Duty Free

Traveling as much as I do, all airports begin to look alike. And, in them, nothing is more indistinguishable than the shops. Enticing, indulgent, and, just possibly, dangerous.

By Michael Oren

Eau fraiche, Eau de toilette, parfume—we have them all. And only the finest brands. Dior, Chanel, Gautier, Vuitton. Would you like to sample some? No worry, I see your flight isn’t departing til ten. Yes, on your wrist. The heat there brings out the scent—did you know that? Also, you can lift it up to your nose. Voila. Oo-la-la, what a bouquet! Delicious. Sensuous, no? And on sale, only sixty bucks a bottle. Your wife is going to love it.

How many times a day or night do I say that? Two hours in and already I’m numb. The routine never changes, only the people. Countless numbers of them trudging, running, stumbling through the terminal. Some late but most early, with plenty of time to kill. To check out the overpriced bookshops and clothing outlets, the souvenir t-shirts and mugs. Or to hang out here. A potpourri of indulgences—cigars and candy bars, cosmetics and booze. Here, the chance to prolong a vacation’s fantasy or to compensate for a family loss. A cornucopia of luxuries, almost all of them available at chain stores near home and often at a lesser price, but somehow, here, turned glamorous. Backlit and shimmering and, best of all, tax-free!

And sold by enticing-looking ladies. At least that’s the case in the section where I work. Somewhere, I guess, in a stratospheric boardroom, it was decided that those who sold fragrances should be attractively—correction, seductively—built, with a profusion of hair, preferably blonde, French-braided. Tight black pantsuits, cinched around the breasts and backside, the lipstick crimson and eyeliner midnight. Not young girls, no students certainly, but women in the fullness of their prime. Worldly, knowledgeable, within reach. No doubt they knew, those crafty executives, just who their favorite customers would be.

Not the retired night nurse shopping for herself or the grandma looking for easy-to-carry Christmas gifts. Not the flight attendants, the suntan seekers, or daughters recently bereaved. No, most of the buyers are men. Married men or men in otherwise permanent relationships, for one doesn’t spend that kind of money and on an item so intimate unless he knows the woman well. Unless, of course, the wife or girlfriend is just a convenient excuse, and the real reason is the saleswoman. Rather than Passionate Intense or Baccarat Rouge—more like Coucher Avec Moi—the object of the purchase is me.

This is how it works. I make a show of adjusting some bottles when behind me I feel the presence of the person I saw peering through the display window. The gentleman in a teal cashmere cardigan or the bomber jacket too young for his age. Gray at the temples, opal in his eyes, with a jaw that’s good for ferreting. Slightly taller than me, older, and far better educated, and rich. Perhaps not as rich as he wants to portray himself, but definitely better off than a twice-divorced and many times dumped woman who lives alone in a fourth-floor walk-up she rents for more than she has in her savings.

            “I’m looking for something special,” he’ll say.

            And I’ll play along. “For that special somebody…”

            “Yes,” he’ll agree, with a widening, wet smile. “Unique.”

So I test out an Armani for him, on my wrist, not his, and let him take a sniff. Let him hold my hand as he does and gaze upward into eyes he’ll remember even at 25,000 feet and, later, when he’d sitting down to dinner with his family. It doesn’t take long, usually a day or two, before my phone buzzes with a No Caller ID, but I know it’s him, dialing the number I left with him just in case he had further questions. If he still wanted something unique.

And unique he gets. In a nearby city where he just happens to have further business, in a hotel room that is cheaper than even he could afford. Some wine, some room service, and sheets that look like cyclones photographed from space. Lies about love, about misery at home and hope for a better life with a woman who works at an airport, who he barely knows but somehow intuits that she is the one he’s always been searching for, who fulfills his every need. Dates are set, assignations. A gift is given—guess what? Perfume. Then, invariably, nothing.

Occasionally, I’ll look for his face among the thousands streaming outside the display window, but never with any success. Soon, I, too, will forget him, and another shopper will approach with the same generic looks and lines. The wrist, the sniff, the eyes. The hotel rooms resounding with a din of sighs, of bedsprings and body parts bouncing.

Nothing, in the end, remains. Only an emptiness matched by the terminal after the last of its flights has departed. Only the rage of having been used once again by dishonest men, treated like a business class travel kit, sampled then left for the cleaners. But most of all there’s the need. Not for respect or affection, but something more elemental, irrepressible. Revenge.

Fittingly, it comes in a bottle. A vial, actually, scarcely bigger than my thumb and filled with an oily, amber liquid. This I lifted from a Russian patron, one of the few who came right out and said what he wanted, which wasn’t for once Hermes for his wife. A bull of man, his skin festooned with body art, chest and head denuded of hair. We emptied an entire minibar and worked through a six-pack of condoms before he finally fell into a tundra-deep sleep. That’s when I had the chance to rifle through his jacket pockets and to find, sewn in the liner, the answer to that innermost need.

“Would you like to try the Number 5?” I say to my very next customer. “It’s the all-time classic you know.”

He doesn’t, or so he claims, a manicured dude in a blue Zegna suit, with a matching Brioni tie and pocket square. Cartier glasses, Patek Philippe watch, and a face that could have graced a mountain climber’s manual. His smile is crevice-like. “Whatever you recommend,” he said. “I trust in your expert judgment.”

            “Perhaps the Versace instead.”

I dapple a drop on my inner wrist and let him grip it and whiff. The eyes behind his lenses swim. “Enticing, indeed,” he swoons.

        “Spicy. Mysterious.” My smile is cavernous. It closes on the smallest tip of tongue. “Forbidden.”

            From there, the routine is unaltered—except for one bitty detail.

            “But this scent is my favorite,” I tell him. “Guaranteed to win any woman’s heart. That and other organs.”

            He laughs as I select another bottle, this one unlabelled, and spill the tiniest droplet on his wrist. The golden fluid spreads and sinks in. He breathes and then looks up quizzically. “I can’t smell anything…”

            “Maybe not now, but wait,” I assure him and insist that he take down a number. “In case you have any questions. In case you want to buy more.”

He leaves and I go back to selling perfume. Two hours, four, the shift proceeds unexceptionally. Travelers come and sniff, peruse and browse, unable to decide or never intending to. I offer advice and sometimes my wrist, which has begun to smell like ambrosia.

Somewhere, though, I know his plane is cruising at altitude. High over the ocean or mountain range, and already the attendants are serving. He’ll order a martini, maybe, or a Scotch on the rocks. Perhaps he’ll strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to him—another corporate type en route to his headquarters or a lonely-hearted widow happy to join him for a drink.

Two sips in, though, he’ll begin to sputter. To gag and choke and froth at the corners of his mouth. He’ll try to apologize but the words will get stuck in his gullet. He’ll struggle to breathe but cannot inhale, not even the trace of perfume. Someone will call for a doctor—the attendant will plead into his phone—but the passenger has already reached his destination. The passenger has already deplaned.

Back in the terminal, I will sell another ampul, another flask of liquified scent. All who enter will receive the same hospitality, the same unfettered willingness to help. And to the men seeking special gifts for their beloveds, I will continue to have just the thing. The one aroma that will never dwindle, that will always remind them of their duty to me and to all women like me. Which can never, in fact, be free.