Forever Now by Elise Sax

Author:Elise Sax [Sax, Elise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

“They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.”

---Emily Dickinson

Old people smell. You’ve probably smelled them. They smell like—you know—old. They have a kind of musty scent. Different. Like they’ve moved on to being not quite who they were. They’re people plus.

Evolved.

I love the smell of old. Everything old. People, books, buildings.

There’s not a lot of old in San Diego, and there wasn’t a lot of old in my life. No grandparents and my mother liked to hang with a younger crowd.

Monsieur and Madame Berger smelled like really old—ancient old—in a cloud of expensive perfume and cologne. I liked them immediately, even though they were different from any people I had ever met.

Madame Berger dripped diamonds. She was covered in shining, shimmering rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. It was like Zales had opened a store on her tiny body. She wore a navy blue Chanel suit, and her hair was perfectly done in a hairsprayed mound on her head.

Monsieur Berger was dressed in slacks, a black turtleneck, and a blue smoking jacket with a coat of arms on his chest pocket. A nobleman. I wondered what he thought about the French revolution. I wondered how his ancestors escaped the guillotine. He took a cigarette out of a gold case and lit it, blowing a thin trail of smoke above him.

This was my first contact with French people. They weren’t at all what I had expected. I expected a whole different smell with fewer diamonds.

“Bonjour ma belle,” Madame Berger said to Dahlia, who hopped up and down before she gave the old woman two kisses on her cheeks. European style. “So much energy,” Madame Berger observed.

She was right. Dahlia plopped onto the couch arm next to Madame Berger. She tapped her feet on the floor, and bounced up and down in place, as if she was riding a horse.

“Madame Berger, this is Tess Parker, the one I told you about.”

“Mais oui. Mais oui,” Madame Berger said, putting on her glasses in order to study me better. “Come here,” she told me in a thick accent.

I took a couple steps toward her and leaned down. “So fresh,” Monsieur Berger said. “N’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, so fresh,” Madame Berger agreed.

I didn’t know what “fresh” meant, but it was obviously good because they were smiling, and they signaled for me to sit next to them on the couch.

Dahlia clapped her hands. “This is great! This is great! It’s like the sun and stars aligning, or you know, Twinkies.” She jumped up, and skipped across the room, bumping into a server and sending a plate full of bacon-wrapped scallops flying through the air to land on a half dozen of San Diego’s elite. Without missing a beat, she skipped off to the next room. I wondered if I should run after her.

“Stay with us,” Madame Berger said, reading my mind. Her bony hand clutched onto my arm with surprising strength.

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