international perfume trade was established and has never looked back. I think I saw Brenda Gelasse a moment ago, chief buyer for the deBrieze chain. We owe you a debt, Brenda, and the perfume world thanks you for your advocacy.”

  Pure drivel. I’m only as good as the unit volume I push out the doors.

  Applause erupted. Brenda saw Richie Marin visibly jerk at the mention of her name and look wildly about. She turned her back and quickly slid into an empty seat with a table of surprised product packagers.

  “But this year,” Montague rolled on, “history has been made again by the discovery of one of earth’s rarest flowers, with a fragrance so rich and arresting that its three-week market test has resulted in the single largest preorder in the annals of perfume. More than ten million units have presold, forcing parent company Azure World to subcontract bottling and packaging operations to half a dozen vendors on four continents.

  “Oh, we say that a particular scent is alluring, inviting, irresistible, and have been saying it for decades about several of our products. But now comes an aroma that literally and legally heightens human awareness and enhances human olfactory receptors in heretofore unknown intensity. The Guild board has declared it the must-have fragrance of the modern era, and we stand by that assessment.

  “And as good as this new scent is, the story of Azure World is as good. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Nicholas and Cassandra, whom we honor this evening with the Grand Crystal Decanter for keeping the dream alive and never giving up their quest for the finest scent in all of creation!”

  “The most dangerous scent,” amended Brenda under her breath, “and the most deadly.”

  The orchestra played regally while the Dixons made their way to the microphone amid a standing ovation led by the mayor and the governor and cries of “Bravo!” from every quarter of the room.

  Brenda covered another third of the distance between her and Richie the waiter. What had John said? “Keep your eyes on Cassie Dixon when she exits the stage.”

  She joined a table of journalists, most from the trades, including the suave Claire Benoit from Paris Review and the acidic little gnome from Drug and Cosmetic Weekly. She sat next to a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.

  “What’s your take on Cassandra?” he said into her ear.

  “A beguiling scent that wears a mask,” she replied.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means write nothing until you have all the facts.”

  For the third time that night she leaned closer.

  He sat stunned, face flushed with both a new understanding and a new bewilderment.

  The scent had persistence. It was now innocently playful, a moment later carnally urgent. One minute soft as a sigh, the next subtle as neon. It kept Brenda off balance, glad to be seated. Her face heated, heart fluttered, the sensory confusion diving deep into her being. Never had she been as incapable of defining a scent. She could not walk its perimeter, was incapable of parsing its essential elements. She felt disabled, and no word existed for her crippling condition.

  Nick spoke first, or tried. The uproar would not die. He waved and smiled broadly and held high the exquisite Crystal Decanter, a cut glass flagon that flashed bolts of refracted light. Still they clapped, cheered, and shouted their approval. Brenda drained the wineglass belonging to the flustered Chronicle reporter. Savagely she pinched her cheeks. Clarity slowly returned. She knew that none had missed the significance of this night. When the Guild moved the gala to the opposite coast for the first time and their president admitted the organization’s pigheadedness to an international audience, for them it was as if the earth had moved.

  When everyone finally resumed their seats, Nick said, “Ahh, that’s okay!”

  Another roar of applause. Another, briefer, standing ovation.

  “My folks taught me, as I’m sure many of yours taught you, that nothing worth having comes easy.” He turned and smiled at the woman by his side. “A marriage, to last, takes hard work. And Beth” — he blew a kiss to the camera — “parenting is a tough job, and who of us is really equipped to do it as well as we’d like? This award is for you too, dear Beth.

  “Sticking to a plan and believing in it year in and year out is not easy. Especially when so many negative voices, what Cass calls the jackals of doubt, tear away at your resolve. When your own peers think you’re not up to the challenge or dismiss the thing of your own making, it wears you down. More than once we seriously considered quitting and opening a bait store and gift shop at the seashore. There just aren’t enough of those.” He got the laugh he was after.

  “But no, we gutted it out and stuck to the plan. We never lost the house or the car, but we did lose a lot of sleep, and there weren’t many vacations together. Many’s the time Cassie was left to wonder where and how I was. And my most recent battle with wild things and hostile forces is well documented. For that I would thank the press, who finally got it right.” He pointed playfully to the journalists, spotted Brenda, then fumbled and seemed to lose his place.

  Nervous, Nicky? I won’t bite.

  Richie worked his way down the center row of tables, his movements hurried, his countenance decidedly cloudy. It wouldn’t take a lot for someone to wear a whole pot of Colombia’s finest.

  What she wanted was to look at Nick, take in every detail of how he moved and spoke, get close enough to him to allow him to drink in the scent reacting with her body, but Brenda instead watched the waiter.

  Nicholas took a deep breath and continued. “Cassie says we owe a big thanks to God for creating so majestic a flower as the orchid that has surrendered the world’s most voluptuous fragrance. I thank heaven for creating so rare a creature as my Cass, for making her stubborn enough to never give up, and for giving her the instincts to believe that with enough time and providence, our search would be rewarded.”

  He turned to his wife. “It feels like our wedding day,” he said, voice low as if she were the only one in the room. She smiled back, her love clearly a sparkling gift. “Now, as then, it’s all giddy and wonderful and terrifying,” Nick said. “I know I’ve not always been there for you, but this is your night and here I am. You loved me, even when I gave you cause to doubt. Forgive me, Cass, for ever being less than you needed me to be. This Crystal Award is our completion, but it is your tribute, your shining moment. I too stand in awe of you.”

  The ovation soared into a tumultuous wave of adulation. Just as it began to recede, the couple kissed, and the second wave rose higher than the first. It was at that moment that Brenda Gelasse recognized true devotion and the unadorned, tragic truth. She had been for him an impulse, a weak moment, a fling, nothing more. Cassie Elaine Dixon — all Midwestern pie and potpourri — was this man’s one true love. There would be no reclaiming Nick, because he had simply never been hers to begin with.

  Brenda felt empty, yet strangely indebted to Cassie Dixon. What other tragedies might she have prevented by remaining loyal to the man who had betrayed her? If anything existed that could divide them now, Brenda would place her money on Cassandra. Would they heed her warning? Coming from her, would they ever believe that their precious perfume was the Devil’s potion?

  The best she could do — the best thing for all of them — was to stop Richie before he carried out John’s revenge . . . and shattered all their lives.

  As the uproar subsided, Cassie stepped to the microphone, the Crystal Decanter hoisted overhead.

  Richie stopped midpour.

  Brenda tensed.

  Richie set the coffee pot in the center of the table he was serving, freeing his hands. He edged closer to the stage.

  Heart hammering, Brenda wondered if her dangerous plan would work.

  Chapter 22

  Maggie awoke with a start. Gretchen had belly-crawled to the TV screen and stretched out, woofing excitedly at the image of Nick and Cassie at the dais.

  The p
opcorn bowl had been licked clean.

  Maggie saw that Cassie was about to speak and figured by the decibels of the applause that she had just enough time to visit the powder room before Cassie got into the heart of her speech.

  “Gretchen, stay!” Mags commanded. The dog gave her a “more popcorn” look and obeyed.

  Mags flipped on the bathroom light and saw the message that had not registered earlier during the strange scene with Beth and Gretchen. The lipstick scrawl on the mirror, the hastily reassembled Cassandra box on its side on the counter, the memory of Beth’s pale face. Now she knew why the girl had been so upset.

  She was genuinely sorry for Beth and the whole craziness that had hijacked their lives. Mags knew what a wall of separation felt like, and she certainly disliked causing any division between Beth and her mother. But right now she also had to admit that the stronger feeling was a burning curiosity about the contents of that box.

  “Cassie girl,” she whispered, “what a nice thing to do for your old adopted mom.” Mags wouldn’t ask for a bottle, Cass knew that. Couldn’t ask; not professional. She had fired off her yap enough to know bad form when she saw it. So this premarket gift of the scent was doubly meaningful coming on the night of Cass Dixon’s triumph.

  Hastily, for Gretchen was woofing for her return, Mags slid the elegant decanter from its box, pulled the stopper, and released the fragrance.

  The seductive essence of the world’s rarest orchid surged from the bottle and swaddled her in redolence so evocative, so suggestive, her knees nearly gave way beneath her.

  The euphoria ebbed, and in its place a sweeping wave of intense heat radiated outward from the core of her. It was as if her image in the mirror possessed an aurora of such color and glow as she had not experienced even as a young woman. Though the physical signs of age remained, the sense of age faded. Mags put out a hand to steady herself.

  Was this perfume or hallucinogen?

  In her travels from Andalusia to Zanzibar in a career that spanned five decades, never had she inhaled a scent so frank, so revealing. It carried its own agenda in defiance of all convention. It allowed itself to be placed in a bottle but beyond that kept its own untamed counsel.