Base Notes, page 14
He gets Cordrey on the ground and zip-ties him, takes off all his clothes.
The side yard borders the wide green lawn of Maclean House, and soon Cordrey is sitting on the porch of that august institution trussed like a pig for butchery. Or, more accurately, like the victim of a less-than-artful sadist. Zip ties are for amateurs.
The Koozie is placed with some ceremony over a tender part of his anatomy. Pearson shines a flashlight and takes pictures. Lots of pictures. Enough to paper the entire campus as soon as they’re developed. Long before the end of the reunion.
In a perfect world, Pearson’s fantasy would of course include the more public part of this humiliation. Alas, the creation of such a crowd falls a little bit outside of my abilities. So this fantasy must remain intimate, our two players alone in the night. The scent of satisfaction only just beginning to blow in on the wind.
Warm malt, wet earth, crushed grass. Castoreum and goat’s hair, for those musky twentysomethings: masculine and sex-adjacent. This scent, I thought, Pearson could wear in public with pride.
Whether it would work in the manner intended was another issue entirely.
It should not have taken me quite so long to mix Pearson’s perfume. But I had a business to run, and doing so had become considerably more time-consuming of late. I found myself embroiled half the week in applying for hazmat approvals in order to send our first wholesaling order overseas. I had assumed the distributors would handle this, but unfortunately there was work on my end I hadn’t anticipated, and I didn’t catch it until late.
On the night I was finally ready to present my experiment to Pearson, the lab spat me out in a foul humor. All the i’s were dotted, all the t’s were crossed, and our shipment would be allowed on board its cargo flight, but that didn’t mean I was happy or relieved.
The finished perfume hung heavy in a tote bag on my shoulder, banging against my hip with every step. This was exactly why I would rather carry a folio, but I knew a fancy bottle would impart some confidence a plain brown sample vial wouldn’t. Even if it wouldn’t fit inside my preferred accessory.
At least I would get dinner out of this. I was supposed to meet him at one of those awful steak houses where they would keep bringing dripping slabs of overpriced meat until he told them to stop. A small compensation for my efforts, perhaps, since I was offering the perfume for free.
It was in Midtown, which at least made it easy to get to. And I was absolutely starving by the time I arrived. The scraps of takeout in my fridge had all gone bad, ignored in favor of a swift departure in the morning, a dollar steamed bun for lunch, and whatever junk food Barry and Leila left lying around in the break room. Luckily, I had lots of practice drinking hungry.
Pearson had a table in the center of the dining room, and I followed the maître d’ between dozens of Pearson look-alikes with white napkins tucked into their collars, juice dripping down their chins. Like automatons or clones, their eyes all followed me in sync: tracking an intruder, an odd person out. The room was thick with the scent of char and a greasy, protein smell that caught in the back of my throat and made saliva pool behind my teeth and under my tongue.
Unlike my lunch with Eisner, a place was already set for me. I hung my tote on the back of the chair, conscious of its ragged canvas straps, the scuffs that marred the weave. But I was wearing Sevilen, and let that act as my jacket and tie, my leather briefcase. The sticky spice of Turkish rose curled around my wrists and elbows, the hollow of my throat. Sweet peppercorns and sweat-salty cumin, it mixed well with the meat-stink. I could almost feel the brush of Jane’s bangs against my lips, the slip of cotton sheets, the soft ocean swell of Beau’s deep breaths, in and out.
At that moment, I would rather have been living in the memory evoked by my perfume. Until I thought about what such an accord would require.
Pearson half rose when I arrived, shook my hand. “Fowler! Have a seat. How have you been?”
“Busy,” I said, and laid my napkin across my lap. The waiter poured ice water into an ugly glass goblet and asked if we had gotten a chance to peruse the wine list.
I looked at Pearson, who already had a lowball of Scotch at his right hand, and relished the moment of struggle as his masculinity wrestled with his discomfort. Just before he broke and blurted the biggest, reddest bottle on the menu, I held up a hand and asked, “May I?”
The warm tide of embarrassment receded from his jowls and he smiled. “Well, you are the nose. I bow to your judgment.”
My home was single malts, but I could swim these waters well enough—anything so based in subtle scent and flavor was of interest to me. A preponderance of cabernet sauvignon occupied two-thirds of the page. I had little interest in those bottles and read until the silence between Pearson and the waiter grew strained.
Finally, I found it: deep in the syrah section. “We’ll have the Cornas,” I said, and the waiter blinked at me. I would not point, and so read him the domaine, the vintner, and the vintage, stopping just short of the price. They really should train waitstaff better in places like that—the clientele never knows its ass from a vin jaune.
When the bottle arrived, the waiter poured it out for Pearson first. He sipped, made a thoughtful face, and nodded. Pure theater, but everybody let the lie alone. The waiter filled our glasses—past the widest point of the bell—and disappeared.
“So,” said Pearson.
I ignored him and drank my wine. It was an old bottle—you wanted it to be, with these grapes—and had gone nicely dark and intricate in its cellar time. There was oak there, and fruit, but something strange also. Something from the earth.
Pearson cleared his throat.
“Gerald,” I said, sweetly condescending. “Let’s wait until after we eat. I wouldn’t want your first impression of the scent to be muddied by the wine or the meal.”
“Of course,” he said, chastened. “And I’m sure you don’t want to mix business with pleasure.”
Which just goes to show: he didn’t know me at all.
Pearson did most of the talking, which was fine. I lost myself in a pile of sirloin and emerged an hour later just as he was winding down and asking to see the list of cognacs.
“Don’t,” I said. “Not yet.”
Though he had the menu in hand, he waved our waiter away. When his gaze turned back to me it was expectant, predatory.
“Have some water,” I suggested. “Cleanse your palate.” This was bullshit: my version of the little act he’d pulled earlier with our wine. But he liked a show, did Pearson.
I took my own advice, if only because I was thirsty. And suddenly very nervous. The meal and the wine and the games had distracted me from the true purpose of my presence: to test Pearson’s fantasy perfume.
“I’m ready,” said Pearson, lacing his fingers in front of him. It looked less like a thoughtful gesture and more like he was trying not to snatch the bottle from my hands as I set it between us.
It was heavy leaded crystal—not the kind of thing we bottled Bright House in. I had a small collection of vintage atomizers and antique finds I liked to save for this sort of commission. Well cleaned, of course. There was no ghost of eau de violette or attar of roses to sully this special scent.
I only hoped it mattered. I only hoped it worked.
“Go ahead.” I pushed it forward and felt slight friction as it slid over the tablecloth.
He swallowed, and his swollen fingers resisted the first time he tried to pull them apart. Cirrhosis, I assume, had made his knuckles swell. The delicate bottle looked absurd in his puffy, hairy hands.
And yet, he didn’t seem to mind. A room full of peers to judge him, but he was laser focused. He pulled out the ground-glass stopper and lifted the neck to his nose.
“You have to put it on your skin,” I said, tapping the crook of my elbow, despite my long sleeves. “You want yourself to be in the fantasy, don’t you? The only thing it’s missing is your smell.”
He took out one of his cuff links and let it fall beside his butter knife. Princeton Tiger stripes. I wondered if he had picked them for the occasion. Without the clasp his cuff flapped open, dangerously close to the juices on his plate. He didn’t notice.
The perfume shone on his skin for a moment, until the alcohol began to evaporate from the edges, the liquid glimmer receding until it disappeared into the ether. He lifted his wrist to his nose, lips against his forearm, and inhaled.
I didn’t realize, until that moment, that I had held an old breath fast in my throat. Exhaling, I was suddenly desperate for air. As I gasped I caught a mouthful of the groiny stink of his perfume. It had a powerful sillage, and this close it was as if I were wearing it myself.
It did nothing for me, except strike the back of my soft palate like a leather glove. I closed my eyes, afraid to look at Pearson. Afraid to face my failure.
But, in the dark behind my eyelids, I heard him make a sound. And so I looked, after all.
His eyes were shut, mouth hanging open, hands slack on the edge of the table. I could hear him breathing, too fast and too hard, and as I watched a smile began to bloom across his face like mold.
I took another breath, less desperate. I savored the rank smell this time, its layers softening into sweat and sex, damp earth and dew.
“Well?” I asked, and he held up one hand, palm out. I bit back any further questions; I didn’t need to ask them. It had worked.
As I watched his face flush, jowls reddening past his collar, I noticed flecks of hair on the white cotton, stuck in the pores of his nose. On further reflection, he did look freshly shorn, though somewhat shoddily. I wasn’t an expert, but something about the lines of it seemed . . . raw. Giovanni would have given this cut a sidewise glance and known within five seconds how it had been accomplished and how he could accomplish it better. Pearson, I suspected, was obscurely uncomfortable with his hair, self-conscious of its thinning. But he lacked the confidence to confront his barber, because he also lacked any insight into what was wrong. It was the wine all over again, except that in the barber’s chair he had no one to correct his course as I had done.
So after Pearson wiped the sweat from his brow and—discreetly—the tears from his eyes, I smiled and said, “Did you get a haircut today?”
If I managed what I was setting out to do, he would never get another.
At home, I stepped into the vestibule to find a pile of mail. Rather say, I stepped onto the pile of mail in the vestibule. It slid under my shoes, unstable, and I nearly fell. As I sorted through it, Iolanda appeared in her doorway holding a dish towel and a cigarette.
“Hey, Vicky,” she said.
“Good evening, Iolanda.” I flipped through the envelopes. A lot of junk for people who’d been gone for months or years. Bills and flyers for the upstairs neighbors.
She tched and flicked the dish towel at me. “There you go. Always so polite. I knew you couldn’t be up to anything.”
The envelopes in my hands developed a curious rubbery texture. It took me a moment to realize the blood had drained from my hands. “What makes you say that?”
“This guy came around today. Second time! First time I didn’t tell you, ’cause I didn’t want you to worry. He said he’s some kind of PI. Looked more like collections. Or a meter guy. Old, white, kinda fat. Ugly jacket. He’s no Magnum, that’s for sure.”
I shrugged, like I had no idea. Inside, acid burned my esophagus. I swallowed hard, and the scent of sofrito and onions from Iolanda’s apartment stuck at the back of my throat. I felt queasy.
“What’s a PI want with you? You murder somebody and hide them in my basement?”
I made myself smile at her, indulgent. “New credit card offers here for you. You want them?”
“I told him you’re not here that often. I told him not to come back.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, my shriveled heart giving a painful palpitation of gratitude. Iolanda didn’t know what I got up to in her basement, but she didn’t like anybody poking into her business and, by extension, that of her tenants. “I’d have talked with him.” Not that I’d have said anything of consequence.
She tched again. “Nobody pays me for gossip. Why should anybody pay him?”
“Thanks anyway,” I said.
She waved away my thanks, scattering cigarette ash.
“Got any laundry for me tonight?” The second- and third-floor tenants were barred from the in-building laundry because Iolanda didn’t want anyone breaking their neck or setting the place on fire, letting the city know she was illegally subletting to a ragged assortment of drug dealers and Columbia students. I was a spry young thing and an unimpeachable tenant, with many reasons to keep Iolanda happily on the ground floor. I did her washing whenever her basket was full, to save her bad hip and my own privacy.
“Not yet,” she said. “Come back in a couple of days. I got a date and I’m going to change the sheets.” Cackling, she disappeared into her apartment. I heard a TV laugh track through the briefly opened door.
One deep and steadying breath later—faint asafoetida from the gas ducts, airborne paint dust, Iolanda’s dinner on the stove—I returned to sorting through the mail. Nothing had come for me. I set the rest of the flyers and solicitations on the wobbly table by the door and descended. In the mildewed dark, I put my palms over my face and squeegeed down until my fingertips rested on my jaw and I felt cool air on the wet membranes below my eyes.
Fuck.
I wondered if Miles was onto my scent or only after what I might pay out as a lead. I didn’t like my odds; I had only escaped discovery this long because no one had ever looked my way. Well, someone was looking now. And Eisner’s commission meant three consecutive killings, of people clearly in cahoots. If Miles wasn’t already suspicious, he was bound to become so. And if he uncovered anything alarming, I didn’t trust him to keep it to himself.
But if I didn’t complete the commission, I’d end up in prison anyhow. A conundrum that might have been entertaining if it had someone else in its clutches.
Pouring a double, I emptied the bottle of Longrow at last and sat staring at the cinder blocks of my wall as though attempting some obscure form of augury. No omens manifested, and I fell asleep still holding my glass, a precarious crystal tulip cupped in my sweaty palm.
Jane couldn’t get away from school or work for a week, and then she told me she wanted to spend time with Beau. I wasn’t jealous. Just impatient. I wanted to tell her the idea had worked. I wanted her to share in my success. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to see her, to fuck her, to smell her scent again . . .
All right, I was a little jealous. But I had my own work to do. Besides, she lived in Crown Heights and I was in Harlem. That was almost as bad as being bicoastal.
When she finally made the trek up, I changed the sheets, cleaned the apartment as rigorously as I had ever done the lab, and bought good vermouth and a bottle of reasonable gin. I couldn’t really afford it, but I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down about the drinks again. Into the air I sprayed a little bit of Sevilen, as much for me as for her. I had come to think of it as the scent that meant our skins were touching. Now when I wore it, it conjured a phantom olfactory impression of hay to mingle with the spices. A memory of her messy hair. The blue shadows underneath her eyes.
She arrived with a grease-spotted bag that smelled of old butter and yeast. “I was studying in this bakery and they were getting rid of day-old stuff. Croissant?”
I took one. “Martini?”
“Please.”
She drank the first half of it professionally, lifting the precise point of her chin as she tipped her head back. The foot of the glass made a tiny noise on the tabletop when she set it down: a soft, decisive snap. For a moment she was still and silent, watching flakes of ice float on the surface of the gin, the slow roll of the lemon twist. Her tongue traced her full lower lip, followed by her teeth. The pink skin there blushed pinker, after.
“Is it time?” she asked, talking to her martini and not to me.
There was something marvelous in the way she said it: the silhouette of a suspension bridge over a chasm of doubt and exhaustion. It should not hold, it should not hold, and yet . . .
I put my drink aside and reached out to her. I surprised myself—I have never been well versed in tenderness—but her bravery moved me. How tired she must be, how at wit’s end, to commit to what I asked of her.
One sympathized. Had I not committed to it many times over? And the first time not even out of financial need, or artistic curiosity, but out of spite. Or . . . not exactly. That paints me rather poorly. Out of a different kind of need: a need that Jonathan had no desire to fulfill. The sort of thing it was impossible to explain, which nonetheless felt right, felt like the only thing one could do. A decision that another person would understand only if you could put them in your shoes.
If I could share that moment with her, would it make this easier? Or when the last of the base notes evaporated from her skin would she look at me in horror, uncomprehending?
“Almost,” I said, and held her hands in mine. “Not quite.”
She let out a breath, and I felt the air move across my knuckles.
“I’m sorry if I had you worried,” I said. Only then did it occur to me my frequent texts, my eagerness, might have seemed to her like something more sinister. It made my gut feel heavy, a strange sensation. I had forgotten the symptoms of shame.
I gave her one hand back to drink with but kept the other one in mine, making small circles on the back of it with my thumb. Purple bloomed at the base of her fingernails. She was cold.
“I’m always worried,” she said. “How we’re going to pay rent, how I’m going to pass my finals, what if I get sick and miss work. I’m used to it.”
I kissed her purple fingers. “You shouldn’t have to be.”
Her laughter was tattered, ragged at the edges. I smelled coffee on her breath. “See, when you say that, I believe you.”
