Cosmic by celeste, p.13
Cosmic by Celeste, page 13
She arches an eyebrow. “Not a chemistry major?”
“I barely made it through music theory. My advisor used to say I was the only student who could improvise their way into failing.”
She almost smiles. “We don’t get many improvisers up here.”
He crosses the room slowly and leans on the far side of her bench, hands braced like he’s holding the world in place. The smell of him, a mix of coffee, mint, and city rain, cuts through the sterile air. For a second, she imagines what it would be like to bottle that.
She says, “Cosmic is a fougère with an ozone top, metallic iris, synthetic jasmine, and a base that’s mostly labdanum and vetiver. But that’s the ingredients. What matters is how it feels.” She hands him a scent strip, already loaded. “Try this.”
He brings it to his nose and inhales deeply. “Wow. It’s…” he pauses, searching for the word, “it’s electric. Like air after lightning. But also warm? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be smelling.”
She looks at him, studying the tiny muscles around his eyes and the way his lips pull in concentration. “You’re supposed to remember something. Perfume is about memory, not notes. Everyone gets a different story.”
He sniffs again. “I get… summer storms in Michigan. My mother used to leave the windows open so everything would smell like wet grass and metal. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
Celeste is silent, letting the air hang heavy with the confession. Then: “Good. Now try this one.” She hands him a second strip.
He hesitates, then grins. “Is this like a blind taste test? If I get it wrong, do I lose the company?”
She ignores the joke. He smells, and the grin fades. “This one’s sadder,” he says. “Like the first day of school. New shoes, plastic lunchbox, everything too bright.”
She sets the remaining strips aside, nodding approval. “That’s the aldehyde. It’s supposed to feel like hope and disappointment at the same time.”
He glances around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Is that what you wanted? To make people sad?”
“I wanted to make them feel something real. Most perfume is camouflage. This isn’t supposed to be pretty.”
He meets her eyes, and for a second, the room is smaller. “You know, you could have been anything.”
She shrugs. “So could you.”
There’s a beat, electric with possibility. He starts to say something, but she cuts him off. “You want to see what the rest of the world is like? The real world, not the boardroom?”
He hesitates, then: “Sure.”
“Leave your phone. And your preconceptions.” She grabs her bag, flicks off the bench lamp, and leads him out.
***
The city is colder than the lab, the December wind chasing them south through the grid. They don’t talk at first. Walk, matching strides as if they’ve practiced this for years. She takes him to SoHo, to a boutique that’s half apothecary, half art gallery. The sign above the door reads "Olfactorium," the name stenciled in black on white tile. Inside, the air is thick with the scent of cloves, dust, and a faint animal musk.
The man behind the counter is all cheekbones and attitude. “Celeste,” he purrs. “And guest.”
She nods at Thad. “He’s new. Don’t scare him.”
The man grins, then turns to Thad. “Ever done this before?”
Thad shakes his head.
“Then you get the special.” The man slides a velvet tray across the counter: six tiny bottles, each capped with a colored bead.
Celeste watches as Thad lifts one, sniffs, and recoils. “Christ. Is this… gasoline?”
“Birch tar,” she says. “It’s in every classic men’s cologne. Also, Russian leather.”
He tries the next. “This one’s better.”
“Tonka. Synthetic, but it smells like vanilla and fresh hay.”
He cycles through the rest, each reaction a little more open, a little less guarded. By the last bottle, he’s smiling for real.
Celeste leans in, voice low. “You see? It’s not about being right. It’s about letting the world in.”
He looks at her, eyes bright. “Why does it feel so much better here than in the office?”
She considers, then says, “Because no one’s judging you. They’re trying to make you remember.”
They linger, passing the last bottle back and forth, fingers brushing. When she pays, the man behind the counter winks at her as if to say: You’ve chosen well.
***
Next stop: the old perfume house near Bryant Park, a narrow storefront crammed with glass bottles and faded photographs. The woman at the desk, ancient, silver-haired, with a posture like a tuning fork, lights up when she sees Celeste.
“Darling! You’re back. Have you brought a convert?”
Celeste smiles, honest and unfiltered. “He’s a work in progress. Can we see the archives?”
The woman gestures to them through a velvet rope. “Of course. But don’t let him touch the Lalique. The last visitor lost a finger.”
Thad looks nervous. “She’s kidding, right?”
“Probably,” Celeste says.
The back room is a shrine to lost chemistry. Wooden drawers labeled in French, faded posters of actresses in hats, a glass dome filled with violets and wax fruit. Celeste pulls out a tray of bottles, each one old enough to be illegal.
“This is where it started for me,” she says. “My mother used to bring me here after piano lessons. I hated the lessons, but I loved the smells.”
She hands Thad a bottle carefully. “This is prewar jasmine. Pure, no synthetics.”
He uncorks it, inhales, and says, “Damn.”
She watches him, the lines of his face shifting as the scent settles in. “You look like you’ve seen God,” she teases.
“I think I did,” he says. “Why does no one make them like this anymore?”
“They do. But it’s not cheap, and it’s not safe. Art like this doesn’t scale.”
He studies the shelf of bottles, each with a paper label, each a tiny universe. “Have you ever thought of leaving? Of running your own shop?”
She hesitates, caught. “Every day. But there’s nowhere to go that isn’t another version of here.”
He laughs softly. “I get that.”
***
Third stop: the olfactory library, two flights up from a Japanese stationery store in the East Village. The place is silent, except for the sound of paper, the air heavy with the scent of sandalwood and old glue. Rows of glass vials stretch from floor to ceiling, each labeled with a barcode and a cryptic code: H24, 7D7, LUX.
Celeste leads him to a back table, lays out three strips, and says, “Close your eyes. I’ll give you a memory.”
He does, and she waves a strip under his nose. “What do you get?”
He thinks. “Wood. Smoke. Like camping, but not in a modern way. No plastic.”
She switches strips. “Now?”
“Sweet. Maybe cherry? But also burnt.”
She nods, pleased. “You’re good at this.”
He opens his eyes, and she’s closer than before, close enough that he can see the flecks of blue in her gray irises.
She says, “That’s guaiac wood. My favorite. They use it in medicine, too, but here, it reminds me of my grandmother’s house. She used to burn it instead of incense. Made the whole place smell like the end of the world.”
He leans in, voice barely above a whisper. “Why do you keep sharing these with me?”
She considers, then: “Because you care. Even when you don’t want to.”
He lets that hang. “Have you ever gotten tired? Of holding it together for everyone else?”
She looks away, then back. “Every day.”
He reaches for her hand, and she lets him.
***
They walk for a while, the city reassembling around them with every block. By the time they reach the corner near her apartment, it’s nearly midnight, and neither wants to go home.
“Want to see one more place?” she asks.
He grins. “Lead the way.”
They duck into a coffee shop, all brick and Edison bulbs, where the menu is in calligraphy, and every cup is a minor act of rebellion. She orders for both of them: black for her and a latte for him, no sugar. They sit at a corner table, knees almost touching, hands still entwined under the lip of the table.
For a few minutes, they watch the street, the city, moving past the window in a blur of light and motion.
He says, “Thanks for tonight.”
She says, “Thanks for not pretending.”
He sips the latte, lets the silence build, then: “You ever wonder what would happen if we didn’t go back?”
She looks at him, and the air between them turns electric.
“I think we’d find out,” she says.
And for the first time in weeks, neither of them is pretending.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The café is a shoebox of brick and brass, with tables salvaged from a chemistry lab and beakers repurposed as carafes, the ceiling lined with garlands of antique Edison bulbs. A cat is sleeping on a stack of old art books by the register, and the barista, shirtless under a leather apron, looks like he could brew coffee with his jaw alone. At this hour, the clientele is two: Thad and Celeste, their voices lost in the hush of someone else’s closing time.
They pick a table by the window, though there’s nothing to see but the ghost of a laundromat across the street. The barista brings their drinks, a cortado for Thad and a shot of espresso for Celeste, both served in thick-walled flasks that seem designed to survive a fall from a fifth-story balcony. Celeste pours a measure of sugar, stirs with her finger, and waits.
“So,” she says, “what did you want to be before you were drafted?”
He looks at her, then at his hands, then back. “Honestly? Famous. I thought if I could get one song on the radio, I’d be bulletproof. The irony is, my mother was the only person who never let me get away with it.”
Celeste sips, unimpressed. “The world is full of famous corpses. Did you like the music or the chase?”
He considers, then says, “The music—the shows. I loved being on stage, losing myself in the moment. Everything else was a way to get back there. But now it’s all spreadsheets and ‘legacy preservation.’ I haven’t written a song in six months.”
She studies him over the rim of her cup. “So why not quit?”
He shrugs. “Guilt. Or habit. Or maybe I think if I stick it out, I’ll learn to want it.”
She laughs, the sound small but real. “That’s optimism. Or delusion.”
He leans in. “Your turn. You always want to mix molecules and make people cry?”
She sets her cup down and traces the edge with a thumbnail. “I wanted to be a scientist—a real one. But every time I got close to undergrad, PhD, or research, I’d find myself sneaking off to a museum or a perfume counter. It wasn’t the chemicals. It was the stories. The way one molecule can erase someone’s whole year in one breath. My advisor told me I was too sentimental to survive in real science.”
“Asshole,” Thad says.
She smiles. “He wasn’t wrong. My first real job was as an apprentice to a perfumer in Grasse. Old man means ammonia. He made me do every menial task for a year before he let me near the blending room. But he taught me how to see the way a perfume comes together. Not as parts, but as a possibility.”
He’s quiet, waiting for her to go on. She doesn’t. Instead, she looks at him, eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to last two months at Chic Alchemy. Not if you’re already this miserable.”
He blinks. “Brutal. Is that the French in you?”
She shrugs. “No, actually French, it’s the training.”
He laughs, and the cat on the register flicks an ear, annoyed at the noise. “You’re right, though. The office makes me want to climb out a window. It’s all risk reports and market segmentation. I don’t even know what half the words mean.”
She leans forward, elbows on the table. “You don’t have to know. You have to care enough to hire the right people. The rest is smoke and mirrors. You could run it like an art collective if you wanted.”
He looks at her, startled by the permission. “What if I ruin it?”
She snorts. “You think Richard wouldn’t?”
He slouches, defeated but entertained. “Point.”
They drink in silence for a minute. The only sounds are the city’s distant cough, the cat’s bored grooming, and the hollow tick of the clock above the counter. At some point, Thad’s knee finds hers under the table. She doesn’t move.
He says, “If Cosmic fails, will you leave?”
She thinks, then: “Probably. I don’t want to be someone’s cost center. If I can’t finish what I started, I’ll go somewhere that lets me.”
He nods. “That’s brave.”
She corrects him, voice soft. “It’s survival. If you let them tell you who you are, you disappear.”
He looks at her, the real her, stripped of the defense mechanisms and the high-gloss sarcasm. “You don’t disappear,” he says. “I’d notice.”
She breaks eye contact for a second. “Flatterer.”
He smiles, and it’s warmer than anything he’s managed all year. “What about you? If you had a month to do anything, no board, no family, no ghosts, what would you do?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Then: “I’d go to Florence, buy a flat above a bakery, and spend all day making the world’s weirdest perfumes. No agenda or experiments. Sometimes, I’d send a bottle to an old friend to mess with their head.”
He grins. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
She raises her cup in a mock toast. “To escape plans.”
He clinks his flask against hers. “To not be what they want.”
When the drinks are empty, neither of them moves to leave. The world outside has gone soft, snow swirling under the streetlights. Inside, the bulbs dim as if to protect the secret of two people discovering something too fragile for daylight.
Finally, Thad says, “There’s a jazz club around the corner. You want to keep not going home?”
She laughs, and it’s not at him. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He stands and holds her coat while she slips into it, and she does the same for him. They step out into the cold, the night pressing close, but neither seems to mind.
Behind them, the barista flips the sign to CLOSED, but the cat stays in the window, watching as they disappear into the dark.
The club is carved out of an old coal chute, three steps below street level and ten below respectability. It’s lit by candles trapped in cloudy mason jars and the soft, syrupy glow of stage lights filtered through decades of smoke. There’s no sign outside; you get in by knowing the bartender or by wanting something badly enough to push the blacked-out door and lie about who sent you.
The house band is already mid-set, the drummer swinging so hard his hair is glued to his forehead. Thad steers Celeste to the only available booth, a narrow U-shaped red vinyl booth, the table polished to a greasy sheen. He orders them rye and soda, the only drink not misspelled on the menu, and slides in so their shoulders brush every time someone passes in the aisle.
The music is molten: horn, piano, upright bass thumping like a pulse beneath the world’s floorboards. For the first few songs, they talk in half-sentences to people who know how to listen. Celeste’s voice is softer here, the night’s edge sanded away by woodwinds and the low drone of audience approval.
She watches Thad. He’s different in this light, looser, more himself, even as his foot taps the floor in time with the snare. She can’t tell if it’s the music or the whiskey or the relief of being outside the bright, shiv-sharp logic of the company’s glass tower. She finds herself leaning in as if each measure of sound draws her physically closer.
He notices. “You ever play?” he asks, nodding at the stage.
She shakes her head. “My mother tried. I can barely fake ‘Happy Birthday’ on a piano.”
He grins. “You’d pick it up quick. There’s a lot of overlap between perfume and jazz. All improvisation. All risk.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “You’re going to tell me about notes and chords next, aren’t you?”
He leans closer, conspiratorial. “I’ll spare you the metaphors. But if you ever want a lesson…”
She raises her glass, toasts his offer, and drinks. The music thickens, the air charged with the kind of attention that makes every surface a little more charged, every glance meaningful.
At the first set break, the crowd surges toward the bar. Thad and Celeste are left with the quiet, the stage lights still burning blue. He watches her watching the room, the way she catalogs the details, the brands of cologne on neighboring men, the lipstick shades on the servers. He wonders if she’s analyzing him, too, breaking him down into molecules and stories.
She says, “You miss it, don’t you? Being on stage.”
He looks at his hands. “Yeah. Sometimes I forget what it’s like until I’m here, and then it hits all at once.”
She tilts her head, thoughtful. “Why don’t you get up there?”
He laughs quickly and self-deprecatingly. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”
She holds his gaze. “If I dared you, would you do it?”
He pretends to think, then says, “Only if you promise not to laugh.”
She leans back, eyes bright. “I never laugh at talent.”
The MC, a woman in leopard print and eyeliner thick as caulk, climbs on stage and taps the mic. “We’ve got an open slot for a guest. Anyone got the stones to take it?” She scans the room, and a handful of hands go up, but Celeste’s is the highest, waving with unmistakable intent.
She points at Thad, her voice low. “He’s in a band. Berlin. He’ll play.”
The room turns, a dozen pairs of eyes pinning him to his seat. He gives Celeste a look, but she’s already pushing him out of the booth, her laughter sweet and merciless.
Thad shrugs, collects himself, and saunters to the stage with the practiced slouch of someone who’s faked confidence long enough to make it real. He confers with the band, points to the guitarist, and they nod, a pact formed in twenty seconds of shared language.
