42
" This here is a Trachycarpus fortunei. A Chinese windmill palm."
The fans bounced up and down as they were released from the burlap, cooling Exley and me like we were on a veranda in South China.
"Sugar comes from the sap of this plant," he said. "And upholstery stuffing, too. Hairbrushes, paint varnish, rosary beads, chess pieces, hats, dress buttons, hot-water bottles, margarine, cooking oils, shampoos, conditioners, cosmetics, moisturizers, doormats, soap, tin cans, and starch for Laundromats. It all comes from the palm tree. "
― Margot Berwin , Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire
44
" He opened his hand, and inside was a tiny lavender-colored flower with a small stem.
"Well, well, well. Look what we have here. Mr. Exley left us a present. Cichorium intybus. Chicory. The plant of freedom and one of the nine plants. He used it to get out of the basement, and then he left us a cutting as a courtesy. Your Mr. Exley has a good sense of humor."
"He's not my Mr. Exley."
"Unimportant. This little petal tells us how he got out of here."
"He broke a deadbolt with a flower petal?"
"In a sense, yes. Cichorium intybus is a perennial related to the dandelion. It's cultivated in England and Ireland and from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to the plains. It is not cultivated here, in South America. He brought it with him!"
"For what?"
"For its magical properties. The plant has a long, thick taproot filled with a bitter milky-white juice. The ancient Egyptians believed that if the juice is rubbed on the body it promotes invisibility, and removal of obstacles. The Mayans called it the plant of freedom, for the same reason. "
― Margot Berwin , Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire
45
" Michael's house was on Magazine Street across from a little diner called Johnny River. It was a local, homemade-looking place with a screen door and dishes that didn't match. The kind of place tourists never find unless they're visiting a friend in New Orleans who happens to live in the neighborhood.
The eggs came three on a plate, over easy but still hot in the center, perfectly done, with two biscuits, gravy, sausage, grits, and hot sauce on the side, and because of them I liked Michael just a little bit more after breakfast than I had before.
I walked across the street listening to the screen door slam behind me. His house was the second in from the corner. A narrow Victorian painted lilac on the outside with cream-colored steps, chipped and sunken in the middle from who knows how many years and how many footsteps. "
― Margot Berwin , Scent of Darkness
47
" The scent had left a red mark on my neck like a boy had been sucking there.
He put his finger on the mark.
"Does it hurt?"
It didn't, but I felt the liquid inside of me as if I'd drunk it down instead of putting it on my skin. Warmth spread through my limbs like the poison might from a scorpion's tail, branching and branching until it was trapped against the edges of my body, pooling in my fingertips and my toes, with nowhere to go.
As the moments passed a definite scent came up through my pores. It began slowly. First from the inside of my arms, and then from my palms. It rose from my legs and then my thighs and then my breasts. Yes. It was coming from everywhere. Fire and jasmine, leather and rose. I was a repository for Louise's life's work, alive, and inside of me.
"Can you smell it?" I asked Gabriel.
He put his face so close to my body I could feel the moisture from his breath.
"I can."
Gabriel and I faced each other on the bed. We sat there for hours, I had no idea either of us possessed that kind of patience. Slow as time the scent ripened and deepened, growing more remote and strange with each passing minute. Hot and dark and sweet, my fragrance was as mesmerizing as looking up and seeing a fire on the moon.
It was not like any type of perfume that I knew but like nature itself, organically beautiful, as if the scent had been made from the inside of my body and hadn't come from the vial at all. As if it had been sitting inside me for years, a wine that had finally found its perfect moment.
Gabriel breathed in this new part of me. He seemed unfocused and unable to stand up or let go of my hands.
"What's it like for you?" I asked him.
He leaned closer, closed his eyes and inhaled.
"Like sweetness," he said, "with a little bit of poison that makes the sweetness, sweeter. "
― Margot Berwin , Scent of Darkness
51
" Cacao
(Theobroma cacao)
Theobroma cacao, translated from the Greek to mean "food of the gods," is one plant that will never let you down. Through the good times and the bad, in times of high anxiety and too much stress, during relationship problems when it seems that all of the passion is gone, when there is no one around to talk to, or when no one will listen, understand, or believe in you, Theobroma cacao, otherwise known as chocolate, is always there to make you feel better. "
― Margot Berwin , Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire
56
" Brushing past me on his way out he smelled like musk. Like something Louise called an animalic, the scent from the gland of a male deer.
He turned around in the middle of the hallway.
"My name's Gabriel, I thought you should know since I've been inside of your grandmother's house."
Like the archangel, I thought, the impact of Loretta's Catholicism making a rare appearance in my mind. I made a mental note to look up the angel Gabriel and see what deeds he had done to deserve his angel status.
When Gabriel was gone his glandular scent, earthy and sweet, lingered in the room. I remembered Louise telling me that a good scent should not smell like a perfume, but like nature itself, including all aspects of the natural world, dark and animal as well as light and floral. "Love includes the bad as well as the good," she'd said, "the evil as well as the kind, and so should the scent that induces it. "
― Margot Berwin , Scent of Darkness
60
" The model stripped down naked and stood with her arms out to her sides while genderless cohorts sprayed her body with large silver canisters of foundation. They wore masks over there faces and sprayed her from head to toe like they were putting out a fire. They airbrushed her into a mono-toned six-foot-two column of a human being with no visible veins, nipples, nails, lips, or eyelashes. When every single thing that was real about the model was gone, the make up artist fug through a suite case of brushes and plowed through hundreds of tubes of flesh colored colors and began to draw human features onto her face. At the same time, the hair stylist meticulously sewed with a needle and thread strand after strand of long blond hairs onto her thin light brown locks, creating a thick full mane of shimmering gold. The model had brought her own chef, who cooked her spinach soup from scratch. The soup was fed to her by one of her lackeys, who existed solely for this purpose. The blond boy stood in front of her, blowing on the soup and then feeding it to her from a small silver child's spoon, just big enough to fit between her lips. the model's mouth was barely open, maybe a quarter of an inch wide, so that she would not crack the flesh colored paint. "
― Margot Berwin , Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire