The Scent of Mimosa

Robert Ducasse

Vince winced as if she had slapped him.

 ''What are you talking about?'' he asked, but Cassandra's back was turned to him. She was digging once more through the cabinet in the wall. Her fingers sorted their way through the bottles coated in the thickest layers of dust, reaching right to the very back.  

When she turned back, she had one in her grasp, its contents rancid and stained dark with age.  Unfurling the yellowing label, she began to read: 

"Italian bergamot 2.90, Guatemalan cardamom 0.5, sweet acacia 3.50, Geranium bourbon 0.6... Do you need me to go on Vince or do you recognize it?'' she asked.  ''I don't mind. Lord knows it's not a secret any longer.''

''Geneviève,''  Vince whispered. ''It's Geneviève.  I knew that your father didn't make it, Cassandra. It has your technique written all over it.''

''It does, doesn't it,'' Cassandra said with a bitter little laugh. ''Perhaps the purest form of my technique, from back in the days before I became so closed to the world, before I learned distrust. I created this perfume in an emotional whirl, you see. My mother had just died and there I was: a raw teenage girl who had to express all her love and all her grief the only way she knew how, by making perfume. I poured my heart and soul into this fragrance, Vincent, dedicating it to her. All the heartbreak, all the sorrow that I was feeling is here – layer upon layer of it. I never dreamed for one moment that my father would take it from me, steal it in the dead of night like a common criminal, and then sell it to the world.''

Vince's face contorted in horror. He had assumed that Cassandra had known what her father was planning when he had launched Geneviève. He had never suspected this degree of treachery, even from a man as flagrant as the Robert Ducasse Cassandra had described to him. ''And he never even credited your name,'' he murmured.

''That was my one consolation,'' Cassandra continued. ''You can't imagine what it was like for me, after that. My grandparents had both already passed. Now with my mother dead and my father a traitor, I was so alone. To make matters worse, the perfume was an instant success. Suddenly it seemed that every second person I passed on the street was wearing Geneviève. I only had to get the slightest whiff of it to feel once again all the trauma – not only of my mother's death, but of my father's deception as well. I couldn't escape from it. It was everywhere.''

''But then why did your father sell the license?'' Vince interjected. ''All he had to do was to hang on to it for a little while and Guipard would have been on top again. It doesn't make any sense.''

'No. It never did with my father. By that point he was already deep in debt. I suspect that is why he did such a desperate thing to begin with. And for a few years it did tide us over, but he wasn't a man who could delay gratification. He wanted money, and he wanted it now. The sale of the license probably went to fund one evening's blackjack and nothing more.''

Cassandra paused for a moment and looked down, tears flooding her eyes.

''After that he kept coming to me, begging me to make more fragrances; telling me that my family's company depended on me. What he really meant was that he depended on me – needed me to fund his profligacy. It repulsed me, Vince. I loathed him, and I loathed what he was asking me to do. He had taken my talent and abused and squandered it for nothing, and I vowed to myself that that would never happen again.''  

Then she looked up at him again, her voice desperate and ragged. ''So help me Vince, but that evening he ran his car off the cliff outside Monaco, I was glad that he was gone.''

She stopped speaking and wrapped both her arms tightly about her solar plexus. Slowly, she began to rock back and forth as sob after heaving sob wracked her frame. Vince stood before her, longing to reach out and comfort her but painfully aware that he had been the cause, or at least the catalyst, of Cassandra's breakdown.