I sit in the car, outside of my workshop, watching them come in and out, laden with cardboard boxes, filled with samples of various hues, sizes and shapes.
I will be sorry to say good-bye to the old place, but I have outgrown it now, and it is time to move on.
I manufacture soaps you see, create, conjure, call it what you will. I prefer to say that I dream soaps into existence. I have given my life to this simple, yet infinite alchemy of permutations, combinations, fragrances and oils.
Recently, I have stumbled across the perfect combination of palm, olive and coconut oils, which melt, mix and mingle on the top of my old stove.
Through tireless hours of experimentation, I have derived the perfect timeline, so that the lye and water solution and the perfectly balanced oils swirl in a symphony of exothermic ecstasy, bubbling at precisely one-hundred and ten degrees.
I am as close to molecular beauty as you can be. I stare, goggle-eyed, into the maelstrom and see it dancing at an atomic level – particles binding and unbinding – Marjory Kelleher cannot do that; that is why the artisanal shops are clamouring over me, not her generic, prosaic muck!
There goes a box of my latest batch. I had to work quickly and carefully on that! At precisely the right time, in went a soupcon of peppermint, a smidgeon of kelp, one heaped teaspoon of love, and a pipette of dimethylmercury.
That’s why these chaps cannot get enough.
I look down at my steel-cuffed hands. Don’t you think that the hazmat suits are a bit much? It’s not as is I haven’t wrapped each bar as if it were a cherished, luxurious gift.
I sit back as the car pulls away.