Cleopatra's Perfume

I laughed, my breasts heaving up and down. “You tell a wonderful story, Ramzi, but I’m still not convinced.”

Smiling, his dark eyes challenging me, he removed a small amount of the solid perfume from the alabaster box sitting upon the dresser. How did it get there? Then he rubbed the unguent between his fingers and applied the perfume to his bare chest. Next, he untied my wrists and removed the dagger from his waistband and placed it in my hand, the curving edge pricking his skin until a drop of blood appeared.

“Drive the blade deep into my heart,” he said.

“I can’t. I won’t.”

“Do it.”

“No.”

“You must. If I’m threatened with a violent death I will disappear.”

“You believe the legend?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re willing to put your life in jeopardy to prove it to me?”

“Yes. Can’t you see how I worship you? Your eyes, your lips haunt me, your skin so fair. I have dared to explore your mysteries, but it’s not enough for me. I want you with me always. Whatever happens, Cleopatra’s perfume will protect you from danger.”

“You’re insane!”

“Yes, I’ve lost my senses, ignored reason, flung my soul into the sea to pay for my sins, but nothing is as important to me as you.”

“Ramzi, I—I…”

“Don’t speak. Let me show you how much I need you.”

Drawing the white satin coverlet down over my breasts, he pinched my nipples, then pulling it down farther still, he pushed my thighs apart and inserted his finger deep inside me. I lifted my hips to allow him easier access, groaning expectantly when he rubbed my clit back and forth in the steady rhythm he knew would take me to the brink. Before I could climax, he withdrew his finger. Would he use his tongue to take me where I wanted to go? Tension skirted across my neck and back, making me groan again. What was he waiting for?

I dropped the dagger and it rattled onto the rug, where I don’t know, didn’t care. I wanted him, hot and raw, inside me. Did I believe his wild tale? No. I admired his ardent performance, his show of bravura with the dagger, but I was a modern woman, capable of knowing a romantic version of the shell game when I saw it. Surely he knew I wouldn’t try to kill him. Then why the pretense?

I convinced myself he saw me as a woman of his world, sweeping black kohl upon my eyelids with the fantail of a white peacock. I imagined it pleased him to believe I retained the air of the veil about me and couldn’t make my own decisions. He wanted to be in control, so I let him.

I arched my back when he slid his cock into me, sighing with delirium as he began moving in me with a fierce urgency, harder and harder until I heard him gasp. I shuddered with a satisfying orgasm when I felt him shoot his hot semen into me. I made up my mind. I’d do as he asked and settle on a sum with him to purchase the artifact. What harm would it do to let him think I believed the story of Cleopatra’s perfume?

The next morning I wired Mrs. Wills to send me the funds.

Ramzi vanished soon after I gave him the money. When I heard the news, I found it difficult to breathe, the muscles of my stomach hardening while my emotions lapsed into depression. His disappearance struck me in the gut with the impact of something sharp ripping me apart. He’d thrust his dagger into me after all and I never saw it coming.

Hitting my fists into my palms, I cursed him, spat at him, then hurled my shoe against the wall and broke off the heel. Grabbing the box of Cleopatra’s perfume, the urge to throw it across my hotel room gripped me. Only the insistent ringing of the telephone stopped me from destroying it. Lady Palmer couldn’t wait to give me her take on the situation. She was convinced Ramzi was murdered, my money stolen; others said he disappeared into the desert; still others said he fled to Cairo to ply his trade of seduction under a different name, a different guise.

Whatever his reason for deserting me, I couldn’t stay in Port Said. During the summer of 1939, the port city was in a state of flux, flooded with Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Armenians, as well as Jewish refugees. I paid them little attention. My mind was too busy analyzing every moment I was with Ramzi, reliving every penetrating stare, every caress, every thrust of his cock in me. Always asking why, why I’d allowed myself to feel again, to dream, to let go and indulge in a dangerous obsession with this man. What did I know about him? Nothing. He knew me only as Lady Marlowe, dear reader, and that’s how it must remain. To reveal the details of my past would invite a certain scrutiny, perhaps danger as well, and I can’t take that chance. All you need to know is I was unsure of myself and harbored the doubt that no man, save my late husband, could love me for who I was and that I possessed no power within me to inspire such a deep love again.

Life in Port Said went on as usual. Tea dances, boring games of bridge, walks on the beach. A week, two, then three passed. My pain turned into a numbing feeling, then finally I rebelled against feeling sorry for myself. It accomplished nothing. As for the money I gave Ramzi, I controlled the fortunes of Lord Marlowe’s vast estate, so I dismissed the lost funds as nothing more than a bad debt. Eager to leave the city, I made plans to depart for Bombay with Lady Palmer and her wayward daughter, Flavia.

I should mention the young woman was no worse for wear for her interlude with Ramzi. Doe-eyed with brown hair longer than the current style, her silk dress hung loosely on her royal bones, belying the sensual sway of her hips and small waist underneath. She hadn’t forgiven me for interfering with her bawdy tryst. She refused to look me in the eye when we’d meet, though I hadn’t mentioned her indiscretion to her mother, merely that I’d found her drinking in a disreputable bar. I had my own secrets and prayed I would find an ally in the girl, but she disappointed me. She dismissed my offer of friendship with a toss of her head, as if I were invisible. To her, I was, for I wasn’t born with a title. Spoiled, beautiful, her flesh never poisoned by disillusionment, Flavia Palmer possessed the breeding I’d kill for, the manners I’d spent years learning and the resilience of youth to find another warm body to assuage her sexual hunger.

I, in turn, suffered from a fierce need to forget this man I knew as Ramzi, the perfume he gave me emitting from my soul as well as my body. Yes, I wore the perfume, and kept a small amount wrapped up in my handkerchief nestled between my breasts in my brassiere. Why? Why does a woman do anything when she’s suffering from the bitterness of love lost? I ask you, dear reader, do you know? I don’t.

What surprised me more was how much like Flavia I’d become.

I discovered this troubling aspect of my personality one afternoon when I strolled with Lady Palmer and her daughter through the open market in Port Said. Black women selling rich mocha coffees, the dried beans sun-golden in color, squatted on mats, the once-bright red fibers dulled by the impressions of their bare feet. Rows and rows of shiny amber beads adorned their necks and dark-skinned arms waving about as they hawked their trinkets and basked in the hot sun overhead.

A rotund woman in a black abaya and nose veil nudged Lady Palmer with her basket to better view the coffees, setting the Englishwoman’s feathered hat askew on her head. Lady Palmer was too shocked to react, but Flavia took the offense and pushed the woman, who turned and hissed at her like a cat. Laughing, the girl ignored her along with several dirty children gathering around her and holding out their hands for baksheesh, tips.

“What filthy, rude people,” she commented, lighting up a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to get out of here.” She blew smoke in my direction, her eyes challenging me when she said, “I only wish I’d had as good a time here as Lady Marlowe.”

Before I could give her a piece of my mind, Lady Palmer pulled the cigarette out of her daughter’s mouth and tossed it into the dirt. Half a dozen children leaped on it, including a bare-legged boy jumping off his donkey. “No smoking, Flavia. What will your father say?”

She shrugged. “What he always says. Nothing.”

Straightening her hat, the Englishwoman turned to me, her eyes sad. “I was hoping this trip would restore some civility to my daughter.”

“Too bad she didn’t get the spanking she deserves,” I retorted, smiling, knowing Flavia would scratch my eyes out if she could. Fortunately, my double entendre was lost on Lady Palmer, who was more interested in checking out the wares of a small shop selling scarabs reputed to be from King Tutankhamen’s tomb, strings of mummy beads and little bronze gods. All made in Paris.

Dallying at the shop proved to be my undoing. I picked up a stone statuette of a bare-breasted goddess, its smooth white chalky surface dirtying my navy gloves, my irritation at Flavia’s rudeness escalating when I called upon the shopkeeper to dust them. Bowing, apologizing, the poor man wiped my soiled gloves, but not to my satisfaction.

I stormed out of the shop, fuming. What was happening to me, acting like that? I began to question why I decided to travel with the girl and her mother to Bombay. Loneliness, I presume, but that was no excuse for putting up with that girl’s insolence. No, I could no longer exist in a world whose rhythms didn’t match my own. Whatever the outcome, I made my decision. Lady Palmer could travel to Bombay without me. I had other plans. I wasn’t leaving Port Said until I tracked down Ramzi, if only to give him a piece of my mind.

And to see his magnificent body again? Was my desire for adventure, sexual fever, wild fantasy that strong? Are you that much of a fool to expose your interest in him for everyone to criticize? I asked myself. Yes, and hell be damned what anyone thought.

Fueled with a new energy, I paid little attention to the young boy wiping the dirt off my shoes with a grimy rag or the little girl pestering me with a frayed pink rose. I reached into my purse and gave him one piastre. Her, two piastres. Then I hurried down the street past butcher shops, cobbler stalls, vendors selling squabs and onions, splitting a goat flock in two, and dragging Lady Palmer with me. It was almost teatime, though I needed something stronger to calm my nerves, especially with Flavia lamenting how bored she was, then tossing more barbs my way about how she couldn’t understand how a handsome man like Ramzi could be interested in an older woman.

“No wonder he left Port Said alone,” she said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder, “after he got what he wanted.”

“I’d watch what you say, Flavia, if you don’t want to spend the next six months touring the Orient with your mother.” I turned around to make certain Lady Palmer didn’t hear my remark, when a camel blocked her way, his handler nowhere to be seen. Before I could react, the animal grabbed Lady Palmer’s feathered hat between his teeth, pulling it off her head.

“My hat!” she yelled, her voice panicked.

I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. She was lucky the camel didn’t bite her ear.

“Lady Marlowe,” she begged, “you must retrieve my hat from that dirty creature! It’s a Bond Street original.”

Shaking my head, I said, “By all means, Lady Palmer.”

Racing down the narrow street after the camel, Lady Palmer’s hat between his teeth, the tassels on his saddle waving in the wind, I chased him down one winding lane then another, until I found myself in a seedier section of the city.

An area I knew all too well.

Across the street I saw the Bar Supplice, boarded up and deserted. My heart pounding, my lips moved without speaking in a silent prayer, recounting the mysterious awakening I discovered within those cavelike walls. The beauty, the sensual illumination, all still lived within me. Within seconds, that feeling dissipated. I sensed a tragic quality about it now, a world created for stimulation that continued to haunt me though its magic ceased when Ramzi left.

I barely noticed the camel had dropped the feathered hat until a young woman picked it up and handed it to me. Without glancing at her, I said, “Thank you. Lady Palmer will be most pleased.”

I opened my purse to give her two piastres, when she blurted out, “You’re British!”

Turning to look at her, I said, “Yes, I’m Lady Marlowe.”