The perfumist of paris, p.23
The Perfumist of Paris, page 23
Delphine addresses Ferdie. “I didn’t realize you’d been to Agra, Ferdie. You’ve kept that little secret hidden from me.”
Ferdie smiles good-naturedly and waves a hand at Yves. “My aunt and uncle took me there for my sixteenth birthday. Wasn’t it beautiful, oncle?”
“Magnifique. Ferdinand told me he always wanted to return. Looks like he’ll have the chance.”
My mentor takes no notice of Yves’s comment. Instead, she focuses her gaze on Ferdie. “How much of this new ingredient can we get immediately? The client is anxious to start production as soon as they approve the scent.”
Ferdie looks around the room. He’s on less firm ground here. “There should be no problem with that.”
Now she turns to Yves. “We should also prepare at least three or four small vials for the client to take back to their people. I think all we need now is to schedule a meeting with the client. I’ll get Celeste to set that up tomorrow.” She stands.
Yves points to me, the silent observer in the corner with a samples tray in front of me. “Did you have something you wanted to show me?”
“Bah, that’s for the Alsace project,” Delphine lies smoothly. “Radha and I are needed at another meeting. I’ll leave you to it.” She nods at Yves, pointedly ignores Ferdie and tilts her chin at me to come with her.
* * *
I follow Delphine back to her office, struggling to keep up with her brisk pace. As soon as she shuts the door to her office, Delphine explodes. “How the hell did he get the formula?” She lights a cigarette and stands with one hand on her hip.
“I have no idea, but...” I realize I’ve never told anyone my suspicions. I do so now, starting with the vetiver fragrance we were working on a few months ago. The samples that didn’t smell the same as the day before. The notebook that went missing for an hour. The way I’d been locking my samples in my drawers before leaving work.
“But how did Ferdie know about the Agra factory? I don’t even know the name of your factory, Radha.”
“He would have had to look in my notebook.” I close my eyes, trying to remember if I locked the drawer last night. I’m almost sure I did.
Delphine is smoking furiously. She notices I’m still standing with the tray and barks at me to set it down somewhere. I look around and put it on the only surface I can: her desk. She points at me with her cigarette, the ash falling on the tray now. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“For a long time, I thought I was imagining it. Then I thought it was something I was doing wrong.” I hesitate. “Then I thought it might be Michel’s doing, and I didn’t want to say anything against him.” Embarrassment is making my face warm. “Because you trust him.”
Her look is incredulous. “Michel? Michel LeGrande? He’s always singing your praises. He thinks, as I do, that you have what it takes to become a master perfumer. No, it’s not Michel.”
I’m so surprised by this revelation I don’t know what to say. Michel has never so much as asked me where I live or how many children I have. “There’s something else,” I say, rubbing my palms against the coat. Her eyes follow my hands, so I shove them in my pockets. Reluctantly, I tell her about the phone call from Hazi, Michel requesting the mitti attar.
“Nonsense!” she snaps. “Michel would never do anything of the kind. And before you think it, I didn’t put him up to it.”
As always, she’s three steps ahead of me.
She shakes her cigarette at me again. Ash falls to the carpet below. “Could have been Ferdie. Maybe he used Michel’s name to throw off suspicion.” She blows smoke toward the windows. “You said you notice the changes to the samples first thing in the morning? Not during work hours?”
I nod.
Her fingers tap the edge of her desk. She picks up the phone and tells Celeste she needs her.
Celeste walks in the office. Today, she’s wearing a lilac sweater dress with a tie across the middle. With no breasts and no hips, however, Celeste looks like the hanger it must have come off of. Her pale hair is hiding half her face.
“Where are the master keys to all the desks?” Delphine asks.
“In my desk,” she says.
“And when you’re away from your desk, the keys are there, in a locked drawer?”
Celeste looks uncomfortable. She pushes her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, I unlock my desk in the morning when I get into the office.”
“And it stays unlocked all day?”
Celeste steals a glance at me, as if to ask a question. What is this about? I try for a sympathetic smile. “Oui,” she tells Delphine. “Except for lunch, when I lock it.”
“And you take the keys with you.”
“Not always.”
“What do you mean?”
A furious blush spreads across Celeste’s cheeks. “I usually take them with me. But sometimes...”
“Yes?”
“When someone forgets their keys, I let them use the master key to unlock their desk. If I’m rushed, I may forget to ask for the master keys back until the end of the day when I’m locking up.”
Delphine puts out her cigarette thoughtfully in her ashtray. “I see.” I notice Celeste looking at the ashtray, probably thinking she needs to empty it. “When was the last time that happened?”
“F-Ferdie seems to have lost his keys. He keeps borrowing my master set. I asked if he wanted me to get another set made, but he said he knows his set is at home somewhere. He hasn’t had a chance to look for it.” She looks from Delphine to me. “To be fair, Ferdie has a lot going on right now. His parents have cut him off—”
“Cut him off?” Delphine’s voice is sharp.
“I can’t help but overhear when they call.” Celeste wrings her hands. “His expenses. The clothes. The discos. They stopped paying for his apartment.” Her nose and cheeks have turned pink. “Please don’t tell him I said anything.”
Now I remember the time I saw Ferdie on the phone at Celeste’s desk, his agitation.
Delphine waves a hand as if casting aside Celeste’s plea. “Do you have the master set now?”
“I’ll get them.” Celeste exits the room and returns in half a minute. She looks like she’s about to cry. “They’re not there.”
Delphine squeezes her eyes shut. “That Judas.” When she opens them again, she fixes a stern gaze on Celeste. “A leopard doesn’t change its spots. Il revient au galop. You realize, chérie, that, for Ferdie, you’ll never be a replacement for Maurice or Noel or Sergio?”
Celeste looks stricken. Her cheeks and neck are crimson. It’s as if Delphine has slapped her. I look down at my lap. We’re all aware of Celeste’s unrequited crush on Ferdie, but no one would have dared mention it openly the way Delphine just did. I wish I weren’t in the room to witness Celeste’s humiliation.
“Tell Michel we need him.”
Celeste retreats quickly, before her tears can spill across her cheeks.
Delphine looks out the window, tapping her fingernail across her desk. I sit mute, unable to move; the last thing I want is to be a convenient target for her anger.
Michel comes in five minutes later, followed by Celeste. He looks around the room at me, Delphine and, finally, at Celeste, whose face is now a mottled pink. She tugs at her dress to keep it from clinging to her tights.
“Michel,” Delphine says. “Have you noticed anything about Ferdinand’s behavior recently that would concern you?”
It’s hard to see Michel’s eyes because his wire-rimmed glasses are reflecting the light from the window. He adjusts his spectacles before speaking. “Nothing more than usual.”
Delphine raises her eyebrows in a question.
Michel blows air out of his mouth, puffing out his cheeks. “Talks of parties, boyfriends, discos, that sort of thing. Perhaps more keyed up than he normally is. On the phone more than usual.”
Delphine stands up and goes to her window, surveying her city. La Tour Eiffel gleams in the distance on a rare sunny December day. After a minute, during which I know her mind is working furiously, she turns to us. She recounts to Michel and Celeste what we just witnessed in Yves’s office.
“My agenda has always been clear—to create the best parfum in Paris. The formulas we create must be both critically successful and commercially viable. We cannot allow others to subvert our good work. That’s what Ferdie has done. He has stolen Radha’s work. Our work. We cannot allow him to succeed, n’est-ce pas?”
At the mention of Ferdie’s name, Michel turns to Celeste, his brows raised. She hangs her head. A curtain of fine hair falls across her flushed face. Michel then glances at me. I look away, embarrassed to have suspected him, to have had all those awful thoughts about him.
Delphine is still talking. “He thinks he will prevail. Because we always trusted him before.” She turns and walks back to her desk, lights a cigarette. “But we are going to make sure he doesn’t get away with this.” She looks from Michel to Celeste and back again. Something passes between them. “Comprenez?”
That’s all she says before she makes a gesture telling us to leave. Celeste leaves first, closing the door after her. Michel doesn’t move. I hesitate. What exactly are we meant to do?
Delphine’s phone rings. She picks it up, listens, then hangs up. She nods at Michel. “It’s clear.” Some signal has passed between them. I wonder if I will ever know her well enough to read her as intuitively as Michel does.
Michel walks to the door, opens it and glances back at me. I realize that I’m supposed to follow him. I lift the tray from Delphine’s desk and walk out with him. I take one last look at Delphine before leaving. She’s picking up the phone and pressing a button for one of the outside lines.
I follow Michel back into the lab, but I’m waiting for him to tell me what Delphine meant about not letting Ferdie get away with it. How will we do that? But he says nothing to me. He sits at his desk, absorbed in his thoughts. All at once, he gets out of his chair, walks out of the lab and goes directly to Celeste’s desk to talk to her.
Slowly, I settle down at my table and pick up a stack of briefs. I don’t have the heart to do a new project. Instead, I take out the vial of the scent of rain. Less than a quarter of the mitti attar remains in the vial. That’s odd. So far, I’ve only used a fraction of it to experiment with my formula. I look across as Ferdie’s empty work area. He must have taken the remainder to recreate my formula, just as he stole the formula from my notebook.
Now, so many things make sense to me. The day he returned my notebook, claiming he had found it in a corner of the lab. The way he smirked at my sample with its odor of benzene. He’d messed with my formula! How blind I’d been! He’d always been so friendly, so jolly, so easygoing. Why would any of us have suspected he would turn on us, the way he had? What a fool I’d been to smile and laugh with him when he was planning how to use me—how to use us all—to get what he wanted. Had I only imagined that we’d been friends? Was he laughing the entire time at how easily I could be duped? I can feel my face get hot with equal parts outrage and shame.
Ferdie walks into the lab. The grin on his face makes me want to slap him. He’s not the least embarrassed or ashamed for taking credit for work I’ve done these past two months. Oh, when I think of the time I robbed from my daughters! And the friction it created between Pierre and me. I set the vial of mitti attar back in the drawer, inside the rosewood box Mr. Mehta gave me. When I slam the drawer, Ferdie looks at me from across the room, smiles and shrugs. He begins whistling a disco tune he often resorts to when he screws up in the lab. “Bad Luck” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.
As if it’s all been a game to him. No hard feelings.
No hard feelings? Behenchod! I need to give that connard a piece of my mind! To let him know it’s not all right to steal my idea! I clamber off my stool, but my coat pocket catches on the handle of the drawer that’s still open. It’s almost as if my work is holding me back.
Michel steps in to block my way. His face is inches from mine. I’ve never seen his eyes this close before. The blue is more cornflower in the center, fading to a pale turquoise at the edge. There’s compassion in them. And a warning. Don’t. You’ll make it worse.
After a moment, I take a breath and go back to my chair. When Michel moves out of the way, I can see Celeste in front of Ferdie’s work area, a bottle of Moët et Chandon in her hand. She offers it to Ferdie as she congratulates him.
What? Ten minutes ago, she was cowering in Delphine’s office, apologizing for giving Ferdie the keys to the kingdom!
Michel joins them now, holding three champagne flutes. He’s smiling. “Félicitations, Ferdinand!”
I can’t begin to know how to react or what to say. Is perfume only the domain of people who look like Ferdie and Delphine and Michel? Is there any room for an Indian woman like me? Since she’s the master perfumer, Delphine Silberman will be recognized by the industry whether Ferdie’s name goes on the formula or mine does. I’d fooled myself into thinking I had a chance to become a master perfumer one day. Right now it seems impossible. I stay put, confusion and frustration writ large on my face.
Celeste hands Ferdie his champagne as she says, “I can’t wait to try your fragrance!”
Michel clinks glasses with Ferdie. “I always told Delphine you were our next master perfumer.”
Liar! I thought Michel said that about me? Isn’t that what Delphine said?
Ferdie accepts the compliment gracefully. He’s self-effacing. It was luck. And intuition. I was so inspired. I know it was Radha’s project; it got me thinking about India. And the scent of rain after the monsoons.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Ferdie is actually describing mitti attar as if he’d discovered it! And why not? He’s one of the most accomplished deceits I’ve ever met. The lies roll off his tongue like beads of water roll off a peepal leaf. It’s effortless. How could I not have seen this coming?
Celeste is all smiles. “We were trying to guess, Michel and I, what your inspiration was? Something to do with an essential oil made of mud?”
Now it’s Michel’s turn to grin. “In all my years working here, I’ve never smelled anything like it.”
Ferdie can’t resist. He reaches for his drawer, unlocks it and pulls out a small vial. He uncaps it and inserts a paper blotter, waves it about and hands it to Michel. “On its own, it’s not a remarkable scent. But in combination with other ingredients, it’s extraordinaire. It’s called petrichor. I remembered it from the time my aunt and uncle took me to India. That was ten years ago, but the scent made such an impression on me.”
Celeste reaches across Ferdie’s desk to pour more champagne into his flute and Michel’s. Her arm hits the neck of the scent bottle, causing it to tip in Ferdie’s direction, dousing him with champagne. He jumps up and away from his worktable. Michel tries to rescue the vial of scent, which is about to tip over. He succeeds.
All at once, Celeste is apologizing, as is Michel. Ferdie is telling them to step away so he can brush champagne off his brand-new corduroy shirt. Celeste tells him she’ll clean his table. He should put cold water on the shirt before the alcohol ruins it. “That’s what you’re wearing to the club tonight, aren’t you?” she asks.
Ferdie looks annoyed. He pushes her out of the way, roughly, to head out of the lab to the bathroom. Celeste runs to the supply closet to grab small lab towels and gets to work soaking up the mess on Ferdie’s work area.
The failed celebration party has taken all of five or six minutes. I’m sickened by all of them—applauding the work of a thief! I push away from my desk, scowling. I rip off my lab coat, grab my overcoat and my purse and head out of the lab, determined to leave after only putting in half a day.
I huff down the hall, past Delphine’s office in my rage. She calls out to me. I double back and stand in the threshold, my lips flattened in anger.
“Come here and close the door.”
For once, I defy her order. “I’m going home, Delphine.” I don’t address her politely as Madame, the way I usually do.
She rises from her chair, takes me by the arm, closes the door behind me and guides me to one of her guest chairs. “Attend.”
Wait for what? I wonder. The smell of her burning Gitane, which normally doesn’t bother me, makes me want to gag. What am I doing here at the House of Yves? What am I doing in Paris? Wasn’t I much happier in Agra? Back on familiar turf, with people who spoke my language, ate the same foods I loved and called me beti and behen? I have a wild desire to pick up my daughters at Florence’s and take them to India today! Is there a flight leaving tonight? Is there enough money in the bank to write a check for tickets? My foot starts a rhythmic tapping on the carpet until Delphine shows me her raised eyebrows. My foot stills. Why am I still under her spell?
“Yves and I have a meeting tomorrow with the client. We have agreed to send their team off with three small vials of each scent. Yours and Ferdie’s.”
“But it’s not Ferdie’s scent! You were there. Ferdie has stolen my—”
Without a knock, Michel enters the room. Delphine eyes him expectantly.
“All done,” he tells her.
“What did you use?” she asks.
“Point zero one grams of cinnamon.” Michel’s eyes seek mine. He smiles.
Michel smiled at me! I throw Delphine a puzzled glance.
She tells Michel, “Merci.”
He touches my arm on his way out. “Don’t worry. À bon chat, bon rat.” He closes the door behind him.
