Parfum Ch 01

All characters are over the age of 18. All the science in this story is utter bunk. This series of stories involves a very slow build-up which is just the way I like it. This is also my first attempt at writing fiction. Be warned, impatient ones!

This tale is about the stereotypical quiet, nerdy dweeb who with the rest of his bespectacled brethren populates school corridors everywhere. While James Calvin Harrison III is his rather presumptuous name, it is

inconspicuous

which is his functional moniker. This 18-year-old hero's primary interest lies in the field of Chemistry where he is truly gifted, and a chemistry lab is where this story begins.

James was in his favourite place--the lab. Thanks to his interest in the subject, his chemistry teacher--Mrs. Saunders--was allowing him to spend an hour after school in the lab in exchange for helping her clean up every day. What she didn't really know was that

she

herself was the reason why his interest in the subject had blossomed. She, he thought, was breathtakingly beautiful and she always had a smile for him. While Mrs. Saunders had initially been very strict in supervising all his experiments, she was now satisfied that James was careful and methodical in anything that he did and therefore, largely left him alone. She did pop in every now and then though, just in case.

For the last couple of weeks, James had been working on a pet project to create his own perfume. He'd stolen an expensive bottle of Chanel from his mother's dressing table and had been busy breaking it down and analysing its contents. The fragrance was far more complex and fascinating than he had initially thought with multiple layers of chemicals working together to produce a final product that James could only describe as harmonious. The key appeared to be the use of

geranyl acetate

, an ester which formed the base of the perfume and provided the foundation that allowed all the chemicals to complement rather than compete with each other. By swapping one of the ingredients with others he'd extracted from flowers samples from his Mum's garden, James was able to subtly alter the scent. He meticulously stored all successful results in vials and labelled them. Before leaving each day, he'd ask Mrs. Saunders to give her opinion on any interesting fragrances that he'd come up with and she was quite happy to do so--well, which woman wouldn't?

On this particular evening, James had supplanted musk with jasmine and it had come out rather well. Just as he was finishing up, Mrs. Saunders, well, sauntered in.

"All done, Coco?" she asked, grinning. (Coco as in Coco Chanel, you see.)

"Oui, Madame," James replied. "Want to check this one out?"

"Sure. What's in it?" She stretched out her hand for him.

"You tell me," he smiled as he placed a drop of the perfume on a piece of tissue and rubbed it on her inner wrist.

Mrs. Saunders brought her wrist up to her nose and inhaled deeply. She had her eyes closed as she did so and James watched as her chest rose appreciably. While she was no centrefold model, Mrs. Saunders had the kind of curves that men respond to unconsciously and even though she usually chose to dress conservatively in long skirt and rather nondescript blouses, her assets still shone through. One of James' friends had called her a Norse Mother Goddess, what with her blonde hair, striking blue eyes, child-bearing hips, and tits that could nurse the world, if required.

"Jasmine!" she exclaimed. "You've added jasmine in today, and," she paused, "removed lemon, which I guess makes it

myrcene

. It's less heady."

"One out of two," nodded James. "I didn't remove lemon. I removed musk."

"Oooh! I like it, Coco. Can I get another sample to take home?"

"Sure. Just remember that you're still bound by the NDA," he grinned. She rolled her eyes.

James carefully prepared a vial for her as she watched on.

"You're turning into a professional, James," she remarked as she accepted the vial. She wasn't exaggerating either. What James was able to do at his age was simply astounding. "Time to close shop. Get me when you're done and I'll give you a ride home."

James watched as Mrs. Saunders left the lab. He didn't think that she really intended to, but she had a natural sashay to her gait which caught his attention every time.

###

Mrs. Saunders had a cosy Elantra and she mothered over James making sure that he'd strapped himself in correctly. She lived ten minutes away from him, but usually dropped him off near an intersection close to his house. They often chatted about Chemistry during the drive and she liked to give him a lot of career advice telling him about her own days at university.

"So, do you think you've had enough practice with chemical decomposition and playing around with them?" she asked him.

"I guess. But I think that I've just scratched the surface on how perfumes really work. I don't really understand how each ingredient really fits with each other. Maybe I should major in Chemistry and minor in Art."

"That's not a bad idea, actually," she replied. "Do you have any artsy skills?"

"Not really. I can play the piano a little, I suppose. And I'm pretty good with PS."

"PS?"

"Photoshop."

"Oh! I knew that," she laughed.

James smiled. He imagined that life in the Saunders house must be really fun.

"Do you have any children, Mrs. Saunders?" he asked on impulse.

His teacher's face clouded over immediately and she looked at him sharply.

"No, I don't. Why do you ask?" she questioned him.

James quailed at her tone of voice.

"It's nothing, Mrs. Saunders," he said.

"It can't be nothing. There must have been a reason for you to ask that question. Did someone say something to you?"

"Nothing like that, Mrs. Saunders. I just thought that you'd be a fun mother to have," he said softly. "I'm sorry if I offended you."

Mrs. Saunders' face immediately changed and a tear formed in her eye. She pulled the car over to the side of the road.

"Oh, sweetie. I'm sorry if I scared you. That's the most beautiful thing that anybody has said to me in a long time."

She placed her hand on James' knee and squeezed gently. She took a breath and composed herself.

"No, sweetheart," she continued. "I don't have any kids. My husband and I have been ... trying for many years now and have been unable to have any."

"Oh," James didn't really know how to sympathise with her. He placed his hand on Mrs.Saunders' and squeezed back. "I'm really sorry to hear that."

Tears had now started streaming down Mrs.Saunders' face and she began to sob quietly. All James could think of doing was to hold her hand. After a minute, she appeared to gather herself removing her hand from his knee and reaching into the back seat to retrieve her bag. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed below her eyes to remove the tears without messing her make-up too much.

"Give me a moment, James. I guess I've weirded you out, huh?"

"It's alright, Mrs.Saunders. I'm sorry I brought up such a difficult topic."

"It's OK. You weren't to know. Now, let's get my favourite student home," she said, reaching out and mussing his hair.

They reached his intersection soon enough and Mrs. Saunders pulled over.

"Here you are, James. I guess I'll see you tomorrow," she smiled weakly.

"Thanks for the ride. See you tomorrow, Mrs. Saunders.", he said as he got out of the car.

"And James.", she called out. "Can we please keep that conversation between us? It's rather personal."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Saunders."

"And I think that you can call me Jill when it's just the two of us."

James smiled.

"OK. Will do. See ya!", he said, taking a step back onto the sidewalk.

Jill smiled back as she pulled away.

###

The next day was Friday and James endured through one mundane class after another. The only highlight was Chem with Mrs. Saunders which woke him up. He also laughed inwardly when she flashed him a broad smile which Kevin Mulligan--who sat in front of him--thought was directed at him. Eventually, the last bell rang and James made his way to the lab. Mrs. Saunders was already there, busy with an experiment. She was concentrating on a flask which was being heated and hadn't seen him yet. James noticed that his collection of perfume vials was also on the table. "What was she doing?!" he thought.

"Hello, Mrs. Saunders," he said.

Mrs. Saunders yelped in surprise.

"You scared the hell out of me, James," she complained. She noticed that he was looking at his collection of vials. "I hope you don't mind that I took this down without your permission. I really wanted to analyse the vial you gave me yesterday."

"I don't mind. But what are you looking for?"

"Oh, I'm just trying to figure out the ingredients," she replied, unconvincingly.

"There's a detailed list in my notes," James offered.

"Yes, I know. I just wanted to check on something."

"I ... see."

James waited uncomfortably.

"Oh, what the hell! Maybe you can help me with this," an exasperated Mrs. Saunders exclaimed. "But you have to keep this to yourself. Breathe one word of this to anybody else and I'll ... I'll have your

balls

! Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mrs. Saunders," said a confused-looking James.

"And for god's sake, call me Jill."

"Yes, Mrs. S-- Jill," James stammered.

He had no idea what was going on with Jill. But he could sense that she needed his help.

"Are you familiar with pheromones, Coco?" she asked him.

"Kinda. They are chemicals that work as signals," he replied.

"What kind of signals?" she prompted in her teacher-voice.

James cleared his throat. "They're released during the mating process."

"The mating process?" Jill laughed out loud. "But you're right. While certain types are released to indicate and promote

sexual

availability, others are released during times of danger or anxiety. Some animals emit pheromones when they find food."

Jill paused.

"What I'm trying to do here, Coco, is to imbue your perfume with pheromones." Jill let that sink in.

"Oh," was all she got in reply.

"Do you remember our conversation yesterday in the car when I said that I couldn't have kids?"

James nodded.

"Well, the problem we are having is sexual and that is what I'm trying to fix here. I hate to say this, but I'm really struggling. Do you think you can help me?"

He hesitated.

"Please?!"

James sighed inwardly. "I don't really know much about this. But I'll help in any way I can."

Jill's eyes lit up. She quickly crossed over to him and gave him a tight hug. James was too stunned to hug her back and simply stood petrified with uncertainty.

"Again, please keep all this to yourself. What I am doing is technically unethical and illegal. But I really need this, OK?" she whispered into his ear.

She felt him nod.

She squeezed him again and broke her hug. "Thank you, Coco. Now, get me that list of ingredients."

###

The next week had James reading up extensively on human sex pheromones and their chemical composition. Jill had provided him with a truck-load of books on the subject and was swimming through a load of them herself. They also met after school every day to discuss the task. Jill had sat him down one day and explained that while she and her husband, Frank, had visited a number of therapists over the last two years, tests found nothing wrong with them physically. Although things had been fine in the early part of their relationship, they were simply no longer getting

aroused

by each other even though they were still very much in love. The therapists were just as perplexed as they were. But a few had suggested experimenting with foreplay to see if that could trigger arousal.

James was slowly getting used to hearing Jill being touchy-feely with him and using words like foreplay and arousal. But it still embarrassed him to no end. Jill took particular delight in seeing him grow red in the face. In many ways, she felt fifteen years younger flirting with her innocent student.

Jill and Frank had, she said, tried many ... "experiments" and finally given up. Or at least,

he

had.

"Frank is fed up with all the doctor visits and quack consultations we've been through. He simply wants us to adopt a child. But I'm going to give this one last shot before taking such a drastic step. I'm only 34, you know. I still have some time left before I have to make a decision."

"What do you mean?" James asked.

"About my age? Fertility in women will drop as they grow older reducing their chances of getting pregnant. Things usually go downhill after 35-36 and become difficult after 40."

"Oh. I see."

"What about IVF or something like that?" he asked.

"We already tried that and we were apparently unsuitable candidates. Anyway, I recently read a paper in

Nature

on the role of pheromones in foreplay and the powerful physical reactions that smell can trigger. So, I've been experimenting by applying scented oils and others perfumes to see if I can get a reaction. The best results I've had so far have been with

patchouli

-based scented oils and, for your information, your jasmine perfume."

"What? Really?," James exclaimed. She nodded.

"Which is why I was tinkering around with it the other day. What I want to do is to perhaps isolate the key ingredients in both your perfume and the oil and make a more potent scent."

Over the next two weeks, James and Jill met regularly after school to breakdown the two scents into their constituent parts. James already knew what went into his perfume. While Jill analysed it, James analysed her

patchouli

-oil. Once the decomposition was done, they began comparing the structures of each ingredient against a table of known pheromone structures. Jill also ordered a batch of chemicals that they used to synthesise their own pheromones. After much mixing and matching, they finally arrived at seven candidates.

"So, how are we going to test this?" James asked.

"Hmm. I was thinking of mixing a base scent along with each candidate and testing it out at home."

"OK. But how will you know that it's working?" he pressed.

"What do you mean? We'll want to have sex. His penis will get

rock

hard and my vagina will get

dripping

wet." She smirked at his expression.

Red-faced (yet again), James spluttered, "I know

that

. But how will you quantify how well they work?"

"For the time being, I simply want it to work once," Jill replied.

"Oh. I guess that makes sense."

She grinned. "Let's concoct some love juice, shall we?"

Together they prepared each of the candidates and filled seven labelled bottles with their concoctions.

Jill sighed in exhaustion and stretched her body as she did so. "Ready to go home?" she asked looking at James pointedly as he ogled her chest. James hurriedly shifted his focus back to her face and nodded.

###

The next few weeks did not go as expected. While Jill was initially excited at the ... chemistry that seemed to have reblossomed between her husband and herself, they were unable to carry it forward. After testing the first five candidates, tempers had frayed and they were now not even speaking to each other. Jill had been very chirpy at school for the first week or so, but her demeanour gradually grew glum. She tended to become very testy in the evenings and even snapped at James a couple of times. Although she quickly apologised, James hadn't been spending as much time in the labs as before. It was only a couple of weeks later that James noticed in class that Jill was looking really wan with dark bags under her eyes. While he was hesitant to meet her, he decided to visit the lab later that evening.

Just as he was about to enter the laboratory a few hours later, he noticed that Jill was already in. While she was seated at her table, she was spacing out with a vacant look in her eyes. As he moved in quietly, she gradually became aware of his presence and shifted her gaze to him.

"Hi," she said weakly.

"Hey," he replied. "Are you OK?"

Jill could only shake her head as she cast her eyes downward to the ground. James noticed that her hand was trembling slightly. While he would have normally simply muttered an inanity and left, something about her posture cried out to him plaintively. He moved over to her, but didn't know what to do. In the end, he simply placed his hand over hers. She jerked her head upwards and the dam burst. She stood up, reaching out to him, and hugged him tightly.

"Frank has left me," she sobbed. "He thinks I've become too pushy and obsessed with having a baby."

James simply held her tight as she wept her heart out. He cursed himself for being distracted by the feeling of her breasts pressing against him. Jill continued weeping as she told him how Frank had moved out and was now living in a motel refusing to answer any of her calls.

"Is it really that wrong for me to want a baby of my own?" she asked him.

"No, it isn't," he replied as he rubbed her back slightly.

"Then why is he pushing me away? Am I to ugly for him now?" she continued.

James didn't know whether this was a rhetorical question (he rarely did). He chose the safer option of answering it.

"Not at all, Jill. You are beautiful. One of the most beautiful people I know."

She burrowed into his chest some more. He shoulders shook as she wept softly.

"Maybe your husband is tired of the repeated disappointments? Or perhaps he's feeling guilty for some reason?" he ventured after a while.

"So he leaves me? What am I supposed to do?"

James sighed. "I don't know. Maybe you should try to perfect the experiment and then ask him to try it one last time? How did the seven candidates fare?"

"I only got to try five of them and two of them were reasonably promising but failed in the end."

Jill pulled herself together and withdrew from his embrace.

"OK. Can I see the data on these? Then we'll try to put together something with a good success rate that you can try again with Frank."

Jill looked up at him and sighed. She nodded her agreement.

###

It took a while for James to become familiar with Jill's notes. She had neatly tabulated each of her "field tests" of the candidates with detailed notes where necessary. The table headings were a little cryptic at first.

"What do M, E, D, and A stand for?"

"They stand for Moisture, Erection, Duration, and overall Arousal on a scale of 1 to 5," Jill explained.

"Oh," James coughed. "Moisture?"

"It quantifies how wet I became during arousal. These figures are not very reliable. But they are the best criteria I could come up with to gauge the effects of each candidate," she explained rather matter-of-factly.

James blushed on cue. "OK. It looks like the arousal only lasts for about two minutes."

"Yes, that's right. We didn't necessarily get aroused at the same time either."

So, it seemed that Jill had been right. There were certain groups of synthesised pheromones that were more successful than others. The use of

patchouli

was key. Other ingredients were effective in varying degrees with a synthetic form of ambergris also appearing to have a positive effect. But the problem appeared to be that only one of the subjects was getting aroused at any one time and the effects were not lasting long enough, which presumably was what led to the shortening of tempers.

Armed with the data, James set about trying to figure out how to improve the formulae. He first decided to not work on just one, but two versions of each candidate, a "his" and "hers". He boosted all the chemicals that worked on Frank for the male batch that he was calling

Eve

. He similarly boosted the chemicals that worked on Jill to create candidates for females, which he called

Adam

. Over the next few days, James had created three candidates each of Adam and Eve and was ready to begin testing. But therein lay the rub. He needed test subjects and Jill's situation with her husband ruled them out.