The Scent of Mimosa

New York

John Harris placed the final piece of his veal chop entrée in his mouth, pulled the crisp white serviette from his shirt-front and sat back with a satisfied grunt. Then he signaled the waiter to bring another bottle of Pinot Noir and folded his hands before looking directly across the table at Vince.

"Well Callaghan, you did it again! The Innuendo launch would've been one heck of a train wreck if I hadn't hauled your ass back from France in time. Here's to you, kiddo!" he boomed, raising his glass and downing half its contents.

"Speaking of France, how is the Imogen project going? I hope it's been worthwhile since it's been monopolizing my top marketing executive for over a month now!"

Vince had been pushing a tiny piece of arugula back and forth across his plate. He was exhausted again after almost two weeks back in New York. The Innuendo launch had been stressful but a grand success, and for all intents and purposes everything was back to normal, including his poor sleep routine.  

Another thing that had returned was the creeping sense of emptiness that plagued him in the middle of the night. He hadn't realised it while he was away, but he hadn't had that feeling for a while before he returned to New York. Now it was worse than ever.

All too often since his return, he would find himself awake at 3am, staring blankly into the neon waters of the aquarium in his lounge, watching the fish swim back and forth... back and forth... back and forth. 

It was a habit that nothing seemed to break: no meditation, no medication, no drink. He was constantly aware of a strange feeling in his chest, as if there were a hollow cave behind his ribs, a bottomless chasm that seemed completely unreachable. But at the mention of the Imogen project, he looked up, suddenly energized. 

"Actually John, I think it's going really well. I've already sampled the initial jus. We just have to go through a couple of iterations now."

"Yeah?" asked the older man. "And what do you reckon? Is there a bit of cross-demographic appeal there? Please tell me yes Callaghan.''

''Well... I would say so... yes. I mean, I've smelled the fragrance. Any woman would be crazy not to love it. It's beautiful."

''Beautiful?! Whatever," his boss cut across Vince's very serious appraisal of Cassandra's work. ''Come on Callaghan, you and I both know the shtick. Just get the girl to come up with something that'll keep the teenagers happy as well as appeal to the thirty-somethings and we're in the money. Right?''

Vince nodded. It was the way he and Harris had always spoken. Just business that was all. So why did he suddenly feel uncomfortable discussing the perfume this way? 

He wondered if he had gotten too involved, was taking it all too personally. It was probably the fact that he had so much of his own creative input on the project. He decided that he needed to back away and get some objectivity. That shouldn't be too hard now he was away from Grasse, should it?

"Excellent," Harris went on, draining his glass. "You know Callaghan. You get this one right and it'll be the push you need to land you on the board. We talked about it at the last meeting. Everyone feels that you are by far the best candidate. I am pleased with that. I'm not getting any younger, and it'll be good to retire knowing that the company lies in hands that I trust."

Again, Vince nodded. He didn't really feel like discussing his future today. Harris had made these insinuations in the past and they generally sent his adrenaline into overdrive. By industry standards Harris was a dinosaur. He had barely a few working years left in him.  

Vince wanted that spot on the board. He wanted the chairmanship of GSS. He wanted all of it: the power, the money, the success, and he deserved it too. He knew he did. The financial mark that he personally had made on the company was not to be sniffed at. Promotion to the board was so near now that he could almost taste it – smell it. But today, the idea that he was that one step closer to achieving the top spot did nothing for him.

The room felt suddenly very hot and stuffy to him. Why hadn't he noticed before that Lever House restaurant had no windows? Outside he knew that the lunch-hour traffic would be gridlocked and the begonias wilting on Park Avenue. He looked around at the suit-clad, power-lunch contingent who surrounded him. 

The repetitive hexagons in the retro-chic interior design were starting to make his eyes swim and his mind boggle. The drone of self-important conversation around him seemed to be getting ever louder and the bottomless pit in his chest felt as if it were expanding, threatening to consume him entirely.

Then, out of nowhere, through the chaos and bustle he caught the scent of something familiar. It was sweet but not cloyingly so. It was bitterly sentimental and achingly sensual, and its every note was as pure and fluid as a stream carving its way through the Provençal countryside. It cut through the grinding harshness of the New York afternoon like a sunbeam through a storm-cloud.  

Vince felt his body rise up from the booth where he and John were sitting and follow it. He could do nothing else.

"Excuse me! Hey! Excuse me!" he called after the group of executives who had passed by his table and were now congregating around the bar. They were busy talking and didn't hear him calling to them as he approached. It didn't matter. He could pick out where the fragrance was coming from in the group as if it were a homing signal. 

The woman's back was towards him. Her knit dress stood out as incongruous amongst the grey and navy suits of her companions. Her hair was wound tightly into a scarf so that he couldn't make out its color, but as she laughed and moved it almost seemed to him that it was red.

It couldn't be... surely not? How was it possible?

"Cassandra?" he asked impatiently, pulling at her shoulder so that she spun around to face him. The woman's mouth, thick with lipstick, broke from a petulant pout to a lascivious smile when she saw who was talking to her. She flicked her thick scarf-bound ponytail over her shoulder (her hair was brown, not red Vince noted) and placed one hand on her hip expectantly.

''Oh!'' he started, the anticipation ebbing from his voice. ''I'm sorry. I thought you were someone I know,'' he apologized.

''No need to be sorry, honey,'' she flirted. ''Maybe I should be... someone you know that is.''

Vince ignored her and turned back to his booth, disappointed.  

''Just tell me one thing,'' he asked, looking back at the last moment. ''Your perfume. I know that smell... what is it again?''

''Why it's Geneviève darlin','' she drawled. ''By Guipard or something like that.''

How strange, thought Vince as he turned and moved purposefully back towards his table. How strange that it had taken a chance encounter with a Southern Belle in a New York restaurant to jolt him into consciousness, but at that moment the buzz around him seemed to dissolve into oblivion. 

His mind was clear and unfettered, the path before him free of obstruction. There was nothing but himself and a sense of pristine certainty of what he needed to do and where he needed to be. And that was in the arid countryside of southern France, in a town where all the houses had red-tile roofs – with a girl whom he used to think was crazy, but now he knew was the one person who seemed to have the power to make him sane.

''Sorry John,'' he said, returning to his seat. ''We were talking about the Imogen fragrance. The thing is... we need to be absolutely sure that what we get is quality product. I think I'm going to have to stick around in Grasse for a little while longer.''