The Object of My Desire

I stole a bottle of perfume once. I was a child. It was a large, gorgeous bottle, sitting like a jewel in a lovely velvet box. It was on display in a bathroom, in a Coursegoules secondary home of friends of my parents. We had a spare key and permission to use the house in their absence.

The first time I saw the bottle in its bed of velvet, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It seemed to me the epitome of loveliness, so pretty and sparkling in that luxurious velvet box! I  How I coveted it!

The second time, it was calling my name even more urgently. I wanted it!

I stole it.

I kept caressing the soft velvet. It was blissful. It was mine.

My next brilliant idea was to offer this treasure to my mom as a present, for a birthday or mother's day. I can still hear my mom's delight -and wonder, as she unwrapped her magnificent present. I was on top of the world.

Then, PATATRAS!

My mom tried to open the bottle to smell it (to do so had never even crossed my mind) and find she couldn't. 

It was a demo, a display, a fake! Oh catastrophe!

The fall was brutal. My parents asked where I had gotten it. Miserable now, as everything came crashing down, I lied of course, and said a store. But my parents were so incensed by the idea that someone had sold an innocent little girl a fake bottle that they insisted on being told exactly where I had gotten it. They were up in arms for my sake and there was going to be hell to pay for the seller.

I burst into tears... and the awful truth eventually came out. Oh the shame, the embarrassment and disappointment. I had been betrayed. My most precious possession was nothing but a lure, and on top of it, I had to reveal my stealing it! I was so crushed my parents couldn't find the heart to scold me as harshly as I expected. A mellow reprimand  was all I got. 

And on the next visit, the useless bottle, nestled in its precious case, regained its rightful place in our friends' bathroom, waiting, I'm sure, to seduce and let down the next naive little girl.