Chapter 8 A Life Beyond Him #3
"Please do." There's a rustle as she moves her paper aside. "I'll keep my notes. You can tell me whether the jasmine still deserves to be on them."
After we hang up, I write Fiorella's name beside the citrus blend. Someone is going to try it. Tomorrow I need to choose which version I want her to smell.
I leave the notebook open on the desk. For once, I know what I'm doing when I get up.
***
After breakfast on Tuesday, I carry a dustpan and a cloth into the little room off the kitchen where I used to work.
It used to be a pantry.
My mother cleared it out years ago when I first got serious about perfumery, giving me somewhere to experiment with a window I could open wide.
My heavier equipment went into storage when I stopped using this room.
Rafael helped me move it to the Visconti house only recently.
For now, the empty table will have to do.
The room is dusty when I push open the door, cobwebs in the corners and a fine layer of grit on the small table under the window. I spend the first hour cleaning, wiping down surfaces and sweeping the floor and opening the window to let in fresh air.
The work feels good, physical and simple, the kind of task that doesn't require thinking about anything except the movement of my hands.
When the room is clean, I arrange what I have. The notebook goes on the table, open to the formula I've been refining.
The three trial bottles line up beside it, amber glass catching the morning light. I find an old metal tray in the kitchen and a packet of unused smelling strips in the workroom drawer, setting them within reach. It's not much.
My real equipment is still at the Visconti house, the extraction setup and the precision scales and the specialized bottles I use for blending.
But it's enough to evaluate what I have, to make notes, to move forward.
I pull a chair up to the table and sit down, looking at the three bottles in front of me.
The trial blend. Neroli, bergamot, cedar, layered together in proportions I've been adjusting for months. Replacing the defective bergamot helped. Now the Atlas cedar can ground the brighter notes without competing with that awful metallic edge.
I've been working toward something with this blend. A signature scent, something that could be mine in a way that nothing else in my life is right now. I want to get it right. I want to introduce myself with something I'm proud of.
I uncap the first bottle and wet the end of a smelling strip, then close the bottle before lifting the strip.
The scent unfolds the way it should, the bright opening of bergamot giving way to the softer neroli heart, the cedar rising underneath to anchor everything. I close my eyes and breathe it in, trying to evaluate with professional detachment, trying to identify what still needs adjustment.
I lay the strip on the tray and spend some time copying notes for Fiorella. When I return to it, the balance is close. But underneath the softer opening, a sharpness still catches my attention.
I make a note in the margin of the formula and reach for the second bottle.
This one is slightly different, more neroli and less cedar, an experiment to see if softening the base would help with the transition. I wet a fresh strip, replace the cap, and lift the strip to my nose.
The smell hits me wrong.
I know this version. I've smelled it over and over without this thick, sick feeling rising in my throat. I try to put the strip down carefully and miss the tray.
My stomach lurches. Saliva floods my mouth.
I push back from the table, my hand pressed against my lips. The room feels suddenly too small, the smell too strong, even though I've barely used any product and the window is wide open.
I know this feeling. The warning that comes right before.
I make it to the bathroom just in time, dropping to my knees in front of the toilet as my body empties itself of everything I ate this morning. The heaving leaves me shaky, with my hands braced against the toilet seat.
When it finally stops, I sit back on my heels and press my forehead against the cool tile wall.
What is wrong with me?
I've been working with these scents for years. I know them better than I know almost anything else in my life. My nose is trained, reliable, the one part of myself I've never doubted. And now suddenly I can't smell my own blend without my body rejecting it like poison?
I close my eyes and breathe through my mouth, waiting for the nausea to pass.
It must be stress. The divorce, the upheaval, the sleepless nights and barely-touched meals. My body is telling me something is wrong, and it's choosing the strangest possible way to deliver the message.
I pull myself up to the sink and rinse my mouth, then splash cold water on my face. The woman in the mirror looks pale and tired, with shadows under her eyes and a crease between her brows that wasn't there a week ago.
I don't recognize her. I don't know who she's becoming.
I reach for the towel. Surely I can manage drying my face and going back to my notebook.
Then my stomach turns again, and I barely reach the basin.