The Scent Keeper(66)

Victoria was right—this was a language, my language, and I wanted to write.



* * *



Claudia was determined to overwhelm me, that was obvious, but the effect she had was the opposite. My mind had never felt so alive. I plunged into the work, stayed as many hours as she demanded. Weeks passed and I didn’t even notice. I was doing the thing I was made for. And caught up in the scents, it was easier to try and forget Fisher, wherever he was. Whoever he was with.

Victoria and I fell into a companionable schedule. She worked as late as I did, and often later. On the evenings when I was alone, I’d walk back to Victoria’s apartment, taking the route along the wharf, letting the sound of my feet on the boardwalk settle my mind. On those nights when Victoria didn’t have a business dinner, we ate together, shopping for groceries on the way home. She introduced me to spices and ingredients I’d never encountered, textures that were new to my tongue. Maybe it was the feeling of Victoria’s attention, the way she watched each and every reaction I had, but even after a day of smelling bottle after bottle, there was something thrilling about holding these new smells in my hands, tasting the samples in the tiny paper cups. Everything that was tired in me woke up anew.

Back at the apartment we’d eat while the rest of the world was already half-asleep. Victoria said I was grown up enough to drink a glass of wine, and we’d sit there and talk about fragrances and the business. There were times when I missed Dodge and Colette and Henry, the smells of fish and fog and the marinade of life that slips into the walls of old houses. But more and more, the girl who’d curled up in front of the fireplace, a wet dog beside her, was beginning to feel like a different Emmeline. A child.

One evening, Victoria and I had finished dinner and were sitting on the couch in the living room. I had a cream-colored throw blanket around my shoulders; it was soft, made of cashmere. We’d had salmon for dinner, so fresh I could swear I even smelled a bit of salt water and cedar in the air. Victoria’s honey-and-amber perfume was there, too.

“You don’t wear that perfume very often,” I noted.

She smiled. “A signature scent is a brand,” she said. “It works fabulously for helping people make emotional connections with places, but if a person wears the same perfume all the time, you risk muddying the memories.” She leaned back in her chair, contemplative. “I remember when I was younger, I learned about this artist named Andy Warhol—he would wear a fragrance for a while, and then put it in his museum, as he called it. Whenever he wanted to go back to a particular time, he’d just open that bottle.”

“Like your collection?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Except I make my own fragrances.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable. She looked over at me. “You will, too.”

It was as close as Victoria ever got to an embrace, and I held her words close.

“Do you ever think of scents as colors?” I asked impulsively. It was the kind of question that would have had the girls in school rolling their eyes.

Victoria nodded, however. “Absolutely. And sounds. Some of them even seem like people.”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.” We sat there for a few minutes in easy silence.

“Were scents always like that for you?” I asked eventually.

She considered her wineglass. “My mother worked the perfume counter at our local department store,” she said. “She’d bring home bottles and line them up on her dresser. I didn’t have a lot of friends at school—we didn’t have much money, and in school, differences matter, you know?”

I did.

Victoria took a sip of wine. “Anyway, I’d go into my mom’s room and smell her different perfumes before she got home from work. I’d give them my own names. Sometimes I’d even carry one around in my pocket for a while.”

She smiled, a sad one. “I’ve heard it said that great perfumers don’t have a lot of friends; they have a lot of ingredients.”

The thought of Fisher picked the lock of my memories and sauntered out. It did this more often than I wanted. This time, there was another girl with him. Prettier, smarter. There were no smudges of dirt or life on her face; she carried no baggage.

Why don’t you want me, Fisher?

I looked at my mother. “I know just what you mean,” I said.



* * *



“When can I learn to mix scents?” I asked Claudia the next morning. She’d been grilling me for more than two months by that point, throwing an ever-changing combination of old and new scents at me with machine-like rapidity. I hadn’t missed one in more than a week. My conversation with Victoria had made me want to surprise my mother, show her I could do more.

“You’re not ready,” Claudia said, taking her seat. Her boredom was like a third person in the room. “Get out your charts.”

“Try me,” I said.

Claudia paused in irritation, but in the end her desire to prove she knew more than me won out.

“Fine,” she said, and then launched in, the words rote, mechanical, coming as fast as the bottles had. “Every perfume is made of top, middle, and base notes. Top notes are light, middle notes last longer, base notes last longest. A good perfume has all three, but they have to be in the proper proportions.”