29

The Roadrunner had a face for radio but a voice whose wavelengths could travel from your ears to the soles of your feet, pushing all the right buttons along the way. We entertained the kind of flirt the French are so adept at weaving into their professional relationships, at least when they know how to handle their native tongue in all its titillating subtleties. He’d been wounded by a sniper shot in Bosnia and was taking a break between war zone assignments by doing a radio series on historic Parisian hotspots of an entirely different kind. I was his guest expert and had been digging up the addresses of some of the brothels that had been closed down after World War II. We’d buzz the intercoms and interview the current occupants to find out if they knew anything about their building’s former function.

The Roadrunner seemed pretty knowledgeable about women, so when he sprang the question on me in the same tell-me-everything-my-child tone he used on his interviewees, I skipped a beat before responding, unable to decide whether he was kidding:

‘Do women fake it?’

Well … of course.

Then he wanted to know whether I did.

I did. I have. I do. Unless a man puts his hand to my heart, I’m pretty sure none has ever been able to tell that the back-arching, limb-twisting spasms and moans were just part of a show … once in a while. I’m not above stroking a man’s ego as deftly as anything else that comes to hand. But this time I’m not faking it. There’s no need to. There never is, with perfume.

The sigh comes unprompted as I’m sniffing my wrist, sitting on a swivel stool in Bertrand’s lab. Aesthetic judgement plays no part in this type of frisson; it’s purely animal, the body easing into an exquisitely sensuous scent-zone. It’s the first time I get the urge to try a new mod directly on my skin in the midst of a session – I’ve always waited until the next morning to test with a rested nose. But this couldn’t wait. Duende 25 was begging for flesh. So I rummaged through the drawers to find a pump, screwed it onto the phial and sprayed.

*   *   *

This is our first meeting since Bertrand’s creative crisis. When I walked in an hour ago trailing the frigid December wind, I knew he’d come up with new mods even though I’d suggested we could just take stock. I was glad he’d resumed working but starting to wonder whether there was any point to my testing the mods he handed me after each session since he never waited for my remarks. So I asked him straight out: did anything I said matter?

‘Until I’m happy with what I’ve done…’

He waved his hand in front of his face and torso as though he were running it along a glass wall. Then backtracked. Of course, he listened: that was why he’d been in such a jam, trying to work my requests into the formula. But the Habanita accord I’d asked for was just too old-fashioned. In fact, he told me as we settled down to smell the new mods, he was still wondering whether the orange blossom and incense accord was such a good idea.

‘You have to tame it, make it smile, lighten it up, and I’m not going to get there with incense! We’ll end up with something imbitable and that’s not the aim of the game.’

Imbitable, pronounced ‘ahn-bee-tah-bluh’, is a French slang word which means incomprehensible, unbearable. Bertrand’s clients have been begging him to steer clear of his usual imbitable. He doesn’t want to do imbitable any more, even for the sake of originality. This isn’t the first time Bertrand mentions the need to be less quirky. But if he weren’t experiencing a tug-of-war between composing on his terms and giving clients what they want, the subject wouldn’t be cropping up so often, as though he were trying to convince himself.

Wait a minute … did he mention clients? We’ve never discussed the specifics of pitching Duende to one of the brands he works with, but that would be the logical final step of our creative venture and it’s always been tacitly understood that we’d take it. I’ve been waiting for Bertrand to bring the matter up. The product probably needs to be closer to its final form before it’s shown to anyone.

That time may not be far off. The proof is in the sigh.

I’m not staging it for Bertrand’s sake. Right now, he’s got his back turned to me. He’s writing out the formula for Duende 28, also a first: he’s never formulated right under my nose. He thought it up as we were discussing mods 25, 26 and 27, all variations on the idea of Habanita rather than a literal rendition. Habanita’s coumarin has been swapped for tonka bean absolute, which naturally contains coumarin but gives off richer almond, hay and tobacco effects, along with slightly roasted notes. Bertrand has added cistus to N°26 and tobacco absolute to N°27, but N°25 is the one we’re interested in. There’s flesh in it, flower flesh: like sucking the nectar out of a plucked blossom, I blurt out. Bertrand says that’s exactly what he was aiming for: orange blossom honey, nectar, petals … But the vanilla is a little overwhelming. Rather than taking some out, he decides to cover it up with the green notes of Duende 5. That’s what he’s doing now: one last mod before we wrap up for the day.

He’s often teased me about being such a chatterbox, so this time I’m shutting up and letting him concentrate. Except, that is, for the sigh. Clearly, he hasn’t heard it. He’s scribbling away, mumbling about putting in a trace of this or that, reaching out for various materials … So I go on sniffing my arm like a good girl.

Then it comes out. Not just a sigh. The Moan.

And there goes Bertrand, blending away obliviously. By the time I breathe out the second moan, I decide he should be apprised of the situation. After all, he’s got a grown woman going loose-limbed in his lab just by sniffing his stuff. He really should be paying a little more attention. I clear my throat. Still no reaction.

‘Ahem … Bertrand?’

‘Yup?’ he answers, barely looking over his shoulder.

‘I’ve … uh … been making a lot of little noises that should be pretty flattering to you.’

That catches his attention. He swivels on his stool to face me.

‘What do you mean?’

As I launch into a mini-recital of the orgasmic noises I’ve been cooing, the Roadrunner’s question pops into my mind, so I add:

‘Of course, you know as well as I do that those sounds can be faked. In this case, though, there wouldn’t be any point, would there? This came out spontaneously. I’d say it was a very good sign.’

He nods.

‘Go ahead. Let loose…’

Then he goes back to work. But we’re both giggling.