The Scent of Freshly Cut Timber

and other reflections on the olfactory facets of travel...

text to follow...

Yet More Soap! The Noblest of Toiletries...

Now that I have managed to cram all of my worldly possessions in a storage space measuring 8 ft x 8 ft x 10 ft--save the contents of three very heavy suitcases and a humongous and probably "against the rules" carry-on tote, I've decided to organize everything else as well, beginning with my photographic images. This has become necessary because now that I have commenced sherapop's big adventure, I am snapping photos like a ... gasp ... tourist!

In the past, I never took photos on my trips to far-away lands. Not in Japan, not in Ghana, not in Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Argentina, anywhere in Europe, nowhere. Partly because I always felt that tourists spent way too much time figuring out how to get the best photos and not enough time looking at things. Partly probably because it used to be rather cumbersome to take photos. You had to buy film, for one. You had to buy the right kind of film. Then you had to develop the film, upon which you'd find that many of the photos were not really worth developing. You kept them, of course, but the whole tedious and expensive process had a strongly deterrent effect.

Not so anymore. Now you can snap one hundred photos and be happy with ten of them and not have wasted anything at all. Yes, digital photography has made everyone into a photographer. Well, perhaps only to the extent that the internet has turned everyone into a writer (ahem). You don't even need a camera, though I have one, because I have yet to join the i-phone craze. Perhaps another day, but for now I still have a "dumb phone" and take pictures on a smart camera,  Nikon Coolpix, which honestly was one of the best investments I ever made. I had to bring it with me to New Zealand, because everything in this place is stunningly beautiful, and it's so far-flung that nearly no one is going to come here to visit me. Hard to believe, but it's not overhyped!

I was a bit daunted by the prospect of doing this, until some kind soul introduced me to Pixelresizer software. What a relief to be able to diminish file sizes by folders instead of one image at a time! So here I am organizing my ever-expanding collection of photographs on Flickr, and I found these entries in the Soap series:

So, yes, it can be truthfully said that I like soap!

Look carefully at the next image, and you'll see the bars I brought with me! Yeah, I know...

My only real defense is that I'll be here for eight months!

Part 1

Part 2

The Ubiquity of Scent

Difficult to believe though it may be, I now find myself in the position of not being able to wear any perfume--for two entire weeks! I am caring for my mother's beloved shih-tzu while she is away on a cruise with her husband (my step-dad). This seemed like a good thing for me to do. The pup has Cushing's disease and is twelve years old, and my mom was seriously concerned that she might come home to a dead dog if she put her up in a kennel or in a ward at the local veterinary hospital. So here I am.

Deciding which perfumes to wear was a difficult task, as many other perfumistas have reported about similar scenarios in the past. It was a bit less difficult, I suppose, because the bulk of my excessive bottle collection is now hidden snuggly away in a storage space. I have been perfuming myself with a fraction of my collection selected primarily for hot-weather readiness--and of course general wonderfulness. It's actually a good exercise to find out which of one's bottles are really worth holding onto and which could be given away without undue strife. As I made my way through my storage space deciding on my summertime perfume wardrobe, I found myself drawn compulsively to Hermès. Basically every Hermès I saw I wanted to add to the pile to take back to my house. Ditto for the Prada, though that was in part because I own full-on jugs of both Infusion d'Iris and Infusion d'Homme, which are perfect for summertime with their clean yet sophisticated personalities. Same for the other Prada Infusions, all of which I own. (Yeah, I know.)

Over the course of the summer I have nearly drained my bottle of Creed Fleurs de Bulgarie, but I have a back up in storage, so no worries! I have also made inroads into my third bottle of La Perla La Perla (the old bottle with the ugly black plastic cap, not the new one, the contents of which I do not like). Rather than Hermès, the houses I've reached for most often over the past couple of months have been Miller Harris and Ineke. Poet's Jasmine appears now to be my favorite "wear to the library" perfume, despite its formidable sillage. I also continue to spritz my way through Le Labo Poudre d'Orient (now on bottle #2). Guerlain Chamade (also bottle #2) and Houbigant Quelques Fleurs L'originale (a twentieth-century vintage) have been worn quite a lot as well.

You might be wondering: Are those really hot-weather scents? They are chez moi, at least this summer, and especially after a bath and before bedtime, because I now own an air conditioner and use it to create a cool-weather climate to escape to when the space downstairs starts to feel like a steam bath. Thanks to my air conditioner, I have even managed to drink a lot of hot tea this summer!

So the trip. What to bring? I debated a few options, including to tote along only two or three bottles which might be drainable during the trip, after which I could toss the empty vessels. Of course, not all bottles are toss-worthy, but that seemed like a good idea since I am trying to tame my tendency toward "collecting"--what is now officially known as "hoarding". Apparently the latest (twenty-first-century) conventional wisdom is that we are now supposed to read all of our books and magazines on Kindle and watch movies streamed live. Anyone who persists in maintaining big collections of either books or DVDs must be pathological!!!!! Ditto for perfume, well, except that it is a pathology afflicting only about .00001% of the population. You know you have a problem when you expel a sigh of relief upon sighting a collection at Parfumo or Fragrantica even larger than your own--especially if it's double or triple the size! (Thank you, Action.)

That logic does not really work, of course. The fact that a person owns 1,000 perfumes does not make it any less excessive for me to own 400. I think that I may have more than that, but the stuff that I really need to get rid of--because I never, ever wear it--I no longer list anywhere.

I could not settle on two or three bottles, nor did it seem like the best solution to my predicament, given that I have hundreds if not thousands of sample vials and decants, and I know for a fact that evaporation is a much worse problem for those than for bottles. In the end, I gathered up a bunch of Histoires des Parfums and Tauer Perfumes samples, and packed them in my bag. Happily I flew on Jet Blue which still permits passengers to bring a bag large enough for a two-week trip without paying a fee! There are lots of other reasons to love Jet Blue (not a shill, just a fan!): above all, the spacious seats and friendly staff. They even provide snacks and never bitch or moan or snarl if you ask for something to drink or a second bag of chips!

Upon my arrival at my parents' humble abode in Boulder, Colorado, I learned that, in addition to her many other health issues, Jula is allergic to perfume! My mom has been seriously worried that Jula might die over the summer, and the last thing I want on my hands is a dead dog, so I promised her that I would not wear any perfume. And I have not.

Except that I have! During this "no perfume" period, I have begun to pay a lot of attention to stuff around me that is really very strongly perfumed. Take the Dial soap I bought upon my arrival. I meant to buy white Dial, which is my favorite body soap. I did buy white Dial Soap. Unfortunately, I did not read the fine print. The white Dial I bought is not the white Dial I like. It has a "Spring Water" scent which smells an awful lot like an aquatic cologne. It's really very strongly scented, to the point of evoking memories of Acqua di Gio and sundry other aquatics which make me feel a bit queasy if not downright seasick. I bought a package of  8 bars, having just run out chez moi, and knowing that I would have to buy some anyway upon my return to Boston. I debated taking the 7 unopened bars back to the store to exchange, but I'm not sure that they would. Plus it was on sale, so it did not cost that much to begin with. I probably should have just bought another package of the regular white Dial, but I have been experimenting on myself to see whether my attitude toward this particular scent will change with repeated usage. Will I become less or more intolerant of this scent, which seems clearly to boast calone? One thing is clear: I seem to be spending a lot more time rinsing than I ever did before...

Then there is the hand soap in my mom's upstairs bathroom. It, too, smells like some sort of aquatic cologne! Is this a conspiracy being perpetrated by Procter & Gamble? I ask most sincerely. The laundry detergent is "Free", that is, devoid of any added scent. Trouble is, the scent of unscented laundry detergent is not the scent of water. It's more like a kind of plastic, it seems to me.

There are lots of other scents here, too. Need I even mention that dogs smell like ... dogs? My mom took Jula to the groomer the day before my arrival. So for one day she smelled like freshly shampooed hair. According to my mom, the groomers use the only shampoo which Jula can tolerate, and it is very lightly scented, but not completely unscented, at least according to my nose. It does not smell like Bedhead shampoo, for example, which in my experience contains a full 100ml bottle of perfume in each large bottle of shampoo or conditioner. That stuff is seriously strong and will and does conflict with some perfumes, so it's important to plan ahead before using such hair products.

Which reminds me of a funny new trend. Hair perfume. That's right. Companies both mainstream and niche are now offering perfume for hair! This strikes me as funny, as so many hair products with functional benefits are already extremely heavily scented with full-on perfume. One glaring example comes to mind: Oscar Blandi leave-in conditioner smells EXACTLY like a jasmine soliflore. In fact, it is a jasmine soliflore, as far as I can tell. Why Jasmine Absolute is explicitly listed among the ingredients! (Apparently the Oscar Blandi company is not privy to the latest "scientific findings" of the IFRA...) But it also conditions the hair. I'm not sure about the hair perfumes being sold by Frédéric Malle, et al. Are they also hair products? I'll have to look more closely into that, but now that I'm on a rambling roll, there's no stopping for a Google fact-finding mission.

So dogs. Yes, dogs will be dogs, and dogs will smell like dogs. To dog owners, who are nearly by definition dog lovers--except for the small contingent of Hitler wannabes who upbraid their dogs for such crimes as, well, being dogs--the scent of dogs is probably a welcome one. To me, I have to admit: it is not. I do not like the smell of dogs. It's a natural scent which may overlap with dirty musk to some extent, so I'm not being a dog bigot here. It's a matter of scent preference, and I am on record as not liking dirty musk perfumes. So I'm not really picking on dogs. I just don't happen to like that particular scent. A chacun son goût...


(part 2)

The Scent of Moving--Lessons Learned, #1

I have known for quite some time that perfumistas inhabit a parallel universe, conversing with like-minded fragrance fanatics in a subculture unknown to the vast majority of humanity. One stark confirmation of this reality was that while apartment hunting during the month of February, I saw a grand total of two perfume bottles in other people's homes.

In a bedroom in Salem, Massachusetts--where I briefly considered moving just because it was possible, and I figured Why not?--I espied a bottle of Beyoncé Heat. Not a vanity tray filled with various perfumes or even all of the flankers of Britney Spears, but a single bottle of Beyoncé Heat:

There was no box with the bottle I saw, but I recognized it, as I had made the mistake of trying the fragrance at TJMaxx a while back, the experience of which branded the image of the bottle in my memory bank.

The second bottle which I saw while looking for a new and humbler abode was Calvin Klein Euphoria. Thanks to the ubiquity of Euphoria ads, I'd have recognized the attractive vessel even if I didn't happen to own a large bottle myself. True, I basically never wear the fragrance, but I acquired the bottle from a Sephora certificate coffret offer--it was the least-bad choice among the available options. I also have a couple (or is it a few?) of the Calvin Klein "mega-minis" of Euphoria--with a full half-ounce in in each one, so when I have worn the woody-fruity-oriental with a somewhat blunt but not repulsive demeanor (usually for comparison purposes), I have sprayed from one of those:

So that was it. During the months of February and March, I packed up hundreds of bottles of my own perfume, and probably thousands of minis and sample vials, but throughout my quest for an apartment, I saw only two other bottles of perfume. No doubt there were other perfume bottles in some of the other abodes, but they were hidden away in drawers or more likely bathroom cabinets, I suspect, among the owners' other toiletries (as they would conceive of perfume). I doubt that, like me, anyone else's chests of drawers, and lingerie cabinet, and armoires, and closets, and various and sundry other storage boxes and drawers were all filled with perfume.

What this shows, I believe, is that perfume simply is not that important to most people. They'll wear whatever they happen to have received as a gift or were persuaded through marketing to purchase, but perfume is just not that big of a deal to the unwashed masses--or the washed masses, for that matter.

One implication of this fact is that the vast majority of people are not going to give a damn what happens with IFRA and legislation governing perfume ingredients. It just does not matter to them. If someone tells them that it's all for the good of their health, they'll accept this as the truth and buy whatever is currently being marketed as perfume. Tell them that eggs are bad, and they'll stop eating eggs. Basically, they'll accept whatever the designated authorities say. Consequently, it seems quite likely that most consumers from here on out will have no idea what the world of perfume was like pre-Y2K. Ignorance is a bliss, so they'll be perfectly happy wearing their Heat or Euphoria or whatever Coty happens to hurl their way.

At the same time, most of us who do know what perfumery was like back in the day, also have sizeable perfume collections, so we are covered just as well, proving once again that Leibniz was right: this is the best of all possible worlds, because it is the only one we've got. It's where we happen to be, and wondering what our lives would be like if we inhabited another place at another time is ultimately for naught.

I recall when I was in Port of Spain, Trinidad, for a conference a few years back that I was stunned by the sight of the shanty towns rimming the city. The place was oppressively hot, and those people were living out in the open, with no climate control. Probably not wearing much perfume. Oakmoss is just not an issue for them.

While in Accra, Ghana, where I also went to attend a conference, I walked through portions of the city with open sewers. In San Jose, Costa Rica, I saw people whose livelihood derives from plastifying things for people with enough money to have things worth plastifying. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, I saw people whose source of food was other people's trash. In such spaces, far from our slick niche emporia, fresh air becomes the sought-after scent.

Why are we here, while they are there? The luck of the draw, no more and no less.

Is Perfume Make-up? The Strange Case of Scented Nail Polish

It appears that the "perfume is art" crowd are being given a run for their money by an opposing force no doubt championed much more vigorously by the corporatized fragrance industry. Perfume in some circles has now become make-up! 

I recently happened upon an advertisement for a new and unexpected product while flipping through one of the many worthless magazines littering my apartment. I receive a lot of magazines in part because Fragrancenet offers a free subscription with every purchase. So that's how I ended up with lengthy, multiyear subscriptions to such publications as Cosmopolitan, Martha Stewart Living, Every Day with Rachel Ray, Better Homes & Gardens, and the magazine in which this advertisement appeared: Allure, which is devoted above all to make-up. The only magazine perhaps even more ridiculous and yet frighteningly a sign of the post-post-modern, SSRI, Twitter-twenty-first-century times may be Lucky, which is dedicated to ... drum roll ... shopping!

This is a perfect example of why I do find myself leafing rapidly through an issue of this sort of magazine before dropping it into the vertical. Who knows what one may learn about contemporary culture, society, and mores? In this case, I learned that, unbelievably enough, there is now a perfumed nail polish being made by Revlon, in its special Parfumerie line.

I was initially thinking about simply approaching this topic from a purely philosophical perspective: Is perfume make-up, after all? Is it perhaps not entirely coincidental that Chandler Burr's disappearance from the Museum of Arts and Design was approximately concomitant with the appearance of perfumed nail polish on the market? To be honest, I'm not sure when Revlon's Parfumerie collection was launched, but I do believe that Chandler Burr's fifteen minutes of fame as a "perfume is art" theorist have now elapsed.

Does this mean that the powerful "perfume is a toiletry" lobby which exerts enormous influence on the industry--and indeed perhaps is identical with the mainstream fragrance industry--has won out? This development may be hailed or scorned, but in all likelihood that will depend upon one's prior beliefs about "perfume as art" and "perfume as toiletry". 

If you already believe that all perfume is directly connected to all cologne, which began as a way for stinky people without access to frequent baths to cover up their own bodily stench, and therefore is obviously a toiletry (being a bath surrogate), then the sight of the above Revlon Parfumerie advertisement is probably not going to bother you in the least.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to think of perfume as something loftier, something higher, something transcendent, perhaps something that someone like Jackson Pollock might create, then the sight of this little splotch of Revlon Parfumerie Beachy, which may in fact resemble some artist's work of art somewhere, may be a bit disconcerting:

As usual, sherapop manages to navigate her epistemological way through this untenable duality. Yes, of course, perfume is used as a way of masking body odor or else to add some where there is none. Musk and ambergris perfumes, anyone? Yes, of course, people like Daniela Andrier and Bertrand Duchaufour and Jean-Claude Elléna and Dominique Ropion and (add your favorite perfumer) __________________ are creative spirits and bursting with talent. But none of either of these two ways of looking at perfume--as a "mere" toiletry or as an exalted "art""--tells the whole story. The truth, my fragrant friends, is that 

Perfume is perfume!

As a toiletry, the Revlon Parfumerie project is an epic fail. Why? Because the dried perfume-enamel amalgamate, which I painted onto the back of an envelope--I figured that there was no need to risk the test on my own nails, especially with bedtime on the horizon--smells just like nail polish! 

Anyone who has ever used nail polish is aware--or was at one time--of its dangerously potent fumes, so volatile and intense that it's difficult to suppress the suspicion that it may very well be causing brain cell damage each and every time that it is used. Hopefully not, but let's face it, the scent differs from that of glue (as in glue sniffing) in degree, not in kind.

I find, in fact, that this Revlon Parfumerie Beachy, which I selected thinking that it might possibly smell like Lilly Pulitzer Beachy, or perhaps even Bond no 9 Fire Island, occupies an olfactory coordinate not terribly far from the opening of Lanvin Rumeur. But that's only because that perfume opens just like the scent of a chemical industry waste factory.

Yes, I am afraid that the Revlon experiment in product multitasking has failed in this case. No worries, though, because it will only be a matter of time before the experiment is undertaken again, by day laborers working under the yoke of some driven triple-A personality CEO, and eventually some synthetic organic chemist somewhere will devise a way to insert a scent more powerful than the scent of nail polish into the nail polish so that one can buy a single product under the guise of either perfume or nail polish (what's your pleasure?) rather than buying both.

Wait a minute! How, then, could it be that the cosmetic industry is producing such a thing, working to decrease the amount of wallet share which they can siphon off the readers of Allure magazine? This case reminds me in some ways of the Starbucks Via project. Why is Starbucks trying to sell to its very own customers products which obviate the need for them to stop off in the stores to buy $6 cups of coffee? 

The answer, my fragrant friends, in both cases, is that these companies are after total global hegemonic control. Whatever beverage you may choose to drink, and in whatever format, Starbucks will be there for you.  (Lest you forget, they acquired both Tazo and Teavana!) And whichever make-up or fragrance product you choose to spend the discretionary share of your paltry Friday take-home pay on, Revlon wants to be in on it!

Would Chloé wear Chloé? Part 2: Coming Critically Clean

part 1

When is a Love Triangle 
more than a Love Triangle?

CAVEAT LECTOR: 
MAJOR SPOILER REMARKS TO FOLLOW!!!!!!

How many of the erotic thrillers in existence bottom out in a Lifetime Channel-esque family values defense?
By my count: one.

Chloé, a 2009 film directed by Atom Ergoyan

As we have seen, this work is an extended film essay on mid-life crisis and the ways in which, after a time, even the most romantic of relationships may eventually fizzle out like flat champagne, leaving nothing behind but memories of the "The Way We Were". Catherine and David Stewart were apparently quite the hot and heavy couple as youngsters, but times have changed and so have they. As the years--now decades--sped by, and wrinkles crept onto the corners of their eyes, each of the two pursued their career, and a son was thrown into the mix, with the boring and predictable result of distraction and exhaustion. Eventually the couple reached the point where they just weren't doing it anymore.

Or has David been fooling around with someone else? was Catherine's concern, her insecurity verily screaming out from nearly every single scene of the film. On the one hand, she seems to be a strong, independent woman. On the other hand, she is completely overwhelmed by the prospect that her husband may be cheating on her. The thought that she may have become undesirable constantly tears away at the successful physician, making her snap even at David's jovial banter with a mere waitress, who, in Catherine's eyes, now appears to be one of the many menacing threats with which she has suddenly become beset.

Do not proceed, if you have not seen this film 
and have any intention of doing so. 

Inquiring minds have straying eyes, which is why I provided an extra wall of spoiler warning. Now, at last, it is time to come critically clean. Chloé (the film) is not at all what Chloé at first seems. For one thing, Chloé (the prostitute) never slept with David, though she told Catherine that she did.

Near the end of the story, it finally emerges, after the depiction of a couple of hot and heavy erotic scenes between the young prostitute and the suspected cad, that the real reason for David's loss of interest in his wife is that he is simply too tired to sleep with anyone, worn down by his excessive workload as a college professor and growing older day by day.

Too many performances prancing about the stage; too many late nights grading bad term papers on Beethoven. By the end of the day, David wants nothing more than to sleep. He has simply lost the vim and verve and, well, drive, that he had in his earlier years. Yes, that's right, notwithstanding the mounting circumstantial evidence, Catherine's husband has not been sleeping with anyone, neither his middle-aged wife, nor his fresh as a daisy co-eds, as she had suspected and feared.

He skipped his birthday party not to spend extracurricular time with a student (the one whose image blipped into his device the next day) but because he, like Catherine, was constantly cringing at the thought of his inexorably advancing age.

This viewer was fooled by the film because in it the young prostitute described in detail a series of erotic scenes between herself and David which never in fact took place, though they were vivid enough to conjure up high-definition technicolor images in Catherine's mind. The images on the screen were how things seemed to the would-have-been-cheated-on wife, and that was what the viewer was permitted to see, as though the scenes had really transpired within the world of the film!

Clever, Atom, very clever. But why, one may inquire, would Chloé do such a thing? The clues begin early on, but ultimately the answer to the mystery is that Chloé, the prostitute, has fallen for Catherine, the gynecologist.

Eventually the two women wind up in bed in a hot and heavy lesbian love scene, as Catherine, in her despair, accepts Chloé's overture as a way of connecting with David, with whom, she believes, the young prostitute has recently connected. (No, I am not joking.)

Chloé, on the other hand, ascribes far more significance to the encounter, as she has grown quite fond of Catherine through their various meetings and discussions. 



The morning after, Chloé sends Catherine a souvenir of their afternoon delight, at which point it becomes clear that the young prostitute is now smitten with the distinguished older woman:

But wait, there's more: the fun has only just begun!

Regular visitors to the salon de parfum are apt to have been wondering in the back of their mind whether the inclusion of a son in this fabulous fable was completely gratuitous. A father, a mother, a son... could there also be some Freudian content here?

It seems as though Atom must have read your mind, for the son did indeed figure in the love tetrahedron of this not-so-little morality tale.

Early on in the story, Michael and Chloé had met at Catherine's office. Chloé had gone there to deliver papers documenting her STD-free state. Michael had stopped by to retrieve the formal suit which his mother had apparently picked up for him from the dry cleaner so that he could wear it to his piano recital.

The chemistry between the prostitute and the son was unmistakeable as they hovered for a moment over Catherine's copy machine. Michael, in particular, seemed especially taken with the young woman, perhaps in part because he had recently been virtually dumped (online!) by his own girlfriend, who had decided that she did not want to be "tied down" after graduation:

Naturally, Michael had no idea that Chloé was a prostitute, and his mother was taken aback to find that the two had been chatting while waiting for her to arrive. But it wasn't simply that she feared the potentially corruptive effect which a prostitute might have upon her son. No, Catherine had been suffering from her son's disaffection as well as her husband's at the same time. Having been seemingly abandoned simultaneously by both her husband and her once affectionate son, Catherine has been plagued by the specter of having somehow failed both as a wife and as a mother.

In reality, we have seen the real reason for her husband's lack of attention, and her son's was nothing more than the usual teenage aloofness toward parents who of a sudden begin to seem incredibly uncool and to be avoided, even spurned, at all costs. After all, uncoolness may well be contagious!

When Catherine catches her son with his girlfriend in the house, having just spent the night together, she is visibly annoyed, and the sight of their exuberant youth and the memory of how she and David had once been intensifies her growing concern that her husband is now sleeping with someone not unlike this young lady who has just spent the night with her son!

To return to Chloé, where we last left off, she had developed something of a crush on Catherine. When the young lovestruck woman shows up at Catherine's office, flowers in hand, the physician is visibly perturbed and recognizes that she needs to call a halt to this narrative as quickly as she can.

She informs Chloé that the affair was a mistake and that she is sorry, but they had a business relationship which is now over, and they are now through. She asks the young prostitute how much money she wants, and takes out a checkbook and writes a big check, ripping it from the pad and thrusting it at Chloé in the hope that she will take the money and be on her way.

Chloé is crushed and rails at Catherine, telling her that what they had was real and that she knows that Catherine knows that it was real and that this has nothing to do with money. Chloé does not want Catherine's money, she wants Catherine!!!!!!!!!!!!

Devastated, Chloé sets out to find a way to win Catherine back. Her plan starts with Catherine's son, whom she essentially stalks, following him to the Stewart home.

Being a handsome young lad, Michael naturally believes that Chloé has fallen for him. She asks Michael to show her around his house, and they end up in Catherine and David's bedroom, where Chloé proceeds to undress.




As they make love, in Chloé's effort to reconnect with Catherine, Chloé insists on staring at Catherine's clothes hanging in the closet. Michael does not understand why Chloé is not looking at him. Later, when Catherine returns home, she finds her son asleep in her bed with the prostitute.

A scuffle ensues, and Chloé appears prepared to harm Catherine with the hairpin which she gave her and found lying on her vanity tray. In the brouhaha, Chloé ends up falling off the deck, to her death.

Having won back both her husband and her son with the demise of this young woman of ill-repute, Catherine reigns triumphant once again.