by Gary Urey
Jean Paul looked up from the reporters and glared at Pierre. “Pierre du Voleur! Get that crasseux rat out of my sight! He belongs in the gutter, not a museum!”
Pierre lunged at Jean Paul, his fists curled and ready to fight. But before he could throw a punch, a burly bodyguard wearing dark sunglasses pushed him aside and escorted Jean Paul out of the exhibition hall.
“What was that all about?” I cried.
“You will know soon enough,” Pierre huffed as he and Arnaud tugged me toward an awaiting car.
CHAPTER 10
THE FRANÇAIS SCENT COMPANY
Before I snapped on my seat belt, Arnaud shifted the car into drive and sped recklessly through the city streets. Pierre’s reaction to Jean Paul inside the museum had taken me by surprise. I was curious to know why he wanted to fight my hero, but I dared not ask him. The man had yet to calm down. His face was still as red as a cherry popsicle, and I could see a vein on his temple throbbing a million miles an hour.
After a wild ten-minute ride and two near-collisions, Arnaud skidded to a stop in front of a dingy-looking brick building.
“We are here,” Pierre said. “Follow me.”
An attendant opened the doors, and we walked inside. I knew from reading magazine articles that the perfume business was all about style, fashion, and making a great first impression. So, I was expecting Pierre to overwhelm me with an opulent lobby—perhaps a white marble floor, slick modern furniture, and a bunch of young assistants answering phones. Instead, the first floor looked more like the waiting room of my ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctor’s office. The carpet was an ugly, algae-green color. Four mismatched folding chairs sat against the wood-panel wall. Hanging precariously above the lobby attendant’s desk was a fading sign that read: Français Scent Company—American Headquarters.
Pierre and Arnaud ushered me into a creaky elevator. When the doors opened to the third floor, an unpleasant blast of artificial, synthetic scents bombarded my olfactory bulbs. The smells were nothing like the organic, natural scents locked inside Strange.
“Arnaud, show le Nez around for a moment,” Pierre said. “I need to make a quick phone call.” He then disappeared into a small office, slamming the door behind him.
“Pierre doesn’t seem too happy,” I remarked.
“Monsieur du Voleur has good reason not to be happy,” Arnaud said.
“Why?”
“All of his best work has been systematically stolen by one man.”
“Who?”
“Jean Paul Puanteur.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Jean Paul Puanteur, the world’s greatest scent artist, a thief? “Why in the world would he steal perfume ideas from Pierre?” I wondered aloud.
“The so-called darling of the perfuming world is an untalented escroc. That is why.
“What’s ‘ace … crock’ mean? I’ve heard that word used to describe Jean Paul twice today.”
“Escroc means ‘crook, thief, trickster’ in English. Let’s not talk about Puanteur anymore. Just the mention of his name sends Monsieur du Voleur’s blood pressure to dangereux levels.”
I kept my mouth shut while Arnaud gave me a tour of the Français Scent Company’s perfume laboratory. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep my nose shut, because the place stunk to high heaven with dozens of yucky synthetic aroma compounds. I had sniffed the nastiest odors in the world—the Gates of Smell, hákarl, roadkill skunk on the side of the road—but a whiff of any artificial scent made my nose hairs recoil.
Still, I collected the fake musk for inclusion in my mental scent dictionary. My nostrils scooped up semi-toxic substances like musk ketone, musk xylene, galaxolide, and tonalide. I knew from reading that those chemicals were potentially dangerous to humans, especially galaxolide and tonalide.
“This is where the magic of the Français Scent Company happens,” Arnaud said, leading me through a set of double doors and into a large room.
The room was white and sterile-looking, a complete contrast to the dreariness of the rest of the building. One side of the room had long tables piled with hundreds of small brown bottles. Two bored-looking men and one equally disinterested woman wearing lab coats sat on swivel stools, dipping little wooden sticks into the bottles and then smelling them.
A vast array of chemical-laced aromas wafted in the air. My sniffer picked up scents like baked pumpkin, pomegranate jam, ripe papaya, banana peel, apricot, campfire marshmallow, and dozens of other imitation aromas.
“Are those people perfumers?” I asked Arnaud.
“They are my fragrance technicians,” a voice bellowed from behind me. “But compared to you, le Nez, their noses are about as useless as a skunk without stink spray.”
I turned and saw Pierre. His face was no longer red, and the throbbing vein on his temple had calmed to a normal pulse. Oddly enough, he was clutching a fancy gift bag with Jean Paul Puanteur’s Strange logo emblazoned in gilded script.
“I created Bête Blanc—White Beast, my most popular perfume, in this very room,” Pierre continued. “It was the second most preferred fragrance of incarcerated females in the United States prison system from 2001 to 2003.”
“The number one most popular prisoner perfume of the time was Évasion by You-know-who,” Arnaud said.
Pierre shot him a dirty look.
“What’s that huge machine in the corner?” I asked.
“A robotic mixer,” Pierre explained. “We use it to blend ingredients to create new parfums. I want your exquisite nez to sniff several new lines we are currently working on.”
“How do you capture the smells of natural, living flowers to use in your perfumes?”
Pierre chuckled and then shot Arnaud a sly look. “Le Nez, this is the twenty-first century,” he said. “We buy our scents from Khasabu Fragrance and Flavor International in India. They are the world’s largest—and cheapest—synthetic scent manufacturers in the world.”
“Only fools like Jean Paul Puanteur use all-natural ingredients,” Arnaud added. “They cost a fortune and cut deeply into his profits.”
The word escroc flashed in my mind—crook, thief, trickster. I needed to know the truth about Jean Paul, but I could tell from the look on Pierre’s face that this was not the time to bring up the subject.
“What do you want me to smell first?” I asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Pierre said. He then placed the gift bag he was holding on a table and pulled from it a very familiar-looking red bottle.
“Strange,” he said with a wicked smile. “I want you to smell Strange.”
CHAPTER 11
NEZ PROFESSIONNEL
“Why would you want me to smell Strange?” I asked, a bit confused by Pierre’s request. “Don’t you want me to sniff some of your perfumes?”
Pierre looked at his watch and then clapped his hands, getting the attention of the three fragrance technicians who were working at a back table. “Madame et messieurs, you can leave two hours early today. You will be compensated for a full day’s work.”
“Thank you, merci,” the excited fragrance technicians echoed as they grabbed their jackets and hurried out of the lab.
“Arnaud, I need to speak with you in my office for a moment,” Pierre said. “Le Nez, we will be right back.”
A sudden quiet fell over the Français Scent Company. The events of the day replayed in my mind—the gondola trip from New Hampshire to New York City, landing on top of a skyscraper, the Art of Odor exhibit, and seeing Jean Paul Puanteur up close and personal. Now, less than eight hours after I had lifted off from Jimmy’s backyard, I was alone inside a professional perfumer’s laboratory. I still found the odor of synthetic fragrances a bit disgusting, but I was finally in a place where a kid with a big nose and a sense of smell like a dog was an honored guest instead of an object of ridicule.
The laboratory door swung open. Pierre strolled into the room followed by Arnaud, who was carrying a large sheet of paper in one hand and a fancy quill pen in the other.
“Le Nez,” Pierre announced. “I want to make you the richest nose in the world.”
“Huh?” I mumbled, flaring my nostrils.
“Show him, Arnaud.”
Arnaud placed an official-looking scroll of paper in front of me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“An employment contract,” Pierre answered. “I want you to work for me.”
“I already have a job. Every Sunday the Denmark Parks and Rec Department pays me a dollar for every pile of dog poop I sniff out that people have neglected to pick up. Dog waste left on the ground near the town’s swimming pond causes pollution problems.”
Pierre laughed. “I am talking about a real job. In fact, one of the most important jobs in the whole perfume industry—a nez professionnel!
I scratched my sniffer and thought for a second. Nez meant ‘nose.’ Professionnel sounded a lot like ‘professional.’ “Are you saying that you want to hire me as a professional nose?”
“Oui,” Pierre said. “You will be a very highly compensated nez professionnel. Read the number at the bottom of the contract.”
I looked down at the paper, skimming through the boring parts until finally focusing on a number with a bunch of zeroes at the end.
“One million dollars!” I exclaimed. “Is this a typo or something?”
“It is no mistake,” Pierre said. “One million dollars will be yours.”
All the things I could buy with that kind of money tumbled around in my brain. Personal rock-climbing gym in my backyard. A brand-new, state-of-the-art underground hideout for Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, and me. Custom-made Mardi Gras masks decorated with gold leaf. Pencil sharpeners shaped like big noses to hand out as gag gifts at school. Nuclear-powered nose hair clippers and an endless supply of high-grade cayenne pepper imported from Peru. The possibilities were endless!
But most of all, I could help my parents repair all of the damage to our house that my earthquake-like snoring had caused.
“Give me a pen!” I whooped. “I’ll sign right here and now!”
“In due time,” Pierre said. “First, you will need to pass a smell test.”
“What kind of smell test?”
Arnaud placed a bunch of bottles of perfume on the table. I recognized most of them from the Art of Odor exhibit. Famous scents like Dracula Noir, Sticky, Appetite, Perhaps, and Mammal No. 5.
“I want you to sniff each perfume and then tell me the precise ingredients,” Pierre instructed. “A nez professionnel knows every smell in the world and is prized for his or her skilled and intelligent assessment of fragrances.”
“In other words,” Arnaud added, “you need to name every scent in the bottles or you get nothing.”
Pierre looked at his watch. “This test will be timed. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head, no.
“Then you may begin now!”
A jolt of anxiety shot through my body. My fingers shook as I popped the cap from the first perfume—Sticky by Jacques Gluant. The scent wafted from the bottle and into my awaiting honker.
“I smell bergamot, lavender, amber, civet,” I rattled off. “And a slight hint of lemon.”
“Perfect!” Pierre gushed. “Quickly, smell another one.”
I grabbed the bottle of Dracula Noir by Otto Sang, twisted off the cap, and took a huge whiff. “Off the top, I smell rosemary, basil, lemon, bergamot, and cinnamon. Then subtle hints of leather, amber, pine, and sandalwood.”
“Excellent!” Pierre exclaimed. “You are an aromatic genius, an odeur prodigy! Now, smell the bottle of Mammal No. 5.”
For the next fifteen minutes, I astonished Pierre and Arnaud with my olfactory gifts. I systematically listed every fragrance in every bottle of perfume they placed in front of me. The hard work I had put into my mental scent dictionary paid off, and now it was going to reward me with a million dollars. I couldn’t wait to see my parents’ faces when I handed them a wad of cash to patch the foundation of our house!
“When do I get paid?” I asked, still dreaming of ways to spend the money.
“Not so fast, le Nez,” Pierre muttered. “We still have one more perfume.”
He placed the bottle of Strange on the table. My heart skipped a beat, and a bead of sweat dripped from my forehead all the way down the bridge of my nose. With the excitement of being in a real perfume lab and getting a million dollars, I had forgotten all about my inability to huff out the secret scent of Strange.
“Scent dictionary, don’t fail me,” I prayed and then took a big snort of Strange. “There are essential oils like lavender, jasmine, more sandalwood, and bergamot,” I said with a shaky voice. “And I get mild hints of artemisia, coriander, patchouli, carnation, and one final scent is … uh … um.”
“What is it?” Pierre growled in my face. “I need to know the final ingredient or you say au revoir to the millions de dollars!”
My nervous nostrils quivered like a cell phone switched on vibrate. Frantically, I scanned my mental scent dictionary, silently pleading for the odor to reveal itself. The vanilla-like smell was earthy yet sophisticated, the icing on the most deliciously perfect perfume ever concocted by man.
“Tell me the scent!” Pierre demanded.
“It’s … it’s … I don’t know!” I cried out, tears streaming down my face. “It resembles vanilla but none I’ve ever smelled before!”
Pierre grabbed more bottles and bags of dried bean pods from a shelf. “These are all of the synthetic and natural vanilla essences known to man,” he said. “Do you smell one of these?”
Inhaling deeply, I sniffed vanilla beans from Mexico, Tahiti, and Madagascar. There was no match. I moved quickly to the bottles—vanilla extract, pure vanilla extract, and vanilla essence. Again, there was no match. Lastly, I popped the cap on a bottle of vanillin, the synthetic version of vanilla. The unnatural ingredients made my nose turn away in disgust.
“It’s none of these,” I informed him. “The unknown, vanilla-like ingredient in Strange is from a completely different origin.”
Pierre violently slammed his fist on the table, sending bottles crashing to the floor. “You are a failure!” he screamed, his face flaming red and his temple vein throbbing. “You will never be a nez professionnel, and you will never see a penny of the money until you figure out every single ingredient inside Strange. Come with me, Arnaud. I need to get ready for our dîner with Aðalbjörn and his friends.”
Pierre and Arnaud walked out of the lab, leaving me alone. I laid my nose on the table, feeling horrible because I had let Pierre down. I was a complete sniffing loser, and it was all because of Strange.
CHAPTER 12
UNTALENTED INSECTE
Pierre, Arnaud, and I drove to the restaurant in silence. The two of them were so disappointed in my inability to conquer Strange that they wouldn’t even look at me. My dream job as a nez professionnel and the million dollars were slipping away.
“We have arrived,” Arnaud said, wheeling to the curb.
I looked out of the car’s tinted windows. Dr. Wackjöb, Vivian, and the Not-Right Brothers were waiting on the sidewalk under a big sign that read: Nourriture—Cuisine Française.
“Do not mention anything about what happened in the perfume lab this afternoon,” Pierre ordered before we stepped out of the car. “I have not given up on you yet, le Nez. I have faith that you will tell me the secret of Strange, and the millions de dollars will be yours.”
Pierre patted my shoulder and smiled at me. My nostrils swelled with relief. He wasn’t mad at me anymore! There was still a chance for me to sniff out Strange and show him the power of my proboscis. I hopped out of the car and walked into the restaurant with my friends.
While Pierre and Dr. Wackjöb chatted, Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers told me about their afternoon touring New York City.
“After the Art of Odor, we went to the top of the Empire State Building,” Jimmy said, biting into a breadstick. “The view was awesome!”
/> Mumps pointed to greasy splotch on his skull. “This is where a pigeon pooped on my head.”
“Yuck.” I grimaced. “You could have at least washed it off.”
“Not a chance. It’s supposed to be good luck. Plus, I’m keeping it there as a souvenir to show my little brother.”
“Tomorrow we’re going to the Museum of Natural History,” TJ said. “There’s a living spider exhibit that I have to see. Black widows, tarantulas, wolf spiders, hairy scorpions, giant vinegaroons, the brown recluse, and the deadliest creepy-crawly in the world—the Brazilian wandering spider!”
Jimmy shuddered. “Spiders give me the creeps.”
“Maybe one will bite you,” Vivian joked. “Then you’ll become Spider Boy!”
We all laughed.
“How was your afternoon of sniffing perfumes?” Dr. Wackjöb asked me.
Pierre stared at me, his intense gaze like sharp needles plunging up my nose holes.
I lowered my head, unable to look Dr. Wackjöb in the eye. “It was fun,” I muttered. “Pierre has some awesome new fragrances coming out.”
After parking the car, Arnaud joined us at the table. Since he had preordered our meal, we didn’t get to pick from a menu. Our first course—salade verte and la soupe à l’oignon—was really a hunk of iceberg lettuce with some tomatoes and a cup of onion soup. I could do without the salad, but the soup was okay. I love the smell of onions.
Next was the main course. Our choices were les coquilles Saint-Jacques à la Provencal, le saumon d’ecosse, or les filets de bœuf. We quickly learned that coquilles Saint-Jacques were scallops, saumon d’ecosse meant Scottish salmon, and filets de bœuf was beef. The Not-Right Brothers and I picked beef. Dr. Wackjöb and Pierre ordered the salmon, and Arnaud had the scallops. Vivian just got a refill of salad, bread sticks, and onion soup.
“Le Nez,” Pierre addressed me through a mouthful of baked salmon. “I would like you to return to my perfume laboratory again tomorrow morning. Your astute observations of my fragrances were quite impressive. Is this okay with you, Aðalbjörn?”