A sharp burn slid across my ribs. It was a picture I tried hard never to allow into my mind—Daniel and his secretary who was promoted to wife. “I know,” was all I said.
“It made me crazy at first. I was so intimate with his body, it was like it was just another part of mine, the way you feel about your kids, you know?” She put her head down on her forearm. “Especially his penis. That really belonged to me. I knew it in every single incarnation possible—dead flaccid and lying on his thigh, saluting.” She slammed her board-straight hand against her brow. “Gently nudging my bottom. Rolling around in my hand. The vein against my tongue. All of it.”
I wondered if she knew there was a tear on her cheek. “I know,” I said again.
“Knowing someone else, some other hand or mouth or vagina, was exploring it, touching it, felt like having a hand in my intestines. It made me feel sick, and if I try to ignore it, and I can, the hand is still there, moving around inside of me.”
“That’s exactly it. Ow. You should write an article or something.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was muffled. “I should write that the way to get over it is to call his new babe a cunt on the phone.”
“Or not.”
“I know.” She sniffed, wiped away tears from her cheeks. “I hate that word.”
We always depersonalized the new women in our exes’ lives, I thought dimly. We didn’t use their names. We made up insults for them, plays on words, all sorts of things to keep us from recognizing that she, too, was a woman, just like ourselves. “And it’s not like she acted alone, right?” I said in a burst of fairness. Truthfulness. “That’s what I always come back to: it wasn’t just her.”
“I guess. That doesn’t exactly make it easier, does it?”
“No.” I thought of a single, searing moment, when I’d seen Daniel put his arm around his new wife. She was tiny, much smaller than me in every way—height, weight, shoulders, hips, legs, even hands and feet—and I’d felt betrayed because he’d always said he liked me for the Amazon I was. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Who was she?” Roxanne asked. “The one your ex married. He married her, right? I think you told me that.”
“Yes.” I gulped lemon-lime soda. “Oh, she’s every cliché in the book—a younger, prettier secretary. How about yours?”
“A neighbor who moved in just after we celebrated our seventeenth anniversary. I never even had the sense to be jealous. It never occurred to me that he’d go with anyone else.” A bloody half moon of color stained each cheekbone. Her nostrils flared. “She was single, had this sexy boyfriend. We used to laugh about them making noise when they had sex. Lorelei.” With a low moan, she smashed her fist down on the chair and dug her nose into the protection of her elbow. “God, I hate her so much!”
“I know,” I said.
“Sorry. I’m not always like this. I’m just having one of those days. The books all say you have to let them just be there. You’ll feel better eventually.” She raised red, swollen eyes to me, and I saw the hickey on her neck. “How long do you reckon?”
A vast mothering swell rose in me, and if I’d known her a little bit longer, I would have hugged her. Another part of my brain was sifting through a thousand scent memories for one that would match a tone, a flavor in my mind, the missing element of Roxanne’s perfume.
What did anger smell like?
11
Nikki’s Perfume Journal
Ingredients
Castoreum. Class: Animal
Castoreum is a dried follicular substance that comes from the secretion of the prepuce glands of male or female beavers. This secretion is stored in a gland that produces an oily substance. The beaver uses the oily substance to waterproof its coat and to mark its territory. The gland is treated with volatile solvents to obtain resinoids and absolutes. Today, beaver secretions are mostly replaced by synthetic substances.
Sundays at Annie’s were very busy. She served an organic brunch buffet and it was renowned far and wide. The sideboards in every room groaned with generous slices of orange and green and yellow melons, sliced blood-red tomatoes, steaming trays of free-range eggs and organic meats, overflowing baskets of grainy, fruity muffins and sticky Danishes. Eggs and pancakes were cooked to order, and that was what kept us busy.
It was surprisingly agreeable work. The customers were generally in fine spirits, happy to be breakfasting with family or friends, alive and eating well on a fine Sunday morning in Colorado. The buzz of their voices was a composition of pleasure, men and women and children punctuated with laughter. Hard to imagine a more satisfying sound.
I was off at one, and sat down at the bar to have a soda before I left. I counted tips happily, stacking up bills and quarters in neat piles for Zara to cash in for me.
“Want a mimosa?” she asked, holding up a wine bowl with a liquid the color of dawn. “Somebody ordered one and changed her mind.”
“Tempting, but no. I’m driving.”
“Oh, please,” she said, and put it down in front of me. “It has maybe a half serving of champagne. Live a little.”
I plucked the cherry and orange garnish from the rim. “What the heck. I’m going to eat, too.”
A woman with dark hair sleekly pulled away from her face sailed into the bar. She was strikingly beautiful, with enormous blue plum eyes and high cheekbones, and the lean limbs of a teenager. “Hallo, Zara!” she sang out in an English accent. “How are you?”
Zara slanted a glance my way. I gave her a perplexed glance in return. Was I supposed to know this woman? She shook her head. “Good, Hannah. Tequila?”
“Please—and make it a double, if you would. I’m just home from the Islands, and you know how depressing it is to return from holiday.”
That, I thought, would explain the pecan-colored tan on her bare arms and legs. She wore a skirt of pale turquoise, embroidered with beads and glittery things on the hem. I separated dimes from the pile of change and watched Zara pour top-end tequila into a mixing glass with ice, put a lime in the bottom of a martini glass, and strained the now-cold tequila into it. “There you go.”
“Thanks.” She sipped. “Ooh, perfect. You’re always so good.”
Zara dried glasses from the rubber matting by her sink. Her body posture was extraordinarily stiff and I wondered what the history was between these two. Clearly, Hannah either did not realize or did not care that Zara found her about as appealing as a woman-sized cockroach. “Glad you like it. Do you want a table?”
“No,” she said, plucking the lime from the bottom of the glass with her fingers, which she then licked, one at a time. “I was hoping to run into Niraj. Have you seen him?”
I kept my eyes carefully on the pile of coins in front of me. I’d been hoping to see him, too, but if this was an example of the women he ordinarily dated, I was way out of my league.
“Sorry,” Zara said, and it was not difficult to read her warning glance at me. I sucked my upper lip into my mouth and looked at the clock. I wanted to remember to get the phone number off the rental sign at the shop. The one I’d written down yesterday had not worked.
“Cash this in for me, will you?” I said to Zara. “I think it’s seventy-two. I’ll be right back.”
She nodded. Pulling the scrunchy out of my hair, I flung off my apron and dashed outside to the shop up the street. This time, I wrote the number down very carefully. The kitten wasn’t immediately visible, and I put my hand on the window to block the glare so I could peer into the room.
The same detritus. The same sense of dusty promise. A vision of bottles in many colors flashed over my imagination.
So lost was I in my reverie that I nearly screeched when I pulled away from the window and nearly ran into Niraj, who laughed and grabbed my arm before I slapped at him.
“So sorry,” he said, and I had forgotten how lyrical his voice was. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was going to Annie’s to see if you would like to come have tea—or maybe a little chai”—he smiled— “
with me this afternoon.”
“Um.” I clenched the pencil in my hand, dazzled by his voice, the look of his very deep eyes with their starry lashes, but mostly by the scent of him, not a waft but a solid arm that reached out and wrapped around me—that roundness of earth and spice and pine. God. I wanted to open my mouth and drink it down. “I . . . uh . . . am not dressed for it.”
He smiled, not at all wolfishly. “Just to my house. It is not far, just up the street. I’d like to show you.”
I felt frozen—then realized the woman had just returned from the Islands, and he’d just come back from a business trip, and I was going to have a crush on a guy like that? No way. “There’s a woman looking for you at Annie’s,” I finally managed. “She’s at the bar, talking to Zara.”
His eyes narrowed. “What does she look like?” His voice was tight.
“Her name is Hannah.”
He looked down the street toward the restaurant. His hands were quiet at his sides. “What is she doing here, I wonder.” He did not sound pleased.
“I don’t know.” I looked at the number written on my hand, tried to remember my happiness in seeing the vision of perfume bottles in rows. “Maybe you should ask her.”
He caught my arm when I started back down the street. “Nikki, please wait a moment.”
I looked at him hard, looked at his hand. “Please don’t do that.”
He released me instantly, put his hands on his hips. “I told you I followed a woman from England to here. That is Hannah. We do not speak, if I can help it.” He looked at me seriously. “She likes to cause trouble. I’m sure she has trouble in mind now.”
I’d picked up the impression that she had dumped him, but that was a discussion for another day. The truth is, I wanted to trust him, and it wasn’t fair to judge him without knowing the facts.
Taking a breath, I said, “All right.”
“So, will you come have tea?” He folded his hands in a prayer position, oddly respectful, as well as playful. “I have been hoping to see you again since I left. Is it all right to say that?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
“So, you’ll come?”
“I’m not sure about going to your house, Niraj. I’m a little uncomfortable with it.”
He raised a hand. “I swear it will only be tea. If you like, you may call Zara and ask her if I am trustworthy. She knows me.”
“Did you date her, too?” I cleared my throat. “Not that I care, it’s just that it’s nice to be in the loop.”
His eyes glittered. “I did not.” His nose twitched, like a rabbit, and I realized he was holding back a smile. “I will not lie, however. She wanted to go out with me, but I felt no interest in her.”
I raised my eyebrows skeptically. “Zara?”
He shrugged. “No.”
“How could you not like her? She’s gorgeous.”
“She is pretty,” he said, inclining his head. “But a little too much for me, I think. She likes to drink hard and stay up very late.”
“And you don’t?”
“Not really.” He shrugged, as if to say, You may as well know it.
“Tea, huh?”
“Yes. Only tea.”
“It better be. I smell like a goat.” I grinned. “And I’m starving, so you’d better have some cookies or something to go with it.”
“That can be arranged.” The “r”s rolled a little, just enough to send a rustling over my nerves. “Can you come now?”
“I have to go get my things.”
He threw a frown toward the restaurant. “I will wait.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
“Will you mind if I ask you not to mention that I am out here?”
“I won’t.” I dashed back inside through the back, stopped in the employee restroom in the kitchen and hurriedly combed my hair. Mary gave me a look. “Must be a man.”
“He’s just a friend.” But suddenly a grin the size of the sky split my face, and I put my hand over it.
Her laugh was earthy. “I can see that.”
Wiggling my fingers at her, I dashed through the swinging doors to the dining room, and deliberately slowed down. I picked up my purse, took a long swallow of the mimosa, and folded the money Zara had put on the counter. “See ya in a few days,” I said. “I don’t work again until Wednesday.”
“Have a good one,” she said in her cigarette-throaty voice.
The woman—Hannah—was no less gorgeous upon second look. I had not exaggerated her plum-colored eyes, her beautiful shoulders, her amazingly glossy dark hair. She was a knockout.
So was Zara, for that matter. While I was . . . well, “ordinary” was a good word. Round and ordinary and obviously mid-forties. But I thought of Niraj’s starry eyes and didn’t care. He liked me.
Did. Not. Care.
“See ya!” I sang, and rushed out the door.
To reach his house, Niraj and I walked to a staircase made of pinkish granite, cut into the hillside. The steps led steeply to an even steeper ribbon of street, just visible through the low-hanging arms of cottonwoods. At the foot of the steps was a bubbling spring, pouring water endlessly through a spout. I put my hand under it and captured a palmful as we went by.
“It’s not far,” he said, “but it’s steep.”
“That’s how you keep those excellent calves, huh?”
He looked at me. “Are they?”
“Very.”
“I’m glad you like them.”
The grade felt as if it were straight up, and I gave up talking. It really wasn’t very long before he turned down a more level stretch and we walked on an old, multi-squared sidewalk with grass growing in the cracks, to an Arts & Crafts bungalow perched on the hill. Lilac bushes, not yet in bud, clustered in the corners of the grassy yard, and peonies sprouted in front of the porch. Two wicker chairs and a table faced southwest, and I paused to look over my shoulder at what they viewed. It was only the street, the trees, the house across the street, a furry blue green elbow of mountain just visible over the roof. “Pretty,” I said.
“It is,” he agreed. “But it is nicer from the back. Come in.”
I hadn’t expected homemaking skills from a bachelor computer geek, honestly—maybe utilitarian desks, a computer breathing somewhere in the front room, plain window coverings, anime posters or some other oddity like that on the walls.
Instead, the room was furnished with sturdy mission-style furniture that matched the Arts & Crafts era of the house; good wood; and a soft, nubby, copper-colored fabric with red and gold accents. A figure with the head of an elephant and the body of a human sat in the middle of the mantel, and there was a moody photo of more elephants in a line across a red sky. A glossy pothos spilled over the windowsill and down the wall, leaves shining in the sunlight. The rooms smelled of exotic spices, some cooking I didn’t know, vaguely ginger, and something I couldn’t name.
Niraj stood beside me. I was aware of the heat of his arm along the outside of my own, conscious of the scent of his skin, of his waiting. I glanced at him. He glanced down at the same moment, a slight lift of his left eyebrow the only expression on his face.
I thought of his sleek ex-girlfriend. Together with this evidence of his homemaking skills, I felt foolish and oversized. “This is in beautiful condition,” I commented, since I could tell he waited for my impressions. “Did you have it redone?”
He nodded. “It was not in terrible shape. But I had a man come in and redo all the wood, and the floors.” He gestured to the well-tended oak around the windows, the high baseboards, the gleaming floor with an Arabian Nights rug on the floor.
“It’s wonderful.” I realized it had to also be worth a fortune. “I accidentally blew up my old house.”
“Blew it up? How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.” I met his curious gaze and told the truth for the first time. “I probably didn’t really want it and didn’t know how else to get out of it. Subconsciously, of course. I didn’t do it
on purpose.”
“It was a difficult divorce?”
I touched the cool green marble of the mantelpiece, a Pikes Peak specialty. “Aren’t they all?”
“I suppose they are.” He moved, leading the way through the long front room. “Come through here. Let me show you the rest— the view from the back is fantastic.”
“All right.” I followed him into the kitchen, a broad room with white walls and glass-fronted cupboards. Hexagonal tiles lined the backsplash over the sink, in shades of brick and white, and the floor repeated the color. A plain wooden table sat by the window that overlooked the garden, and a pile of books was stacked there, some in a language with curly letters. “Is that Arabic?”
“Hindi,” he said. “I am learning. Slowly.” He picked up the book and flipped through it. “We are several generations removed from India now. My mother’s family lived in South Africa, and my father’s family has been in London a long time.”
“So, have you ever been to India?”
“Not yet.” He put the book down. “Ironically, I was offered a position there—it was thought I might be a good man for the job, supervising other Indians.”
There had been much made in Colorado Springs of the out-sourcing of computer jobs to India. “That seems as if it might be awkward. The token, right?”
He smiled in surprise. “Yes. And I think I’ve found my home here.” He gestured and we went through the back door. He spread a hand, as if tossing a beautiful scarf across the landscape. “How could a man leave this?”
I put my hands to my cheeks and laughed softly. The wooden porch, braced on very tall stilts, looked out over the valley, the tumble of the town to the right, the climb toward the mountain to the left, and directly in front, a frameable view of the Garden of the Gods, nestled beneath the hills. “I can see Annie’s!”
“That is just why I purchased the house, so I could admire the restaurant.”
I gave him a wry smile. “Ha-ha.”
He leaned on the railing, relaxed, confident. “I love to sit out here. It is very different from anything in England.”
Madame Mirabou's School of Love Page 15