The Favoured, The Fair and Ms. Vérité Claire

8 Pardonnez-moi (Part 2)

"But doesn't perfume go rancid?" Julia asked as they waited in line outside the museum.

"Yes," Vérité responded absently, distracted by a pair of socks in a pair of men's sandals just ahead of them in line. "But if kept safe from unsavory elements..."

"Even still."

"They recreate some of them," she said, now pursing her lips disapprovingly at socks-in-sandals' wife's enormous backpack encroaching on her space.

"If it's one hundred and fifty Euros for the tour and thirty more for the exhibit, I'd hate to think how much Disneyland Paris would cost."

"Considerably less, as a matter of fact," Vérité said, nearly missing the opportunity to be part of the offensive couple's selfie. She scoffed. "I think these people may be in the wrong line."

The male of the pair read a sign aloud phonetically: "'Alley-monts inter-dits a parteer de ce point.' Google that, hon, and find out what it means."

Vérité couldn't help herself , she was so consumed. "It says no food permitted beyond this point."

"Oh, thank you very much," the man said. He tipped his bucket hat at Vérité and shoved the last two-thirds of what had once been a Rueben sandwich into his mouth. His wife laughed and lovingly wiped a blob of sauerkraut off his chin, flinging it so that it landed a gasped breath away from Vérité's foot.

"Gross," Julia tsked.

"That's one thing about the Europeans, they prefer to eat at a table. It's one thing to have an ice cream at a park, but it's quite another to have an entire entree in a paper cone."

"Come on now, Vérité," Julia egged her, "You said life was a moveable feast."

"Yes, not a lazy Susan of sidewalk meats."

"Write that down Bernard!" Julia said.

Vérité laughed at herself. "Well?"

They paid their admission and were wrangled together as a tour group. Vérité asked if they couldn't just bypass the tour and head to the special exhibit but she was told in no uncertain terms that it was not how things were done. Forty minutes or so later, they at last were given the choice of the gift shop exit or the line to have their extra tickets punched for the Last Drop. The sandwich couple from earlier stood immediately behind Vérité and Julia and so the exhibit might as well have been subtitled, The Last Nerve.

There were only twelve visitors allowed into the small smelling room at a time. A person could stay for as long as they liked before exiting and making room for someone else. Still, the line moved fairly quickly. Vérité and Julia finally gained entry to the tiny, climate controlled, room. While the exhibit design was underwhelming, its contents were the stuff of perfume lovers' dreams, though perhaps some animals' nightmares. There was the ambergris, anise scented Courage, an ocelot musk called Savage Heart and the coffee scented So? which had an ivory cap.

All scents, excluding those recreated synthetically and available for purchase at the gift shop, were kept behind small plexiglass display windows with slots to be opened for the purpose of sniffing. One need only line up one's nose and inhale deeply to smell the nearly extinct scents. An oddly titled Lab Scent no. 4.5, the last of a perfumer who finished his days in prison for sending poisoned letters to members of British parliament, came with a disconcerting warning not to inhale too deeply if a woman was or suspected she might be pregnant.

Some of the bottles were so beautiful that they inspired designs in Julia's mind and her hand itched for pen and sketch pad.

But Vérité only had eyes for Traîtresse. As she began her stalk towards an old lover, the dull hum of visitors was broken by the hoarse chuckle of the sandwich couple who had at last gained entry.