I was dreaming a very pleasant dream about winning the Nobel Prize for Obscure Canadian Writers (a relatively new category, to be sure. I was in the middle of a long speech thanking everybody from the Fathers of Confederation to Knowlton Nash for “making me what I am today.”
Then, the phone rang.
Unlike most people I know, I wake up almost instantaneously. I groped for the receiver in the dark, and (because, like most people I know, I don’t like being woken up in the middle of the night) angrily asked: “Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line pleasantly answered, “Hello, my boy. Are you free? I need to talk to somebody…” It was Professor Blunderson, but not at all the calm, self-assured Professor Blunderson that I had studied under at University. Under his pleasant manner, the Professor sounded worn down, possibly nervous, tired, or both.
I felt around the ledge of my dresser for my watch, knocking over a variety of objects I keep by my bed. Nothing tinkled like broken glass, so I momentarily ignored the mess and concentrated on pushing the button that lit the watch’s face. “Professor,” I finally exclaimed, “it’s three thirty in the morning!”
“I just got into town,” the Professor apologized. Sort of.
“I don’t care. If you want to talk to me, give me a call during the day. And, don’t ever call me in the middle of the night again!”
“But -” Click!
I turned over and tried to get back to sleep, but the phone rang a minute later. “My boy,” the professor, gaining some of his old bluster, asked, “is that any way to treat somebody you haven’t seen in a year?”
“How about those Jays?” I nastily countered.
“A minor miscalculation,” the Professor insisted, although with little conviction. “Aren’t you at all interested in where I’ve been or what I’ve been up to?”
“No,” I honestly replied, hanging up the phone once again. This time, however, to ensure that I would be disturbed no further, I pulled the jack out of the wall socket. I should have known that would only delay the inevitable.
Some time later, I was awakened by a knocking at my bedroom window. I hoped that it was merely a zombie refugee from Dawn of the Living Dead. No such luck, though; it was the Professor. “What are you doing in my back yard?” I shouted.
“I had to talk to you!” he shouted back.
I was trapped, and I knew it. I threw some clothes on and, feeling very grungy, accompanied the old man to Fran’s. I don’t particularly care for the food at Fran’s, but it was the only place we could think of that would be open at five in the morning. As usual, the Professor refused to say anything until the food was set before him.
“Do you know what pheremones are?” he finally asked me as he cut into a think blintz smothered in sour cream.
I stared dolefully at the piece of apple pie on my plate. “Yes,” I answered. “As a matter of fact, I do. They are part of an animal’s scent. It is said that they are given off to attract members of the opposite sex of the species…”
The Professor looked up at me with surprise. “Very good,” he remarked, a forkful of blintz hovering close to his mouth. He always enjoyed playing the approving teacher. “Can you see that animal pheremones could have tremendous marketing potential in the perfume industry? “
I sipped my Coke thoughtfully. “Hasn’t that already been tried?” I asked, falling into my old (friendly) adversarial role.
“Yes,” the Professor allowed. “Unsuccessfully…”
“It doesn’t sound very practical to me,” I continued to object. “What attracts animals to each other isn’t likely to attract humans to each other, now, is it?”
“Oh, no,” the Professor agreed. “Of course not. But, I’m not talking about a product that would necessarily work, I’m talking about a product that is new enough to be marketed profitably…”
I saw the game at once. “Why should this interest you?” I asked, suspiciously wiping my mouth with a napkin.
Professor Blunderson lowered his fork confidentially. “Just before I left the country, I was approached by a company…Scents for Cents…I don’t suppose you’ve heard of them?”
I admitted that I hadn’t.
“Have you heard of MultNatCorp?”
I whistled. (I know, I know – could there be a more retro gesture? Well, I get retro when I haven’t had enough sleep.) “Hasn’t everybody?”
The Professor looked me in the eye and poked himself in the chin with his fork. Fortunately, whatever had been on it had long since fallen off. “I was hired to do research on extracting pheremones from the secretions of cat glands and introducing it into a perfume. Can you begin to understand what that meant to me? Finally, a chance to get away from the University and prove myself with some real scientific research!
“I jumped at the opportunity.”
“You left without a word to anybody?” I asked, incredulous.
“I,” the Professor stated, full of self-importance, “was immediately flown to a top secret research facility on the outskirts of a city I am sworn not to identify…well, alright, Pittsburgh. Of course, isolating the pheremones was simple enough, and introducing them into perfume was even easier. The whole operation took less than three months from start to finish…”
“Then, what’s the problem?” I asked, impatient. I had long since finished my pie, it was starting to get light outside, and I was only interested in cutting the interview short and returning to bed.
“They started marketing the perfume too soon,” Professor Blunderson explained, then turned to the waitress to order a milkshake. I hated when he did that! “There was a strong ad campaign in six major American markets and, before I had a chance to properly test the perfume on human subjects, hundreds of thousands of bottles had been sold.
“Then, reports of side effects started coming in…”
“Side effects?” I asked. Curiousity. It’s a curse.
The Professor looked grave. “Some women who used the perfume started to grow whiskers, others could not sleep at night. There was even a case of a woman howling at the moon…”
I laughed. “Really?”
“It wasn’t true,” the Professor insisted, “but, I was finished. I took the first plane out of there…”
I tried, not wholly successfully, to match the Professor serious mood. “Of course,” I glumly stated, “that’s why the other companies discontinued their research into pheremones. Still, this will probably hurt your reputation…”
The Professor shrugged. “I’m lucky to have gotten out of the country with my life,” he sadly told me. “I’ve heard that MultiNatCorp does not forgive failure easily. Do you…do you think I’ll be able to get another appointment somewhere?”
“Professor,” I replied in earnest, “the academic world is where you belong.”
We both smiled, although, I’m sure, for very different reasons.