Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
On her way home, Iris picked up a few items at the farmers market for herself and Madame Rapacine, including a bouquet of flowers to thank her for the perfume.
Outside her brownstone, Hugo did his thirteen-year-old version of bounding up the steps, akin to a bunny hop on his stiff hind legs.
He seemed extra keen to visit today, sniffing wildly at the front door.
Iris punched in the code for the vestibule, and as soon as she opened the door, the sickly-sweet stench of garbage smacked her in the face.
A row of bulging trash bags slumped along the wall; one by the staircase had oozed a mystery liquid onto the checkerboard tile.
She swatted a fly buzzing around her and tucked her nose into her collar to muffle the stink.
Iris tied Hugo’s leash to the brownstone’s railing so he wouldn’t try to “help” with the trash and got to work hauling it to the curb.
After several trips, she’d taken it all out, retrieved Hugo, and knocked on Mme Rapacine’s apartment door.
She waited to hear the rattling of the chain and various clicks from the other side.
“ Salut, Iris!” Rapacine answered the door with an Hermès silk scarf tied around the lower half of her face like the world’s most elegant bandit.
“ Salut, Madame, do you want me to put on a mask?” Iris still kept one in her purse.
“No, it’s—ah, it’s gone!” She yanked down the scarf.
“I took the trash out.”
“ Merci! But you shouldn’t have. Come in, come in.” After exchanging the customary double air-kiss, Rapacine scowled over Iris’s shoulder like she was angry at the hallway and welcomed her inside.
Hugo was good with cats, collectibles less so, so they went straight to the back garden, where Iris saw Rapacine had company. A muscular, shirtless man was pouring a large bag of soil out by the border of the rosebushes.
“William, come meet my friend Iris.”
William dusted his hands off and walked over. With his long blond hair, shirt tied at his tapered waist, and skin glistening with sweat, he looked like he’d sauntered off the cover of a romance novel. Rapacine introduced them.
“I’ll head out, let you two catch up. And I’ll get that trash on my way out.”
“ Ma’m’selle beat you to it.”
He looked disappointed but gave Iris a nod. “A’right, babe. Text me.” William bent and kissed Rapacine on the lips.
It was all Iris could do to contain her laughter until he disappeared inside the apartment. “Babe?”
Rapacine leaned her cheek in her hand. “I told him not to get attached.”
“Well, he’s good at his job. You and the garden are glowing. More flowers are probably the last thing you need.” She presented her with the bouquet and a pint of fresh strawberries.
“They are beautiful. And I often cannot cut my own darlings. I’ll get a vase.”
Iris let Hugo off the leash with a telepathic plea, No digging, and watched him toddle off to snuffle Jasmine, who lay stretched out on the patio, unbothered by the old dog.
Rapacine returned to arrange the flowers in the vase and rinsed the strawberries with the garden hose before laying them on a cloth-napkin-covered plate. She poured Iris a glass of iced tea from a pitcher. “You know they put the trash there to torment me.”
“Your neighbors?”
“The neighbors are gone, ousted. I am the only one left in the building. My tormentors are the new landlords and their bastard henchman manager. He is the one who takes the next-door neighbors’ trash from the curb and piles it outside my door.”
“Why would he do that?”
“They want to drive me out. I’ve lived here since 1979, the original owner was a friend from Paris, and it was rent-controlled. The building has changed hands several times since then, but I am the grandfather inside.”
“You’re grandfathered in?”
She snapped her fingers in approval. “Previous owners have tried to buy me out, but I say no, this is my home, it’s priceless to me. These new ones hate me. They want to sell the whole building to some hedgehog.”
“Hedge funder?”
“You’ve been here five minutes, already you must correct my English?”
“You’ve been here since seventy-nine, I thought your English would be better.”
She laughed and clasped her hands, jingling her stacked bracelets.
Iris took a sip, pleasantly surprised by the bite. “Ooh, is that lemonade in it?”
“Yes, but you probably taste the whiskey.”
Iris chuckled. “Hot gardener, spiked iced tea, you live right.”
“Alors, I forgot the mint.” She darted over to the herb section of her garden and returned rolling a sprig between her fingers.
She tore it right above Iris’s glass, releasing the most refreshing aroma, a relief tantamount to smelling salts in this heat, before dropping the torn leaves into her glass.
“I asked William to cut the grass and prune before the rain, so that the plants could drink more deeply. A beautiful scent, no?”
Iris breathed in through her nose, savoring a tender sweetness, a hint of peppery spice, and the lemony taste of a chewed clover that reminded her of peaceful childhood summers of green knees, grazing ponies, and lazily tearing grass blades between her fingers.
“The smell is the grass screaming .” Rapacine popped a strawberry into her mouth as though she hadn’t said something completely batshit.
“Huh?”
“The aroma chemicals emitted when a blade of grass is cut are a warning call to the others that there is danger afoot and to adapt. All living things speak with fragrance, plants included.”
“Now I feel bad for grass? I need more whiskey in my tea.”
Rapacine chuckled. “I mean to say that scent is a channel of communication. It has guided our lives for millennia, helping us to survive and evolve to today’s point of overthinking. That is why I’m always telling you to trust your nose.”
“Speaking of scent, that perfume you gave me … ” Iris widened her eyes.
“I noticed you are wearing it today. It is as special on you as I’d imagined.”
“I honestly didn’t believe you when you gave it to me. But you’re right, people are relating to me completely differently, especially men.”
“Men are very suggestible.”
“I have to thank you. I’ve had the most amazing couple weeks wearing it. It’s so good, I feel a bit guilty.”
“I don’t believe in guilty pleasure.”
“But is it…wrong somehow? Maybe manipulative? It’s like a superpower, I’m not sure I know how to wield it responsibly.”
“It is a perfume, not the atom bomb.”
“I wore it to work,” Iris said sheepishly.
“Why is your face?” Rapacine mimicked her wince.
“I wore the perfume the day my company was making a pitch to this big developer. And the developer loved my ideas, I won the bid. My boss was super happy. But my co-worker dinged me over it, he thought the developer just loved me .”
“Your co-worker is also a man?”
“Yes, Nate. We used to get along, but—”
“This Nate did not succumb and step aside for you simply because of the perfume?”
“No.”
“So whatever appeal you had that day did not make him abandon his self-interest. Do you think so little of men as to imagine they are so easily overcome by feminine wiles? If that were so, women would be in a much more powerful position than we are in this world.”
“That’s true.”
“And what is professional attire for you at the office? What kind of shoes?”
“Sometimes flats. But on pitch days, we dress up more, so I wore heels.”
“So a shoe that lifts your ass. And hair that looks shiny and touchable. And a face that is pleasing. ‘Professional’ for women is a combination of a mother, temptress, and nun, on top of your actual role. And if the balance of any one of those roles is off, according to someone else, you are blamed for it. You see, the game is already rigged against women, because men made all these rules. Just because you found a way to win doesn’t mean you are the one cheating. Was your idea the best?”
“Yes.”
“So don’t question it. You waste time wondering whether they recognized the idea’s merit or your physical appeal. So what? They could just as easily overlook your idea’s merit because of your physical appeal. You cannot make your body and mind exist à la carte . You are a package deal.”
Iris pondered the truth of what she was saying. “They have done studies that show taller men get promoted faster.”
“Of course! The things men admire in other men are always valued. The things men desire in women are used to undermine women so they retain the upper hand. Don’t fight back with one of yours tied behind your back.”
Hugo barked, making Iris jump up. But Hugo was only play-bowing before Chéri, who, despite his eyes wide as an owl’s and ears pinned, had his orange paw splat atop the dog’s head. Hugo’s tongue lolled with joy, relishing his submission.
“You see? Power is a game. Play well,” Rapacine said.
Iris sat back down. “But wait, you didn’t finish the story about the apartment. The new owners can’t just abdicate management because they want you gone. Dumping outside trash at your door is tenant harassment. Who is this new landlord?”
“No one, it is not a person, it’s a société écran.”
Iris searched her memory of high school French, but came up empty.
“Comment dit-on? Euhh…” Rapacine swirled her hands trying to conjure the word in English. “A company created to hide one’s identity.”
“A shell corporation.”
“ Oui. This shell of a person bought the building and also secured the air rights. So if they could get me out, they could tear the whole thing down and build something bigger that would make them gobs of money.”
Iris had heard of this kind of thing, landlords antagonizing residents in order to get them to break leases and move out. “I’ll ask my friend who’s a lawyer if he knows anything about this type of thing. Maybe you could sue them.”
Rapacine puffed her cheeks in horreur . “I don’t have the money to wage a legal battle against the likes of them. Non, if I am to get the better of them, it won’t be in a courtroom.”
“He takes some cases pro bono . What they’re doing might be criminal, you have rights.”
“Iris, you must listen to me carefully. You and I both are without family to protect us or to fall back on. And that’s all right, sometimes family is who one needs protecting from.
But it takes a certain tenacity. It takes strategy.
You can trust only yourself. And you must get what you need, by hook or by book! ”
“By hook or by crook .”
“That’s what I said!”
Iris pondered a moment. “Why don’t you make yourself a special perfume like mine to get the landlord to change his mind about letting you stay in the apartment?”
“I cannot make one like yours for myself.”
“Why not?”
“Because regardless of my skills as a nose, I cannot escape one fundamental human fact: We are nose-blind to our own natural scent. A parfum like yours, its transcendence lies in its perfect harmony with your personal scent. I calibrated it specifically to you. That alchemy of flesh and fragrance is what takes it to the next level. You are the final ingredient. I could make myself a stunningly beautiful perfume, but not one as transformative as yours.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could give you the gift you’ve given me.”
“I’ve lived longer than you, and I have learned the lessons of my senses. You still have a way to go.”