Base Notes, page 2
Bright House was floundering. I had hoped we would do better in Europe, before Eisner crushed that dream. The last several years had been a slog. I was exhausted from trying to balance unbalanceable books and, when I stopped to consider it, quite bored. Perhaps even lonely. I missed having someone to snarl at who would snarl back—none of my employees dared, and I dared not snarl at my clients. I wanted a whetstone for my edge. I wanted to get laid, at least. And I wanted to pursue my art outside business or commissions.
All in all, a sorry state of affairs upon which I preferred not to dwell. The Scotch helped a little, but I had something stronger stored away. Several somethings.
In my refrigerator was a battered pink leather jewelry box with a tarnished clasp: a flea market find when I was first stumbling through the world of perfume and needed somewhere dark to keep my new obsession safe.
Then, I had stored samples in the tiny earring brackets in the top shelf. The bottom had been given over to the few full-size bottles worth my money and my time. The box had sat on my dresser in London during my study-abroad semester. It had steadily filled after I dropped out of college to pursue my certificate in perfumery arts. And it came with me to New York when I landed a product dev assistant job at the only place I had bothered to apply: Bright House.
I had gotten the job on the strength of several sterling faculty references. The references in turn I had wrangled by means of flirtation, blackmail, natural precocity, and filthy sexual favors, though not necessarily related to one another or in any particular order. I sometimes wonder if it was whispered word of mouth, and not the written letters, that really recommended me to Bright.
Now that I was more serious about my craft, the jewelry box was crammed full of sample-size atomizers. I kept them as close to inert as I could, at morgue temperature in my mini fridge. Beneath them, on the shelves proper: larger glass bottles labeled with letters and numbers. Absolutes, left over from previous projects.
I set the jewelry box on the small square of counter space and popped it open. Thoughtfully touching the top of each small atomizer, I finally selected one. Applying expert pressure to the atomizer’s top, I sent a cool mist across my throat.
A sudden suffusion of coffee, leather, cigarettes, brine.
The AeroPress drip-drying by the sink was ruthlessly clean, as was everything in Jonathan’s apartment, but the plastic had been impregnated with arabica and its scent could not be scrubbed away. Somebody in the building was smoking, and the HVAC system carried it to us. Leather for his shoes and mine, set side by side, flush with the wall. His were much nicer, by a margin of several thousand dollars. The brine was for our sweat. Cèpes might have been more appropriate, or musk, but I had needed something clean to balance the unwashed base of this perfume. My Jonathan perfumes were all like that: elegant at the top, voluptuous in the middle, cruel and filthy at their core.
It was warm, in the memory. Hot, even. I had mostly chosen it for the temperature, the play of sun on my bare skin. There were other lovers or memories I might have revisited. I hadn’t been a saint outside of my commissions, when I still had time to pursue independent projects. As an artisan and a professional, I needed to experiment in order to refine my technique. As an aesthete, I sometimes met moments, scents, and personalities I wanted to preserve at the expense of the other people who had experienced or produced them.
But besides the sunlight, I needed a reminder of where I’d come from and how far I’d clawed. I wanted to remember my ruthless mentor, and my own ruthlessness in getting ahead of him. I wanted to feel, for just a moment, that there was someone in the world I understood.
When I say “revisit,” I do not mean “remember.” I mean I was there, sweat prickling on my naked skin. I could see Jonathan at the counter, drinking his coffee, checking his phone. He needed a shave. The raw skin across my jaw was marked by the bristles on his.
I did not move, because I hadn’t then. I lay across his bed, on his memory foam mattress and creamy Swiss-made sheets, chin resting on my bare arms. Looking down from the loft, I traced the patterns of marble in the countertop, the whorls of coarse, dark hair against his scalp. I took a deep breath of all the faint and mingled smells of the moment, let it out in a sigh.
Jonathan looked up. “What?” he asked, and I could hear his voice: its uneasy timbre, artificially low and edging toward nasal, always teetering on the edge of a juvenile crack. His voice, like everything about him, was pretending to be something it was not. I admired his constant performance, because in large part he succeeded. I learned this skill from him carefully, through stealthy observation. Much like I learned the art of perfumery. Since his passing, I have made discoveries and innovations in both arenas. Including this discovery, one of my most intriguing.
Scent is the strongest link to our memories. What I do just makes a deeper connection. Brain chemistry or black magic—it’s unclear. People pay a lot of money for it, though.
To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only person who knows how to do what I do. Jonathan certainly didn’t teach me, except through his unwilling participation in my first experiments. Perhaps it was something he had dreamed of, in concept. In execution—as it were—the product was all mine. Except, of course, for the components that went into it.
Then again, he was a secretive bastard, and I don’t exactly shout about my talents from the rooftops. There could be other perfumers offering the same services, but I have as little idea of them as I hope they do of me.
The memory began to swim, growing indistinct as the brighter elements of brine evaporated. The leather and coffee would linger through the last of my Scotch. If I didn’t shower, I would go to bed with Jonathan’s ghost beside me and wake in sheets that smelled like he had stayed the night and slipped away before I woke.
I finished my whisky and went to the windowless bathroom, turning the water on so hot the whole apartment filled with steam. When I came out my skin was pink and I only smelled like soap. Castille, unscented.
My assistant, Barry, found me doing inventory in the lab at half past nine. I had not slept well—unsurprising, given my straits—and was grateful that there were no mirrors in the cold, white space save the shining surface of stainless steel. The walls were unadorned, scrubbed clean. The freshly mopped linoleum floor squeaked beneath my shoes. I had cleaned the drain out with a brush myself, last night, and snaked it not so long ago. The whole place smelled of alcohol and little else.
“You’re late,” I said, weighing a bottle of benzaldehyde in one hand.
“No,” said Barry, ignoring me and checking the arrangement of his free-form locs with his phone camera. “I was on time for staff meeting. You know, upstairs? In the office? And I brought doughnuts.”
I set the bottle back on the shelf and kept myself from cursing. “Anything interesting?”
“Binh’s quitting. She got offered a job at Lanvin.”
“They’re welcome to her.” One less person on payroll. And knowing the big names wanted to poach my employees gave me a modicum of satisfaction. We were good at what we did. We just couldn’t make any damn money.
“Okay, we’ll see how you feel when my sponsorships start coming through and I drop your raggedy ass.” Barry was gaining some notoriety as a perfume YouTuber. I had watched a few of his videos, and they were good. I would rather have died than admit this to him.
“I wish you only the best,” I said.
“You look tired,” he said, with false concern. “Have you been moisturizing?”
“Barry.” I used That Tone.
He held up his hands, elegantly uncurling his fingers like the tops of ferns. “Right, right. Don’t be such an auntie. You got it all under control.” Though he weighed approximately ninety-five pounds when he’d been fasting, Barry could pack twice his weight in sarcasm.
“Joseph Eisner left a message on the office phone last night,” he added. “Kind of late.”
“About eleven o’clock?” I asked, adding enough time to the end of the concert for a cab ride and a drink. I wondered if he’d kept the boy around after that, only because I couldn’t quite picture Eisner making a business call en déshabillé.
Barry raised an eyebrow that asked What were you up to? but gave me a nod nonetheless.
“What did he want?”
A shrug. “He said it was ‘such a pleasure’ to run into you. Like, used-car-salesman status. I had to run home and jump in the shower after I listened, it was that skeevy.”
“Not catty?”
At this, a vigorous shake of the head, despite his earlier preening. “No. Slick as hell. Like silicone lube.”
“Thank you, Barry.” I snatched my phone and folio—the former in imminent need of repair or replacement, the latter a lucky thrift store find. “Did he ask for a callback?”
“‘Whenever it’s convenient,’ he said.”
Change of heart? Jerk on the chain? Who could say? I’d let him stew for a while. If he called me again, I’d know who had the power.
“Any other calls?” I asked, heading for the stairs. “And is there still coffee in the break room?”
“Yes. Also, Clairfield & Amos.” The European wholesale company. “They want to know when you can commit.”
“How much longer can we stall?”
“They need numbers next week.”
“Fuck.” I knew exactly what I’d sell them, but I didn’t have the staff or the raw materials to make it happen. Or the cash to acquire them. And no sane bank would lend me money. I was going to have to call Eisner. Eventually.
But not today. I wouldn’t fawn or beg. Maybe that made me stupid. But when you haven’t got a lot, you hang on to your pride with teeth and nails.
“Are we good to do it?” Barry asked. “I mean I know we’re not, but . . . are we going to be?”
“Of course,” I said. Lying came easily to me. Less easy would be turning this into the truth.
I had a haircut scheduled that evening after work. My mood brightened considerably once I stepped out of the lab, though my hands were raw at the knuckles from cleaning beakers, my skin cracked by high-proof spirits. I didn’t mind that so much as the persistent crick in my neck, remnant of long phone calls, or the whisper of tendinitis in my forearms. I thought longingly of the secretary I had let go last year and wondered if an unpaid intern might be worth the trouble.
I always looked forward to haircuts, as they were luxurious but cost me very little. Giovanni Metzger had been carrying Bright House colognes since I first took the reins. I respected his work, so I gave him wholesale prices on small orders that ought to have gone for retail. He responded in kind. My cuts had been steeply discounted for the last several years.
Even if they had cost more, I would have tightened my belt. Very few things in my life have made me feel as much myself as a haircut from Giovanni, and these days I miss his ministrations sorely.
He ran a minuscule shop of exceeding quality: a white-tiled Italian barbiere steeped in the scents of Proraso and Barbicide. The front desk was staffed by a rotating cast of smudgy-eyed burlesque performers, sexier somehow for their sleepiness, still smelling of sweat and powder. The man himself was small and ruthlessly neat, with wavy hair parted in the middle and an ambiguous olive complexion. I had never seen him without a scrupulously groomed mustache.
There were three chairs: two manned by barbers who satisfied Giovanni’s stringent standards and one by Giovanni himself. His dream, he once confessed to me, was to find a third barber, install an espresso machine, and act solely as host to his customers. A tonsorial maître d’. I hoped in this eventuality he’d still consent to cut my hair, but I didn’t waste time worrying. Rents kept going up, and I doubted his profits kept pace.
“Vic,” he said, in an affable monotone. Quick eye contact, and then back to the comb and scissors. His hands never stopped moving while he was at work. No hair clung to his immaculate white coat that I had ever seen, nor to the three-piece suit beneath it. Giovanni didn’t cut corners. Not on his personal appearance, nor his commitments, nor his vocation. It made him an excellent barber, though ill-suited to life in late capitalism.
One sympathized.
I settled onto the bench to wait, under the smoky gaze of some Slipper Room siren who looked like she’d rather be in bed. A chorus of jackhammers on Christopher Street crescendoed, ebbed, then grew again. I thought of last night’s Dvořák and felt angry acid at the back of my throat.
Money. What a hindrance to our arts.
The Indochino ad who had been shorn before me paid and tipped and left, trailing a wake of Old Spice Swagger that almost made me gag. Giovanni swept briskly around his chair and then stepped forward to shake my hand. His morning aftershave had faded, but a pleasing hint of citrus and vetiver still hung in the air around him. Not one of mine, but I wasn’t so vain as to begrudge him that.
“Have a seat,” he said. “Same as last time?”
“Same as always. Thank you.”
Giovanni didn’t talk as he worked, unless his client talked first. Normally, this suited my desires. But today I had a vat of bile at a rolling boil behind my ribs, and as he ran a comb through my hair, I sighed and said, “I’m at the end of my fucking rope. And I’m not even the one who should be strangling.” Then, embarrassed, I added, “How’s business for you?”
I felt the comb pause at the nape of my neck, and that stillness froze the boiling acid in my gut to ice.
Giovanni’s hands were never still.
“Ups and downs,” he said, and resumed his work.
“Mm.” More down than up, if I had to bet. “If you start charging me full price, I’ll have to go back to Astor Place.”
It won me a brief bout of laughter: a single “ha,” mostly through the nose. He did have a sense of humor, if one knew where to dig for it.
“Really,” I said. “That cattle chute of clippers is all I can afford, and I’d much rather come here.”
He snipped and snipped, swept his hands through my hair, snipped again. The rhythm didn’t falter, even when he said, “My lease is up for renewal.”
“How much this time?”
He didn’t answer. I lifted my eyes in time to catch his reflection shake its head. Refusal to name a figure? Or maybe just despair.
“The Village pricing you out?” I asked. “Welcome to the club.” Bright House had kept a storefront on MacDougal for a year but had to fill that particular money pit before the whole enterprise slid in.
“I’ve been looking around for a cheaper space, but I’ll lose a lot of clients if I move uptown or out to Queens or wherever.” A shrug in the mirror. “Head down.” He gently pushed against my skull. “There are a lot of good shops where I could get a chair, if it came to it.”
After a few thoughtful snips, he said, “This place would have been operating in the black in the first two years if they hadn’t raised the rent on me every time the lease was up. I’d be in a bigger spot now, and I’d be up front. I’d be fucking franchising.” His hands whisked around my head, sorting which pieces of my hair to snip. “Oh well.”
The rest of the cut proceeded silently. My fury had at this point bubbled over and left me empty and smoking, acrid with upset. After Giovanni brushed stray hairs from my neck and swept the smock away, I tried to hand him twice my usual tip. He refused.
“Fine,” I said. “But at least let me buy you a drink.”
2
Notes de Tête: Lime Juice, Burnt Orange
Notes de Cœur: Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro
Notes de Fond: Stale Urine, Cold Concrete, Spilled Snapple
The cocktails at the bar he picked were more expensive than the tip I’d tried to leave, but the bartender on the happy hour shift clearly recognized Giovanni and greeted him with a smile that said we wouldn’t be paying full price.
“Jane.” Giovanni leaned across the bar to kiss her cheek. “How’s it going?”
It was strange to see him out of his white coat. Stranger still to hear him say four words together without prompting.
“It’s going,” said Jane. “You know.”
“Don’t I. This is Vic. Old friend. Works in perfume.”
Even stranger than the coat and small talk was hearing him call me a friend. He seemed to realize it, and smiled at me sheepishly.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Giovanni out of his element. I held my counsel on the matter and offered my hand to Jane. Her fingers were slightly sticky, and when I pulled mine back, they were sticky too, and smelled of lime.
“Nice to meet you,” said Jane. “What are you drinking?”
Giovanni wiped a hand across his face, smearing on a smile. “Corpse reviver.”
“Dealer’s choice,” I said. “But don’t go out of your way.”
“I usually don’t.” We eyed each other, neither willing to back down. Finally she said, “But you’re a friend of Giovanni’s, I guess. So what do you like?”
“Spirit forward,” I said. “Bitter. Dark.”
“I got you. Hang on.”
Two glasses on the bar, two beakers beside them. The clatter of ice and the ring of a spoon on crystal. As she worked, her brows drew together in a frown. She was pretty, pale and freckled, but the fragile bluish skin beneath her eyes told me she was tired. And the smell of old sweat and dried sugar on her work clothes—she had not washed them in a while. No time, maybe. No days off. No spares to wear on shift while these were at the drop-off laundry.
There was an elegance and concentration to her movements, despite her exhaustion; she could have done this in her sleep, and done it well. I wondered how long she had been behind the bar, and whether she had learned her grace that way or in some other pursuit.
“How do you two know each other?” I asked.
“Jane used to be the assistant to the guy who framed all the art in the shop.”
