“I have invented an honest-to-God, legitimate love potion,” she said in an awe-filled whisper. “In two weeks the human experiments will begin, but there’s no doubt as to the outcome.”
Unable to contain her elation, Sylvie boogied a little victory dance around her research lab, witnessed only by a bunch of unimpressed rats and the equally unimpressed Blanche.
“Yech!” Blanche had a profound dislike for rodents of any type, even the cute, miniature variety of rats that Sylvie used, which were more like large mice, and she stood tentatively on the far side of the room, away from the animal cages. She brushed a hand with perfectly manicured lavender nails over the front of her long, gauzy dress, as if she might be contaminated, even from that distance.
In her white lab coat, plain linen shirt, and jeans, Sylvie felt frumpy and staid next to Blanche, but after more than thirty years of friendship—thirty-three, if you counted the time they’d spent lying next to each other in high-wheeled, designer carriages while their nannies strolled them to Magnolia Park as babies—she’d long ago given up on competing with Blanche’s beauty or flair for style.
“Really, Sylv, you’ve gotta get a personal life. Watching rats have sex is not… well, normal.”
“Is that a professional opinion? From ‘The Love Astrologer’?” Sylvie asked with a grin. Blanche was a self-trained astrologer, a local radio celebrity whose “love horoscopes” were must-listening every morning across Louisiana—a combination star chart analysis and philosophy for daily living.
“I develop horoscopes for all aspects of life, not just love charts,” Blanche corrected her with a little harrumphing sound of consternation. “But you’re changing the subject, Sylv.” She let out a whoosh of exasperation. “You’ve been cooped up in this dreary place for too long, hon.”
“Do you think this is dreary?” Sylvie was so used to the dim light lab rats preferred that she no longer noticed. “You just don’t get it, Blanche. I have invented a love potion… a love potion!”
“Well, big whoop! A potion to reduce thighs… now that I could get excited about.”
“As if you have to worry about your thighs!” Sylvie made several more notes on her clipboard before casting a sidelong glance of disgust at Blanche’s perfect figure. At five-foot-ten, Blanche didn’t carry an ounce of excess fat. Sylvie, a good four inches shorter, didn’t either, but she had to work at it every single day. Darn it!
“Every woman in the world has to worry about her thighs, honey. Especially after she passes the big Three-Oh. Forget cellulite. Everything starts to swell up or slip down then.”
“That’s precisely why my discovery is so important. It moves the emphasis away from physical appearance.”
“With rat aphrodisiacs? Disgusting!”
Blanche just didn’t understand.
In this spare room, off the main laboratories of Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company that dealt almost exclusively with birth control and hormone replacement products, Sylvie had been conducting her experiments for the past year on dozens of rodent couples in their glass-walled cages. It hadn’t started out that way. She’d been immersed in her regular work involving progesterone when she noticed an elevation in pheromone levels as different ingredients were manipulated. Out of that had grown her JBX Project, which would be of special interest to any for-profit company, especially after the way Pfizer stock had almost doubled in price following the announcement in mid-’98 of its little blue pill.
Of course, there was a world of difference between Viagra and JBX, but they were both drugs that could enhance a person’s love life. The public would love it… there was no doubt about that fact in Sylvie’s mind.
She’d given her chemical formula to just the male rat, the male and female, just the female, two males, two females, every combination possible. She’d adjusted the proportions, measured heart rates and blood pressure, tested blood samples, studied changes in physical characteristics. Samson and Delilah were the standard against which all the other “guinea pigs” were studied, and they’d proven in more than a hundred encounters that physical and emotional attraction could be directed on a short-term basis.
Oh, the idea of inciting or heightening lust had been around since the beginning of time. Everything from amulets to oysters. And, of course, Viagra. But being able to orchestrate the emotions, perhaps even love itself, through chemistry, now that was a big-time breakthrough.