The Scent Keeper(65)
Her ferocity was beautiful. No daughter of mine. I could feel the words claim me, warm and possessive. She wanted me, even if Fisher didn’t.
“So, do we have a deal?” she asked.
I imagined days spent swimming in smells, with no need to hide who I was. I could be myself. I could be like her.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wonderful,” Victoria said, taking a sip from her wineglass. “I have just the person to teach you. She’s a real up-and-comer; she’ll be perfect.”
* * *
Later that evening, I called the cove and told Colette I was going to stay. The story spilled out of me and she listened quietly. When I was done, she said she was glad for me, but in the slight hesitation in her voice I could hear the reflection of my own words—shiny and a little too fast. Armed with excitement. I imagined them banging around the kitchen, bouncing off the pots and pans.
“I’ll call again soon,” I said, and got off the phone as quickly as I could.
* * *
The next morning, my teacher was waiting for us in a small, white room on the third floor of Inspire, Inc. It was the young woman I’d seen talking with Victoria that first day in the lobby; I recognized her white-blond hair. She had on a formfitting black skirt and blouse, the one accent a gray-blue scarf tied in a complicated knot around her neck. She wore no perfume, but I detected a hint of ginger nonetheless.
“Claudia is a wonder,” Victoria said. “She’ll take good care of you.”
Claudia smiled. “Of course, Ms. Wingate. I’d be honored to teach your daughter.”
Victoria gave her an approving look, then turned to me. “I’ll see you at the end of the day, Emmeline. We can have dinner together.”
The door clicked shut behind her, and Claudia’s smile disappeared. She walked over to the table, her heels clacking against the hard floor, and motioned for me to sit facing her. When I’d done so, she leaned forward. Her eyes were the same cold blue as her scarf.
“I trained in Paris for three years,” she said, each word clipped. “I worked my ass off to get hired here. I was just given my first big assignment two days ago. I was going to make bespoke fragrances for seven different houses for a major actress.”
She paused, expectant.
“That’s amazing,” I said. It was all you could ever say to girls like this. I’d learned that much in school.
“Now I’m training you,” Claudia said. “The boss’s daughter, who’s probably never been inside a lab in her life.” For just an instant, I saw the right corner of her upper lip curl. “Victoria says you were raised on one of those little islands up north?”
I nodded, and she lifted her hands in disbelief. “Okay, then; I guess we better get started. We’ve got a long way to go.”
She reached under the table and brought up a box.
“You probably think all you need is a good nose to make it in this business,” she said. “The truth is, a professional perfumer’s mind is a giant database. You have to be able to retain literally thousands of scents in your memory. Do you think you can do that?”
I nodded. Scents I could hold on to; it was everything else that left me.
“Let’s see if you’re right.” Claudia opened the box and handed me a bottle. I unscrewed the top, and breathed in.
Once upon a time, Emmeline, Jack went to an island covered with trees whose flowers glowed like tiny lamps …
“Nutmeg.” Claudia grabbed the bottle and screwed the cap back on. The story was still filtering through me when a new scent exploded forth.
“Orris root,” Claudia said, tapping the new bottle on the table. “Am I going too fast for you?”
“No,” I lied.
“Good.”
Linden blossom. Tonka bean. Benzoin. The smells came at me, little glass missiles fired across the table in rapid succession.
“The point is speed and precision,” Claudia said. She pushed a stack of papers toward me, the pages divided into rows and columns. “Put each scent in a category. Fresh, floral, woody, spicy, animal, marine, fruity. You need to recognize them instantly, without thinking.”
The bottles started again, and the world turned into charts and rows, filled with an onslaught of strange names. Litsea cubeba. Frangipani. Neroli. Tagette. Orange broke into pieces, became pettigrain, bergamot, tangerine, mandarin, bitter, sweet, and blood. Pepper was black, green, or pink. Mint was winter, spear, or pepper. Hour after hour. Box after box. Every once in a while, Claudia slipped in a repeat, just to see if I could catch it.
“This one?” she asked.
“Labdanum.” I remembered it from hours before, the feel of it like the touch of a hand on your lower back.
Claudia blinked, the barrage of scents hesitating.
“Huh,” she muttered.
When the scents started to flow again, they came even faster.
* * *
At the end of the day, head pounding, I went back to Victoria’s apartment and took a shower, using the hottest water I could stand. The steam swirled up into my nose, blissfully neutral, clean.
“How did it go?” Victoria asked when I came into the living room.
“Fine,” I said. “Good.”
I meant it, I realized, almost to my surprise. As much as I disliked Claudia, the intensity had been as exhilarating as it had been exhausting. By the end of the day, I’d reached the point where I could sense the category of a scent almost before the bottle was open. Fresh was quick and cool, never warm. Floral was soft and seductive, the kind that kept its clothes on, showing only an ankle or a shoulder. Spicy bit your nose, woke you up. Woody sent me to the island so fast I couldn’t stop the tears from filling my eyes. I couldn’t wait to start combining them, creating something new.