In the autumn of 1997, I rented a friend's older small home located in mid-town Tulsa. She moved out to live and care for her elderly father. Her mother had just passed away about 2 weeks before from a long battle with cancer.
Before I was to move in, my landlord friend, myself and two others (Jane & her husband) came in one weekend to repaint the interior. The house was complety empty, not a stick of furniture or appliance in the whole place. We had the windows open to air out the house because the carpet cleaning detergent and the paint fumes were strong, but not overpowering or toxic.
We had been painting since late morning. Around 4:00pm we decided we were getting hungry. So while we waited for a pizza to be delivered we continued to paint, when we started to feel it getting cold and sort of breezy. We figured it's because the windows are open and here it is the middle of October, no wonder. So we closed all the windows and the house began to warm up a little.
We sat down on the floor to visit; the pizza was due any minute. Jane got up to go to the bathroom, just around the corner from the living room. When Jane came back she stopped in the door way and said "Who put on perfume?" We laughed at her and said none of us had. She said, "No Really, who just bathed in perfume?" We laughed again and said no one had put on any perfume, that all we smell is paint. Jane said, "No way, come here one of you, can't you smell it?" One at a time each of us got up but none of us could smell anything like perfume, but she could and she said it was getting stronger. That's when the pizza came, so we forgot about it.
While we were eating, picnic style in the middle of the living room Jane said "That is so weird! I can't smell the perfume anymore." I asked; could she smell the pizza, she said yes, how about the paint, she said yes she could.
That's when she said "I recognize it now, it was Giorgio" she knew that because it wasn't one of her favorite scents. My landlord friend literally blanched (hard to do being full blood Cherokee) and choked, spitting pizza and squirting Coca-Cola through her nose. We all started slapping her on the back, trying not to laugh, but not for long.
When she caught her breath she said "Oh my Gawd you guys! My mom wore Giorgio! All the time; she would never leave home without putting some on". Needless to say we ate really fast, washed out the paint brushes and locked up for the night. I guess my friend's mom, Rose came by to supervise and to inspect the place. There were other things that happened while I lived there. But I'll share those another time.
Thanks for reading.
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