Scribblers by Stephen Kirk

Author:Stephen Kirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography/Memoir
ISBN: 9780895874610
Publisher: John F. Blair, Publisher
Published: 2004-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Ham-and-Eggers

I’m riding a bus with my daughter’s fifth-grade class. I’m chaperoning a field trip to a science museum an hour away.

I’ve just begun reading a romance novel, Essence of My Desire by Jill Jones. On its hot-pink cover is an antique perfume bottle. In the center of the bottle, an inch-square peekaboo cutaway reveals a bouquet of flowers on the first interior page. After that comes a page with capsule raves from publications called Affaire de Coeur, Romantic Times, and Belles and Beaux of Romance.

The story begins in New Orleans as Simone Lefèvre receives a mysterious package containing an unidentified perfume. The daughter of the late master perfumer Jean René Lefèvre, Simone has fallen on hard times since Englishman Nick Rutledge, her first lover, stole her father’s secret formulas and left town. Meanwhile, in London, Nick Rutledge, too, takes delivery of a strange perfume. Like Simone, Nick has seen his fortunes slide. Crafty Frenchman Antoine Dupuis tricked him into his theft of Jean René Lefèvre’s life’s work, then gained control of Nick’s family’s perfume empire, the House of Rutledge.

An ocean apart, Simone and Nick test the perfume and find it has a highly erotic effect. In their dreams, they are transported to a land of indigo mist and an hour of sizzling passion with … each other!

Simone is enraged; Nick Rutledge is her sworn enemy.

Nick is tormented; he is ashamed of his duplicity toward Simone.

Before long, Simone receives an invitation from Antoine Dupuis to come to London to interview for a position at the House of Rutledge. In England, she rents a cottage on a country estate. It is, she learns, the former home of a witch and the place where her mysterious perfume was concocted. Meanwhile, Nick decides to take a weekend at his country estate, where he has just begun renting out an old cottage to bring in some needed cash. He parks his Triumph roadster, saddles his Arabian stallion to go introduce himself to his new renter at the cottage, knocks on the door, and—

“Enjoying your book?”

It’s the lady in the seat in front of me, another of the chaperons. She’s been bending the teacher’s ear up to this point and has apparently worn her out.

“Book?” I say.

“Are you enjoying your book?”

“It’s okay.”

I go back to reading.

“Is it something for work?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.”

She’s not accustomed to having her curiosity go unsatisfied, I can tell. Her daughter is the star of the class, and that ought to command a certain amount of deference from someone like me. She’s turned sideways. I catch her looking over the seat every now and then, trying to see what it is I’m reading. I have to tilt the top edge down until the book is flat across my leg.

She finally leaves me alone—until we pull up outside the museum.

“What’s that you’re reading?”

I pretend I don’t hear.

“What’s that you’re reading?”

“Uh, nothing.”

That answer, so flagrantly false, stuns her long enough for me to slip past, tucking the book in the inside pocket of my jacket, where it will stay until I can continue in peace.

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