by Dee Detarsio
He took a quick whiff and then burrowed between my breasts. “Ah, God. You are driving me crazy. You smell better that any perfume.” I felt and heard him draw a deep breath. His right hand reached up to bat away the bottle. It spilled, splashing the remaining precious drops.
We laughed and I tried not to think of how I was going to explain to La-ura that I needed another sample. All I could think about was that I wanted to pre-order a case load.
Dino’s hand, still damp from the potion, worked its way under the lace of my panties. He knew his way around my body as if we had done this many times before. Maybe it was his perfect pressure, or the synchronicity of his caressing friction, or maybe it was all enhanced by the power of the perfume, and that crazy Ph-uX ingredient; I had never felt so close to perfection before. My writhing panting paused as I held my breath, as if waiting for a conductor to wave his magic wand, ordering the symphony to commence: I could hear the low rumble of drums, the vibrating hum of strings, building to the crescendoing crash of cymbals, which always happens right before I...
Ta da!
“Dino!” I whimpered and said his name again. Sweet harmony of swoon. I may have even screamed. Once. Or twice. Dino joined me in his own greedy, orgiastic hootenanny, a strange exhausting primitive experience where we were both abandoned of all etiquette. “Ph-uX,” I whispered, which seemed to send Dino into an even greater frenzy. I do believe that is my new favorite word. “Ph-uX.”
Unbelievably, I fell asleep. I have no idea how long I slumbered, missing out on my very own real life dream. How dare I? In what universe would I go to sleep after achieving nirvana? I had just remembered feeling so complete, I had had no control.
My eyelids fluttered as I felt a kiss swoop down on my brow. “Hey, sleepyhead,” Dino said. We were on my couch, laying sideways but facing each other, with Dino cradling his arms around me. Even in that position I wasted time multitasking, kicking myself for wasting precious seconds. How could I have fallen asleep? The defining moment of my life? The apogee of my dreams come true and I’m snoring on Prince Charming? Oh dear God, I hope I didn’t drool. I licked my lips.
He kissed the tip of my nose. “You are so sweet.”
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“Too long. Play with me some more.” He kissed my lips.
I stared up at him. He smiled. “What?” he asked. “You don’t snore. You didn’t blurt out embarrassing requests like, ‘spank me, pull my hair, make me call you daddy,’ or anything.”
My stomach rippled as I laughed. “Thank goodness for that.” I was embarrassed to have fallen asleep. It almost seemed more intimate than what went on right before I fell into a coma. Almost...but not quite.
“I say we move our headquarters,” I said.
“Right behind you,” Dino agreed. He held my hand as we moved into my bedroom.
The time for shyness had long gone; its mast had set sail, rutting into my thigh right about the first time our tongues had said a ‘howdy-do’ to each other. Yet, I found myself holding my breath as I invited Dino into my boudoir. I didn’t have much money, but heaven knows what little I had added up to incredible wealth compared to my talent for designing. I worried that he wouldn’t like the haven I had created for myself.
As long as you didn’t peer into the corners too closely or strain your neck checking out the ceiling line, I had done a decent enough job painting my room. I chose the paint based simply on the name, Periwinkle Pearl. I should note that I do not have a great track record pulling stunts like that; I once had to ruin a perfectly good manicure because the ‘Pink: Love Guaranteed’ nail polish color I had once chosen was anything but pink, and guaranteed nothing but ten days of anguish.
The only thing special about my bedroom, other than the palest pearlized blush of the bluish-lilac shimmering color, captured from the sky mere seconds before dawn in springtime, was that it was celibate monk cell clean. By not trying to design or decorate I had come up with a style that was perfect for me. I had finally gotten a headboard the year before, yay, welcome to adulthood. My mom had donated two ancient round end tables that had been butt ugly in my family’s living room my whole life, but when placed on either side of my bed as night stands, they managed to grab a second chance at funky chic. I had simply replaced the drawer pulls on an old, mismatched brown dresser with shiny stainless steel knobs. The only other furniture in the room was a giant rectangular mirror, framed in a wide band of silvery curlicues, standing on one end on the floor. My comforter and sheets were a wonderful crisp clean boring white. I always felt like I was entering a spa when I came into my bedroom. Unfortunately my zen-ness did not extend to my drawers or closet; enter at your own risk.
Dino seemed to like it well enough, but truth be told, at the time I was flattered that he only had eyes for me. I could have made out with him forever, but like most guys, Dino played to win. At risk of downplaying the most important moment of my life with a sports metaphor, I was his biggest cheerleader.
Dino was gone the next morning when I finally woke up. I stretched and smiled and reached for my cell. He had left me a message. I kissed my phone as I played it. “Hey, MaryBeth,” his message began. “Wow. You are amazing. I had such a great time last night.”
“Hee hee hee,” I laughed.
“Um, listen, though...”
Da da dum...I heard the ominous drum beats of doom begin. What the Ph-uX? I heard him clear his throat on his message. “I really like you and want to see you, but it will be awkward right now so we need to be careful.”
Hm. Awkward? How? And for whom? I thought we were in love. What happened last night just doesn’t happen to everybody. OK, ass. How ya gonna get out of this one?
“Let’s just take it slow, and keep this between us, OK?” He said. I guess I could see his point. La-ura was our boss and it could get ugly. One of us could even be fired and it didn’t take a genius to realize that I wasn’t the one playing hide-the-sausage with La-ura, or the one she’d miss most...if at all.
“I have some plans that I can’t get out of this weekend, but we’ll definitely talk this week.” Long pause. Then he hung up.
I do not know how I made it through the weekend. It certainly wasn’t by coming up with any new slogans for Rapunzel. Susie came over on Sunday and I made her listen to Dino’s message fourteen times.
She blew out a breath. “You know, MaryBeth. He almost had me, until the part about ‘we’ll definitely talk this week.’ Why the word ‘definitely’? Why hasn’t he called back and talked to you in person. And, finally, he never said his name, or La-ura’s name, so you can’t even blackmail him.”
“I don’t want to blackmail him!” I said. “I just want to be with him. Limbo sucks. This not knowing. Does he like me? Is he going to break it off with La-ura? He does have to worry about his career, you know.”
“Just seems like he could be a little more gallant about it all,” Susie said.
“I’m not giving up yet. Who knows what Dino could do next?” I said.
Chapter 3
Ph-uX
I had to go into work extra early on Monday, to print out my list of garbage for La-ura about the new perfume campaign. I told her I accidentally dropped the bottle. It took every ounce of self-control I had, not to add: “on your boyfriend’s penis!”
We had a big department meeting and as I jumped into the elevator to ride down to the fourth floor conference room with the rest of the team, Dino got on right behind me. As luck would have it, I had been going cross-eyed all morning, looking out for him, wondering what he would say or do, or how he would look, or look at me. The second I let my guard down, poof! There he was.
Gulp. “H-h...” my mouth had just begun to form my ‘hello’, but Dino beat me to the punch.
“‘Morning,” he said.
“Ham,” I replied. I’m sure he didn’t notice. I turned to face the front of the elevator and positioned myself among the other bodies. Then I probably turned a brighter color than Littl
e Red Riding Hood’s cape. The whole Rapunzel debacle, as I was beginning to think of it, had put me into a grim fairy tale mode.
“Hey, MaryBeth,” Dino said. “Skip, Rosie, Selene...” he nodded and greeted the morning’s cast and crew. Poor Susie, would I really make her try to figure this encounter out, too? I sincerely hoped not.
La-ura was already in the conference room and was busy handing out the preliminary report I had done. Her smile, meant to be private and pointed at Dino, as if at an inside joke, might as well have been gussied up in bright neon lights announcing to the world, “I huffed and I puffed and I blew Dino’s...” I snorted. Damn, I was a gruesome ogre, the crone with a poisoned apple, the cropped-top Goldilocks who had no business sitting in someone else’s boyfriend’s lap. This could not end well.
The meeting didn’t do much to improve my attitude. With my heightened state of alert and all senses set to Dino, it was all I could do to answer when people had questions about Rapunzel.
“People, people.” La-ura clapped her hands. We need to brand this and make it desirable to people who don’t have long hair, like men, and,” she backhanded her thumb toward me. “Even MaryBeth.” The room laughed.
I swiped my palm over my head, hoping to kill two birds with one sweaty stone--act like I was cool with the teasing, and smooth down my hair to look like I meant it to look like it did.
“Yeah, but La-ura, I don’t think ‘let your hair down’ is intrinsically for people with long hair.” One of the other copy writers, Steven, looked at me and nodded. “Right, MaryBeth? Didn’t you intend this to be a ‘let your hair down’ as in let loose, relax, party?”
I nodded my head, my eyes darting toward Dino. He saw me and quickly looked down, tapping his pen on the table. I just couldn’t read him. The girl who still believed in happy endings knew that he had to feel the same way I did. He was just playing it cool, until things could be sorted out. Like, until he dumped La-ura’s sorry ass and proposed to me.
My stomach churned, not buying any of that. I have been accused of being a glass half full girl. This time, however, the pessimism in me was filled to the brim, in fact it was even spilling over the edges; the only thing I had left that I could count on was my belief in my pessimism that things weren’t going to turn out well at all. In addition to being loved and left, I wouldn’t have been surprised had I even been mauled by three bears.
I fiddled with my pen, wishing I could take a nap. I was so sleepy and bored I began to write grocery lists in my head to try to stay awake, and to stop thinking about ‘what-ifs’ with Dino.
“What’s this pheromone stuff about?” Joe, another account executive asked. “It sounds kind of hot.” I had included a synopsis of ingredients in my report, and briefly detailed the super-secret Ph-uX. I took a deep breath and cleared my throat and prayed to God that my cheeks weren’t nearly 1/100th as flaming hot as they felt. Before I could respond, La-ura spoke up.
“P-H-dash-U-X is a proprietary ingredient that we don’t want to bore our consumers with. Some scientific mumbo jumbo doesn’t sell. Sex sells.”
Ain’t that the truth, I thought, my eyes inadvertently winging left to seek out Dino. Was he actually whistling, trying to appear innocent? He looked like he would be confessing to the whole office in a matter of seconds. I could just hear him now, whistling his tune and singing:
“Hi ho, hi ho, off to work I go.
I love my boss,
But I screwed and lost...
And what’s the cost?
Hi ho, hi ho...
A magic potion,
A big commotion,
There goes my promotion...
Hi ho, hi ho...
Cheers to the aphrodisiac
I morphed into a maniac,
Thanks to Ph-uX,
My life really sucks.
Hi ho...hi ho...
Dino was looking down, I couldn’t make out his expression.
“Really, La-ura? Sex sells?” Thank goodness Steven interrupted again. “Well, maybe we need to take a look at your secret ingredient again.” I knew it would only be a matter of moments before someone figured it out. “P-H-dash-U-X? Think about it. Say it out loud.” People around the table started laughing.
La-ura looked around blankly. “P-H-dash-U-X.” She raised her hand and shrugged. “So what?” Everyone started laughing louder.
“PHUX!” Someone finally called out. La-ura stood there with her arms crossed, waiting for people to stop: giggling, wiping their eyes, and saying “phew.”
“Are you quite finished?” she asked. A few more laughs answered her. “Grow up.” She picked up my paper again, and read it closely.
“MaryBeth!” She barked in my general vicinity. “We’ve all heard of pheromones, but what’s the deal? Do you mean to tell me Rapunzel is claiming to have a secret ingredient, one that makes it an aphrodisiac?”
Twenty eyeballs stared me down, waiting for my response, but the only ones that mattered, the brown sparkly ones that had shimmered and nearly wept over me, were now busy, suddenly occupado; seemingly mesmerized by his long, strong fingers rubbing at an imaginary smudge on the laminate tabletop. I stared at the rubbing motion, moving back and forth, a synchronized rhythm that caused me to shift in my seat. I crossed my legs.
“Ah, MaryBeth!” La-ura repeated again. “You’re the only one who smelled it. What did you think? What was it like?”
“It was nice,” I finally managed to say. I wished again for the kabillionth time that my superpower was the ability of super fast, witty repartee. I could be SmartMouth Woman. SassyPants. Barring that, I’d even settle for a pause button, one that would allow me time to write out my responses to whatever life threw me. If only I could edit my words, re-write, clean up, delete and rearrange, check for typos and grammatical errors, before engaging the send button. My work performance would be enhanced, for sure, to say nothing of my love life. Oh, to be able to orchestrate the words I needed, like a maestro directing a concert with a pen, and have the time to consider, or better yet, reconsider, the most appropriate responses.
“It was nice? What does nice smell like, exactly?”
“It was a very fresh, clean smell,” I said, biting my lips, trying to snort out the smell of lust that lingered, clinging to some memory molecule from Friday night. The room waited, uncommonly silent. “Undertones of patchouli and citrus,” I mumbled. I shrugged my shoulders and doodled on the paper in front of me.
“Any Ph-uX effect you’d care to share with us? Did you notice anything before you, ah, ‘spilled’ it?” The room laughed, as La-ura used air quotes around the word spilled. “What?” La-ura continued. “Did you drink this stuff? Did you get lucky? Did it turn you into a sex machine?” She fired off questions, looking like she actually wanted a response.
‘Didn’t have to,’ ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes!’ I wanted to burst out. “It definitely had something different...” I began. “It smelled different in the bottle, more medicine-like, almost antiseptic. Then, when I dabbed it on my wrists,” I made the motion, waving my right wrist around, “it was very light and soothing. It was like I couldn’t stop smelling it, like I was addicted to the scent and trying to find out what the aroma was.”
La-ura swished the air in front of her, waving me on to continue. “Did you get turned on?”
“La-ura,” Dino said. “Seriously, lighten up. You’re putting MaryBeth on the spot. We’re here to sell perfume. If it has an X-factor or Ph-uX factor, cool. We can sell that; like you said, sex sells. But to think there is some magic hocus-pocus serum that turns people into sex maniacs...well...” he finished with a small laugh. Was it just me or did that laugh sound rather pathetic.
Eyeballs now swiveled toward Dino. La-ura was no dummy. “Why are you defending little Miss Muffet?” She jerked her head toward my end of the table.
Perhaps because a little over 48 hours ago he was sitting on my tuffet? I thought despondently.
I dared a smile at him, and his answering look semaphored b
ack an accusing glare at me, as if to say, “you bewitched me,” giving him a free pass out of the little pickle he was in.
“So, did you give Rapunzel a test drive after you spilled it?” La-ura asked me. Believe it or not it was her way of apologizing.
I gave a little shake to my head. No. “La-ura,” I said. “Sorry. It is kind of awkward. I’m just a little embarrassed,” I said with a gush of laughter. “I thought it was a great perfume, and I think it could have a lot of potential for marketing. People love secrets, people love sex, and if you put the two together...” I drifted off, shrugging my shoulders and extending my hands. “When I read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, I have to tell you, I was intrigued.”
“What disclaimer?” Joe asked.
“Just about the pheromone that may or may not be included, being proprietary information, with a patent pending,” I said. “That info is often a template used as a matter of fact, just to cover bases, but it’s interesting how much detail they went into, including naming of a secret ingredient.”
“Ph-uX!” Joe said, slamming his hand on the table.
While everyone else laughed again, I continued. “Yes. Patent pending, new, improved, consumers go for it. I think we should utilize the ‘wow’ factor as much as we can. I don’t know what the legal department would say, but it would be fun to get as close to the word ‘aphrodisiac’ as possible, without making unwarranted claims that could get us in trouble.”
The eyes of all the men in the room seemed to glaze over, as if the word itself was doing its job. Even the women seemed a little uncomfortable; Peggy was tugging at her neckline, Angie was checking for split ends, and La-ura was running her hand up and down her thigh; you just knew she was making sure everyone knew she was wearing her infamous thigh-highs.
“Anyway,” I said. “I called the company and ordered some more samples.” At that announcement, the whole table broke into clapping. Even though it wasn’t for me, I accepted their excitement with a nod. “Just wait.”