Published in Tincture Journal, Issue 8.
It’s like lingerie, Max always says. You don’t find something that makes you feel a million dollars at Kmart. You want real silk, a garment fitted perfectly to your body, something that feels cool and sensual against your skin. Choosing a fragrance is the same, she says. You should be treated well; you should feel like this thing, this piece of art, has been made just for you. These perfumes, all bottled up in brown glass, winking quietly from the shelves, they should make you feel like the best part of yourself.
I tell people this when they drop in to look at all the pretty little bottles, wistful smiles on their faces. All these fragrances, I tell them, they’re all made by Max herself, just in the next room. She sits there at a big mahogany table, surrounded by beakers and droppers and canisters of natural essences, her skinny brown shoulders hunched over. She hates the idea of working in a lab. “How can I create something beautiful when I’m surrounded by stainless steel and lab coats?” she says. So she fills the shop with sumptuous silks and vintage furniture, her own slightly mad idea of an ancient French distillery, but with a dash of 1930s art deco and a bit of the Orient thrown in. There’s a zebra print on the wall, a bespoke crystal chandelier dangling from the ceiling, and everything about it is Max.
Mostly I’m here to smile prettily and update the website and package up orders to be shipped. I sit at the counter drinking tea from a Japanese teacup, or sometimes I’ll walk around and dust the shelves. This afternoon has been quiet. The sky has been funereal all day, leaking with late-Autumn gloom; it’s not the sort of day for window-shopping. Afternoons like this, Max has me studying from her library of reference materials, learning to be more useful, scouring through encyclopaedias of perfumery and how-to guides for identifying different scents. You have to know this stuff, she says. Scent is something intimate, something that’s on your skin when you’ve got nothing else there, that you share with your lover. So you need to get to know the customer, figure out what they really want when they’re not sure themselves.
It’s Thursday night. Outside it’s starting to get dark, the threat of winter whispering in the 5pm air. I lock the front door with a satisfying click and wander back to my seat behind the counter, where I slump forwards and rest my head in my arms. Grenouille is slinking around on the counter, purring languorously. He brushes his body against my face and I breathe in the smoky scent of his fur. I grab hold of him and pull him in close to my chest.
“Beautiful boy,” I whisper into his fur. I get up and pace around, cradling the cat against me like a baby, feeling his breathing against my ribs, until he wriggles in my arms and I let him leap weightlessly to the floor. I brush the wisps of charcoal hair from my dress.
To start with, when you’re helping someone choose a fragrance, you might say, “What’s your favourite scented flower?” You might offer them a few scents to smell, then watch for the visual tells – if their eyes close, if their head tilts back. Then you can start to figure them out, show them something they didn’t know they were looking for. If they like sweet scents, then something like cherry and vanilla almonds could be a good place to start. Or you could take them somewhere different; try a hint of clove spice, or a light rush of lemon iced tea.
Sometimes I still think about Josh, and I think about what scent I would have picked out for him if I’d known this stuff back then. I know I’m not supposed to dwell on thoughts like that, that if I find my mind wandering through that door I should steer it back kindly, one arm around its shoulder like it’s a crumbly old lady I’ve been charged with protecting. But I think of Josh, and I think of his long, warm body. The delicate outlines of his ribs, his espresso eyes. I think I’d pick a woody, cedary fragrance, one that opens with a fresh chord and warms into dry, spicy pepper. I think of Josh, and I can feel the scratch of his unshaven cheek on my skin, his rough fingernails on my back. I can feel his heart beating through his shirt, and I hate him, I really do.
My phone chimes and I feel my insides shrivel up a little; I know it’s Steve, of course it’s Steve. He’s so sorry, he says, he wanted to come and pick me up from my place but he’s going to be caught up at work for a while, so can I just meet him outside the Arts Centre at 8? The tickets are under his name.
I sit down and Grenouille rubs against my legs, mewing up at me. I slip one stockinged foot out of its court shoe and stroke his undulating back, aching for his happy growling. I tap my nails against the desk. There’s really no way out of this now. I’ve left it too late to cancel with any credibility, and I’ve run out of excuses with Steve anyway. He’s taking me to the ballet tonight. The ballet, of all things. I don’t know when it became cool to pretend to like that kind of stuff, but it’s just like him, jumping at the chance to go to the opera or the symphony or whatever like we’re in Gossip Girl or something.
The ballet though, I guess it’s kind of my fault, all because I told him once that I used to dance back in high school. Like, a million years ago. I quit by the time I was sixteen, when I decided I’d be an artist instead. I swapped crossovers and legwarmers for shirtsleeves covered in charcoal, The Nutcracker for Nevermind on an endless loop on my CD player. Basically, it’s not even something I think about anymore. It’s all just a blush-coloured blur, but in a moment of sleepy vulnerability one night, too many glasses of champagne making me loll my head against his shoulder, I found myself thinking about pliés and arabesques and pas de chats. So I told him about the pain of crushing your toes into pointe shoes, the way Miss Katja would pinch the layer of flesh on our bellies and ask us what we’d been eating, the way it sometimes felt like every muscle and fibre in my body was screeching out in individual despair. The sound of Tchaikovsky can kind of drive you insane.
I told him all that, but I guess he heard some kind of nostalgia in my voice. Maybe I made it sound like a Degas painting – lithe girls stretching at the barre, frothy skirts hanging low on their hips. I should have known he’d just hear the word ballet and file it away, cataloguing it under Potential Date Ideas. What he doesn’t get is it was never about liking ballet, about feeling some kind of oneness with the music, feeling something magical when I moved. It was just about being the best, about working hard to be the skinniest, the strongest, to move like I was the most weightless. That’s all it was, until one day I just stopped caring.
Anyway. It’s not like I love perfume either, not the way Max does. I don’t feel beautiful butterflies in my belly when I think of an amazing scent; it doesn’t conjure rainforests and wildflowers in my mind. But maybe it could. Maybe this really could be my thing.
There has to be something else on tonight, something I’ve forgotten about. I log on to Facebook and click on Events. There is an exhibition opening that I’d said I might attend, without actually having any intention of it. 6 to 9 at some artist-run gallery in Flinders Lane. Not enough to skip the ballet for, but maybe I should stop by first anyway, get a bit drunk before I go meet Steve. I hardly know the girl who invited me, an RMIT silversmithing student with wide-set, rabbit-like eyes and a habit of saying, “I know, right?” But she’s nice enough, and her jewellery and flatware and objets d’art are quite pretty, if you’re into that sort of thing. Besides, the guest list is peppered with people I used to know, people I should maybe try to make an effort with. You need to reach out, Max always says. You can’t be disappointed with people when you don’t make it clear what you need.
It’s just past 5.30 now; I could go straight out from here. I’m already in a black shift dress. The girls will all be wearing black shift dresses. They will all be ruby-lipped and dark haired, throaty from their cigarettes. Maybe if I get tipsy enough I’ll be nice and mellow by the time I see Steve, and I can just sit and nod along without caring too much about how annoying he is.
My heels sound like a metronome on the hardwood floor as I walk into the next room. Max is hunched over the table, surrounded by black tin canisters and plastic packets, scribbling in a notebook.
“Max,” I say. “Can I use your makeup?”
She looks up, grins at me.
“Hot date?” she says, leaning back and stretching her long, thin arms over her head. I shake my head and slouch down into the seat next to her.
“Incredibly boring date,” I say.
“Steve again?”
I nod and roll my eyes.
“Say you’re sick then,” she says. I drop my head against her shoulder and she strokes my hair, twirling the pale lengths in her fingers. “Stay and have dinner with us. John’s making some kind of delicious noodle thing.”
It’s tempting. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of her skin, her signature oriental resin blend of spiced oranges, incense and earthy woods. If I stayed, I could take off my heels and wash off my makeup, and we would sit and eat at their glassed-topped dining table, the news on low in the background. Max always lights candles for dinner; I can smell the vanilla musk, blended with the scent of red wine. Then maybe we’d watch a movie, John and Max curled up on the couch, me with a big cushion on the floor, Grenouille purring and muttering in my lap. I sigh and sit up straight, stretching out my spine.
“No, I’ve cancelled too many times,” I say. “I’d better just go. We’re going to the ballet.”
Max shrugs, gives an impish smile.
“Well, it won’t be that bad, will it,” she says. She tilts her head towards the stairs. “Go on, make yourself beautiful. Use whatever you want.”
It was almost a year ago now that I met Max and she decided I would be her protégé. We met through my mum, of all people. Not long after Josh, my parents had a big party for their 30th wedding anniversary. I was back living with them, and I guess they had told everyone how much I was floundering, how I spent my days limp under my doona watching Nirvana documentaries, how I couldn’t get myself together to find a job or figure out what to wear. But that night for the party I had somehow shoved myself into a crinkly gold dress and dragged myself down the stairs. I was getting quietly drunk on Veuve Clicquot, bedraggled next to my beautiful, tall sister, but I smiled sweetly like a respectable daughter, assuring everyone that I was doing fine, really well actually, that I’d just been a little set back by a breakup, but I’d sort out what to do with myself soon. I drank and drank, and I did my best to ignore the nest of vipers thrashing in my head.
And then there was Max. A strange, exotic creature, with the liquid grace of the very thin. She was effortlessly cool, draped in dark blue silk, her copper-coloured limbs encircled with gold. Her hair was shaved close to her scalp; she had one of those faces that was peculiar and beautiful enough to pull it off, to make you wonder why anyone would ever want to grow their hair long. She and my mum had been colleagues in another lifetime, before she turned 30 and decided to throw it all to the wind and make her perfumes instead. I try to picture her now as a lawyer, in an office, in a Prada skirt suit. She wrote her resignation letter on the night of her 30th birthday, drunk on fancy tequila and her own recklessness.
She smiled at me, and there was something in her dark eyes that just felt different to the way anyone else in that room had looked at me. Curiosity, I guess it was, instead of pity.
“You must be Faith,” she said, taking my hand, and without warning I felt the hot threat of tears pooling in my eyes. Max put down her drink and led me over to a quiet corner.
“So,” she said, giving me a small pearly smile. “Tell me about it.”
So I told her about Josh, about Sarah, about all of it. I told her how I’d wake up exhausted, how it felt like there was something tightening around my ribcage, getting tighter every time I exhaled, how I felt nauseated all the time and I didn’t know if it would ever stop. She let me talk and talk, her chin resting on her fist.
“Okay,” she said, passing me a napkin to wipe my eyes. “Okay. Well, let’s see what we can do about some of this.”
And within a few weeks I had this job in her shop and a room to rent in an okay sharehouse and a semi grown-up haircut. I was still a weepy maniac, but I looked a bit more human, and after a few more months like that – days at the beautiful little shop, drinking tea and furiously studying under Max’s bossy instructions, nights upstairs with Max and John, laughing and sobbing over a bottle of pinot noir – I almost started to feel like it as well.
Grenouille follows me up the stairs to Max and John’s apartment, curling against my heels. John’s already up there, chopping up his spring onions. I like John. I like his deep jazz club scent, a smoky floral that lingers with cloves and Turkish rose. I like his salt-and-pepper hair, the way he doesn’t seem to mind too much that I’m always hanging around. Something about him always makes me imagine him as Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, dancing around with a broom and singing Chim Chim Cher-ee.
“Staying for dinner again Faith?” John asks. “I’m making noodles.”
“No, I’m just borrowing a few things from Max,” I say. He blows me a kiss and I smile.
Max keeps her cosmetics in gleaming jars, all lined up on the vanity like a shop display. I squeeze a few drops of rosehip oil onto my fingertips and rub it slowly into my face. I want to look witchy, I think, complicated. I pick out some smoky, moody colours and I darken my eyebrows, darken my lashes, darken my lips. I soothe the ends of my hair with sweet almond oil, spray some dry shampoo into the roots and twist it back into a loose ponytail at the nape of my neck. From my handbag, I pull out a bottle of my special scent, the one Max made up for me. It’s delicious, a zesty blend of amber, resin and sandalwood. “Doesn’t it just sparkle?” Max said. “Can you feel how uplifting it is?” I spray it onto my throat, my wrists, lightly through my hair. I want so much for it to be who I am.
I need an excuse for later, for when Steve asks me back to stay at his place after the ballet. “I have a headache,” I practice saying with a wince. “I’m just really tired.” Last time, I said I had my period, and he acted all wounded that I was suggesting he just wanted to sleep with me. He said I should come and stay the night anyway, that we could just cuddle. I couldn’t think of any way out of it so I spent the whole night lying awake, curled away from him in his crisp white sheets, his arms heavy around my rigid body. “I promised I’d be home in the morning to feed my housemate’s dog,” I say to the mirror, lifting my arms up like into fifth position and stretching my back tall. “The place is such a mess, I couldn’t let you come in and see it. Next time, I promise.”
Max’s wardrobe doors are slightly ajar behind me. I can’t help myself; I reach in and run my hands over the cool silks, all opulent colours like garnet and topaz and turquoise. For a second I imagine myself as slim and sleek as her, a ream of black crepe de chine slung over one shoulder. I pull a long chiffon scarf from a hook and wrap it around my neck. As I twirl around, it floats like a ghost in the air behind me.
It’s cold, and the gallery is further down Flinders Lane than I really expected. My heels slip a little on the cobbled street. Inside, though, it’s hot and loud. A waiter offers me a glass of champagne from a tray and I take it gratefully, looking around the cramped room. I see Ellen, the rabbit-eyed silversmith. I try to catch her eye and give her a wave, but I don’t think she sees or recognises me. She’s busy, anyway, surrounded by a group of people all in black. I drink my champagne and check my reflection again in my compact mirror.
Someone brushes past me. It’s Gemma, looking slinky and prowly in her black silk shift, her GHD-straight hair glinting in the light. I touch her arm.
“Gemma, hi.”
“Oh my God, Faith!” she says. She kisses me on both cheeks, the long strings of pearls around her neck rattling together as she moves. We exchange it’s-so-great-to-see-yous and oh-my-God-I-love-your-dresses and we both laugh for no reason. There’s an awkward, smiley silence.
“So what have you been doing?” she asks, tilting her head. “I don’t think I’ve even seen you properly in like a year.”
I let a passing waiter refill my glass, and I tell her about the shop, about Max, about how much I’m learning.
“Oh God, I could never go back to working in retail,” she says, grimacing in a way I’m sure she imagines is sympathetic. She’s had her job answering phones at the Heide Museum for like a week.
“Well it’s not just like retail,” I say, but she’s already glancing around over the top of my head. I hate her. She’s wearing some awful synthetic scent, a celebrity fragrance probably. I could tell her that if you like florals, you can get something much more enticing with the real botanical essences, something more natural and sophisticated. An orange citrus, maybe, one that explodes into a sparkling bouquet of pure white flower blossoms. She turns back to focus on me, her eyes suddenly soft and concerned.
“But how are you?” she says, placing her warm hand on my upper arm. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fabulous,” I say. She smiles at me kindly.
“Good,” she says. “That’s really good to hear.”
There’s no air in here. I drink my champagne and I mentally compile a list of all the mean things Gemma has ever done to me. The time she said she’d assumed I must have been Greek or Italian because of my nose, the time she invited me to her birthday party as Josh’s plus-one, even though she only met him through me, the way she always dismisses everything I say and interrupts to say, “But are you creating anything at the moment?”
I’m just about to tell Gemma I’m going to go find the bathroom when a thin, suit-covered arm curls around my waist and pulls me away from her.
“Just the dirty mistress I was hoping to see,” Toby says with a wicked grin.
I reach up to hug him. Over his shoulder I see Gemma taking advantage of the diversion to slip away into the crowd.
“So how’s tricks, missy?” he says, steering me towards the bar. He’s looking dapper, in a charcoal suit with a bow tie the colour of celery. His tawny, silky hair flops over his left eye and he beams at me.
“Good,” I say. He takes two full flutes of champagne from the bar and hands one to me. He gestures cheers, then tips back his glass to drink most of it in one go. I do the same. I’m glad he’s here. Josh always thought Toby was a bad influence on me, bringing out my bitchy and superficial side, encouraging me to make bad choices so he’d have something to gossip about, always letting me down, which is all true, I guess. Sometimes I hate him, but there’s some part of me that longs for his affection, that trusts him even when he’s horrible to me.
“I’ve been hearing some wonderful rumours about you,” he says, grinning.
“Well,” I say. “Not everything you hear is true.”
“Did you fuck Alex at Lily’s party down in Sorrento?”
I pause. It really is unbearably hot in here.
“Who said that?”
“Alex, Lily. Everyone,” he says. He smiles, all cat-canary like. “Lily wants your blood.”
“Well, that’s not what happened,” I say.
“What did happen then?” His eyes are like Grenouille’s, slow-blinking firefly eyes. He’s enjoying this way too much.
“Lily’s not coming tonight, is she?” I say, thinking back to the guest list.
“You’d better hope not.”
He turns and grabs two more full champagne flutes. I take one from him and glance around the room, running my fingers along the length of Max’s scarf. For a second it flickers in my mind. Skin bare, my hair damp at my shoulders, me saying, Alex, you have a girlfriend, but not really caring. Alex knowing I didn’t care and saying It doesn’t matter. His mouth on my collarbone, me taking off my top and letting him push me back onto the bed, because why the hell not. Then the screen in my head goes too white and the picture fizzles out. I drink some more champagne.
“Whatever,” I say.
“Michael says you freaked out and did some Sylvia Plath thing in the bathroom.”
I close my eyes.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I tell him. “Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven.”
“Well whatever,” he says. “I’m not judging you, you know that.”
He’s practically licking his lips, hungry for any sliver I can give him. Like if I told him about the sudden blackness that seemed to pour into me it would be a great story, as if the smudgy flower-patterns of blood on the bathroom floor would be a nice flourish he could add. Red flowers on creamy tiles, the splintering Absolut bottle, the way I felt like I might drown inside myself.
“I saw Josh the other week,” he says, trying one more time. “With Sarah, obviously.”
“Toby, I need some air,” I say.
It’s 8:20 by the time I get to Hamer Hall. The curve of the building is lit up with purple lights, bright against the bruised navy sky. Steve’s there waiting out the front, pacing back and forth, back and forth, like a leopard at the zoo. He’s in a nice suit. He looks good; he always looks good. He’d make a perfect date for some other girl. He smiles when he sees me clattering towards him.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say, a bit out of breath, and he just smiles and says it’s fine. He kisses me slowly and I let him for a bit. To my right, the river blinks and shivers with the confetti of city lights.
“Okay, well, let’s go in I guess?” I say, wriggling out of his arms.
We walk through the big glass doors. The deep persimmon-coloured carpet feels spongy beneath my heels. Steve is talking, saying something about how he’s so sorry he couldn’t come pick me up.
“This deal came through at the last minute, we’ve been working on it for weeks,” he’s saying. I nod and smile and his voice feels muted, far away, like a waterfall.
“I haven’t been here since they re-did this place,” I say.
An usher shows us to our seats and I settle into the soft shell of the chair, Max’s silk scarf pooling in my lap. Steve holds my hand and I let him, and after a while I can’t even feel it.
The swell of the music starts and I think about how I’ll tell Max about all this later. Maybe if the ballet doesn’t go too late I can call her and see if she’ll come and pick me up. I watch the ballerinas, tall wisps of girls in their delicate tutus. They are iridescent creatures, light as they pirouette and glissade and grande jeté. Maybe we could stop by a nice wine bar on the way home, or maybe we’ll just sit up in the living room, a bottle of gin in between us on the gleaming glass table.
It’s John who answers when I call Max.
“Faith,” he says quietly. “It’s late. We were going to bed.”
There’s something in his voice, it’s like I can see him standing there, sleepy and disgruntled in his t-shirt and boxers. I guess it is past eleven. Suddenly I feel kind of bad. But I want to talk to Max.
“I’m sorry,” I say truthfully, and I hear him take a breath. My feet are aching in these stupid heels. Before John can say anything Max grabs the phone.
“What’s up babe?” she says. “Are you okay?” I can hear John’s voice, small and muffled in the background. Max puts her hand over the mouthpiece and says something to him.
“Sorry,” she says to me. “What is it? Do you want me to come and get you?”
Inside Max’s apartment, it’s dark. John has the bedroom door closed, and Grenouille is prowling around the living room. Max flips on the lights and pours me a gin and tonic. I sit down at the table, slipping my shoes off, and I drink quietly. She yawns.
“So how was the ballet, anyway?” she says, folding her body into the chair across from me at the table.
“I just feel like this isn’t my real life,” I tell her. “It’s like I woke up and I don’t know where I am.”
She exhales loudly, then smiles her wry, beautiful smile.
“I guess we’re in for a long night then,” she says, and she pours me another drink.