* * *

It was Christmas 1941. We were 14 years old and I was in love. Well, maybe it was puppy love, but I sure liked Cherie Nierstheimer. In October, I invited her to the Bloomington High School homecoming dance even though the square step was my only talent. Now I wanted to get her a special gift for Christmas. But what?

“How about perfume?” my sister Roberta, already a sophisticated sophomore, suggested.

“What kind?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about perfume.”

“Do you know what perfume she wore to the homecoming dance?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, of course you don’t,” she said.

I thought of another problem. Her father owned the most popular drug store in town, so I was wary of shopping there.

“If we buy it at Nierstheimer’s Drug,” I said, “he’ll know that I bought her perfume for Christmas.”

“We’ll buy it at Biasi’s,” Roberta said.

On a gloomy December afternoon, Roberta and I walked the five blocks to Biasi’s. In the brightly-lit interior, tinsel icicles hung from red and green Christmas garlands draped across the ceiling. We stopped where I never before had paused -- at the women's cosmetics counter.

Roberta asked the clerk for perfume samples. Squeezing the rubber bulbs at the top of each bottle, she sprayed each scent on her wrist, waving her arms in the air to dry them.

"Here, sniff this,” she directed. “Do you like it?”

“Sure,” I said two or three times. I was less concerned with the smell than I was with the price because this gift was coming out of earnings from my lawn mowing jobs.

We left the store with a small bottle of Evening in Paris, a popular perfume of the day, sold in a deep-blue art deco bottle.

“She’ll like it,” Roberta assured me.

But all I could think was, geez, you don’t get much for your money!

* * *

When Cherie un-wrapped her small package on Christmas Eve, I learned she was not one to dance on her tippy-toes and smother me with kisses while accepting a gift. Nor was I prepared for this: “Oh, Evening in Paris,” she said nonchalantly. “Did you buy it at Daddy’s?”

I was caught short. Try to explain to a merchant’s daughter why you didn’t buy her gift at her father’s store. I took the easy way out. I told the truth. “I bought it at Biasi’s so it would be a surprise.”

“I love it,” she said quietly, smiling. She lifted the stopper, dribbling some on her fingers, and swished it behind her ears.

“Here, sniff it,” she said.

I still can’t tell you whether it was the smile or the perfume that kept me coming back, but we’ve been married for 58 years.

* * *

It was 1950, my graduate year at Northwestern University. Cherie and I had been married just over a year. I was juggling studying, part-time work as a student faculty assistant and clerking in the library. And I was job hunting. Cherie was supporting us as a reservations agent for Trans World Airlines.

We were married in January, 1949, in the middle of the school year. Time being short, we settled on a long honeymoon weekend in the South. We made it as far as Olive Branch, Mississippi, and returned with $2.70 cents in our pockets.

As a reservations agent, Cherie was eligible for passes on flights world-wide. So when we decided to take a postponed honeymoon the following spring, she chose Paris.

On our arrival at Orly Field, we paused to change traveler’s checks into francs which I rolled into a wad and stuffed into my jacket pocket. After a bus ride to the central city air terminal, we carried our bags to a small hotel near the Opera.

For $2.50 a night, we got a third floor room with a balcony and a private bathroom. The furniture was old, the plumbing ancient. But the hotel was clean and with the balcony door open, the far-off traffic on the boulevards resonated with the rhythms of George Gershwin’s American in Paris.

The most distinguishing feature of the hotel lobby was an open sided elevator of ornate ironwork. A trip-wire signaled its arrival at each of the three floors with a bo-in-in-gg. All night long as the guests came and went in gay Paree, the trip-wire signaled their arrival and departure with a bo-in-in-gg, then seconds later, bo-in-in-gg, and bo-in-in-gg. This too was part of the ambience of Paris.

* * *

Cherie wanted her first night in Paris to be romantic – dinner and wine at a small Parisienne café, like you see in movies. We bathed, hung our traveling clothes in the closet and set out to find the proper café. Strolling the neighborhood, we made our choice.

It was small – let’s call it “intimate” for this occasion. There were maybe three or four rows of petite tables, each with a white tablecloth, a bud-vase with two spring daffodils and a flickering candle. It was expected that guests would enjoy wine for dinner, so there was an array of sparkling glasses at each place setting.

Neither of us can remember our selection from the menu, but we do remember that the entrees were saucily French – rich with thick, creamy gravy. And the French bread was sliced in chunks so the aroma became part of the flavor. The dinners were delicious, served with the expected flourish of French waiters, with much scraping of bread crumbs and a wish for bon appetit as each course was served. We ordered crepes for dessert, and as we waited for them to be grilled, we drank a toast to Paris.

As our wine glasses clinked together, a sobering realization welled into my throat. I had left my francs in the pocket of the jacket that was hanging in the hotel room closet. All I had with me was American money which, by law, the proprietor could not accept.

Suddenly, our romantic evening wasn’t so romantic. The proprietor had been watching this sudden shift in our demeanor and alertly walked over to our table.

“Did you enjoy your dinner?” he asked.

“Oui,” I replied. "But we have a problem.” Reaching for my wallet, I said, “I can pay you in traveler’s checks or dollars.” He nervously glanced at the other patrons. “Non. Non,” he replied. “There is a gentleman --.“

He left the sentence unfinished as he slipped out the door.

“Black market,” I whispered to Cherie.

Moments later, he returned with a grungy-looking character, wearing a beret and a grimy military coat, in tow.

“This gentleman will help you,” he said, easing me out of my seat and onto the sidewalk.

Grimy Coat followed me out the door. I hoped that I wasn’t walking into a trap. The black market in American dollars was commonplace in those days, but illegal.

I waved to Cherie as I left the café. She waved back, her face pleading “Don’t go!” But there was no turning back.

Grimy Coat kept his distance, but beckoned that I should follow. We walked for about a half block when he motioned me into a recessed doorway. It was dark and smelled of urine.

“American dollars?” he asked in English. He smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

I handed him two $20 bills. He held them up so he could see their denomination from the light of a dim street lamp. Then he took out a bundle of francs.

As he counted, I glanced over his shoulder at a storefront sign framed by the doorway, BOULANGERIE. Bakery. Ah yes, this must be the place where they make that great bread served at the café.

Grimy Coat handed me the francs. I thanked him as I started back to the restaurant, and Cherie. After a few steps, I looked back. He had mysteriously disappeared.

The proprietor was waiting for my return. I counted out the francs and a generous tip for his financial services.

We made our way back to the hotel in near silence and walked past the night clerk, only nodding in response to his grunted “bon soir.” We stepped into the elevator cage and pressed the button for the third floor.

“Bo-in-in-gg,” it chimed. “Bo-in-in-gg, Bo-in-in-gg.”

We laughed together as we closed our room door.

* * *

Fast forward three score and two years. Carol Lupia is talking about Evening in Paris, the perfume counterfeited in the bottle being passed around the table. “It’s been off the market for several years,” she says. I knew because I had been trying to buy it all those years.

The other members ooh-ed and aah-ed about it. They talked about the similarity in the coloring of the bottle. They noted that it was not called Evening in Paris. Instead, it was re-labeled Soir de Paris, the French translation. One woman who tested the scent observed that it also was “not quite the same.” No one could describe the difference, but there was general agreement that it was “different.”

My mind was elsewhere. “Where did you get it?” I asked.

“From the Vermont Country Store,” Carol answered. “You can find it on the internet.”

That’s all I needed to hear. I fervently wanted that cobalt blue bottle of perfume. Aladdin, by rubbing an ancient lamp, released a genie who fulfilled any request, from riches to happiness.

But from the bottle of Soir de Paris, I could liberate an even greater force: Love!

And I did, again, that Christmas Eve.