Swizzle Stick

Miss Shalimar

One of the students in my Business English class every Tuesday morning
at the Paris perfume factory was most articulate on the olfactory nerve.
He could speak endlessly of scent, with scientific bent or sensual,
& while it was not his official job title, he was officially The Nose

of the organisation. Tiny bundles of atoms & their potential impacts
with scales of variations, combinations. A highly refined bloodhound
in a beautifully-cut brown suit, he took delight in new adjectives,
idioms, adverbs, collecting new words to describe from the nose.

One Tuesday morning he asked if he could speak with me after class.
I imagined that he had a complaint, that I was for some reason at fault.
His question, when the class had departed: Why do you wear that perfume?
That Jean Paul Gaultier? It is the wrong perfume for you. Very wrong, oui.

For you, he said, this is the right perfume. It is right for your height
& your skin & your hair. He passed me a tall plain bottle of perfume, no label,
no shape, no colour, just product. Du Shalimar, he said. For you this is perfect.
It is an Amber Spicy fragrance, which I spray lightly in the classroom air

& walk through. Thank you, I said. Merci! Bergamot, cedar lemon, iris.
An olde-worlde perfume that I'd always thought grandmotherly. Now I reassess.
The perfume hovers, warm & layered, & I suddenly know that it suits me.
All good now Miss Shalimar, he said, while departing. Trust me; I'm a nose.