Essential Oils
By Peggy Vincent

Roberta's husband, Jack, liked to take cruises.

Roberta didn't. She'd rather sit under an umbrella on a beach with a stack of novels on her right, a cooler of beer on her left, and the surging surf of the Atlantic straight ahead.

Boats, ships, barges, cruisers, outboards, canoes, whatever, are meant to be looked at and admired from a distance through Polarized sunglasses, she believed. They are not actually supposed to be ridden in, atop the waves. But she tried to be a good sport, and about every other year she gave in to her husband's whining of "Bahamas, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Seychelles..."

She had to wear a seasickness patch in order to walk straight, see straight, and eat, but the eating, when she could actually do it, was good, just way too good. Cruises put out three meals a day, plus buffets at mid-morning, tea-time, and before bed. Halfway into a one-week cruise through and around some anonymous chain of islands, Jack loaded his plate with crab at the salad and dessert buffet, grabbed two bottles of Danish beer, and said, "These spreads of food they put out between meals are phenomenal."

"They spread all right, all over my hips and thighs." Roberta put a lettuce leaf on her plate and topped it with three baby shrimp. "You know, by the end of this cruise, I won't even fit into the elastic-waisted yellow linen slacks I just bought."

"Don't be silly."

"I'm not being silly. I'm being realistic. I've got to find something else to do besides eat."

"Maybe you should take off the patch and start throwing up again."

"Up yours."

He waggled his eyebrows at her like Groucho, leered, and said, "Oooh, when, when? Is that a promise?"

There was no such thing as a comeback that Jack couldn't or wouldn't try to top. She patted his bum, said, "Later, dear boy," and turned back to the buffet. Passing up the Chardonnay she really wanted, she fished through the selections of designer water, rejecting one because its blue bottle reminded her of Milk of Magnesia containers. Finally she settled for Evian, took her three shrimp and water outside, and wandered around looking for a vacant deck chair in the shade.

On the left side -- port, she told herself, port, port, port. It was her fourth cruise, for heaven's sake, and high time she learn the lingo -- on the port side there seemed to be some action going on around a woman, thin as a mast, wearing a dress that appeared to have been constructed from twenty pastel scarves. All the scarves at that moment were blowing in the warm breeze, making her resemble a psychedelic flamingo caught in a hurricane.

And right beside Scarf Lady was an empty chair.

"May I?" asked Roberta, balancing her plate as she gestured toward the chair with her hip and a flick of her eyes.

"Of course," Scarf Lady said, trilling her words. "Of course, of course. Please join us. This is the aromatherapy class."

"The what? I just want to sit in the shade, actually, so..."

"Never mind, never mind, sit down and join us. Sit, sit, do sit down and make yourself comfortable."

Did the woman always say things in twos or threes? Roberta wiggled into position and set her water on the edge of an adjacent table while she pulled down her T-shirt and adjusted the crotch of her shorts.

"Oh, no, no, no!" Truly, the woman twittered like a canary every time she opened her mouth. "No, dear, please don't set that plastic bottle on the table with the aromatherapy supplies. Plastic should never come into close proximity with essential oils. Never, never."

"The essential whats?" Roberta had already snatched the offending Evian bottle from the table, glancing right and left as if expecting the Aromatherapy Police to come charging down the deck.

"The oils. The essential oils, of course. Yes, yes, yes, it's quite imperative that the essence of these oils, their healing and soothing properties, never occupy the same space with non-organic containers. It would destroy or at least irrevocably alter their most vital properties."

"Oils," said Roberta. "Ah, of course, of course." Two could play this game, she figured, and even if this woman was Loony Tunes, at least she'd found herself a seat in the shade.

The forbidden table beside her held forty or fifty of the tiniest little amber bottles she'd ever seen, each with an illegible minute label with what might be Latin words in writing the width of human hair. Then Nancy caught the fragrance of some floral -- she hated to use the word -- essence, some floral essence wafting through the air. While Scarf Lady was looking at her polite audience, Roberta picked up one of the bottles, lifted the little glass stopper, and sniffed.

Lord, lord. Gardenias to die for. She set it down -- carefully, carefully, already sure she was breaking some rule about auras or astrology or ESP -- and picked up another one. Sandlewood, maybe, or perhaps... no, not patchouli, but some musky scent that smelled utterly intoxicating. Visions of long-ago college days flooded her mind, memories of Jack when she'd first met him, of the power Shalimar and White Shoulders used to give her, of stolen weekends in seedy motels on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.

"No, oh no, put down the oils. Heavens, don't get ahead of us, dear, no, no, no. And be sure you put them next to their neighbors, that's it, exactly where you found them."

"Their neighbors. Huh?"

"These oils are living and breathing organisms, and they have feelings. They have natural affinities for other scents, so the order in which they are arranged is highly significant. Of the utmost importance, yes, the utmost."