The Scent Keeper(57)

Sleep didn’t come. I was alone in the room, and the emptiness of it reverberated around me. The only nights I’d ever spent by myself were the ones in the cabin after my father died. The memories shivered their way into me. I longed to have Fisher in my bed, or even Dodge by the door. I could hear noises in the hall, the rough laughter of young men, voices speaking in a language I didn’t understand. Outside on the street, the traffic was a constant rumble. A man yelled, a harsh, howling sound. An ambulance screamed past, wailing into the night.

My roommates came in hours later, their voices strong and excited, like the summer workers at Secret Cove. They hushed into drunken giggles when they realized I was there. I rolled over, pulling my backpack close, my eyes shut tight, begging sleep to find me.



* * *



My days fell into a pattern of peanut butter sandwiches, buses, and dead ends. Every night I went back to the hostel and my revolving cast of roommates, the room redolent with the smell of patchouli one night, limes and salt another. My dreams were filled with languages I learned to identify, but never understood. I listened to the laughter, the jokes, and the grand plans of my roommates, and I found myself jealous of the way this city was just a stop on their way, a place to collect memories or boyfriends before traveling on. I would lie in bed, trying to imagine myself discovering Fisher, surprising him with a kiss.

Found you, I’d say.

It never happened. All I got was hard bus seats and the blank faces of nursery owners. By the sixteenth nursery, I found myself having trouble describing Fisher; he was losing specificity amongst the hundreds of faces I saw every day.

Red hair, green eyes, I would say, forgetting the way he could raise his left eyebrow, just a fraction, when he wanted to send me a signal. The small white scar he’d gotten on his right thumb, collecting mussels in the lagoon. This city was too big, too fast, for such quiet details.

Did you lose me, too, Fisher?



* * *



At the end of the sixth day of searching, I went back to the hostel in the late afternoon. I was tired, but too restless to stay inside, so I went to the wharf, wanting to smell salt water. The scent of brine was lost, however, in the fog of cars and boats and seaplanes. Concrete sealed the ground, the smells of earth locked up tight beneath it. I continued on, ignoring my nose, just wanting to walk until my legs burned and I was somewhere, anywhere else.

When I looked up, I found myself at the edge of a rolling expanse of grass and trees. It wasn’t a forest, but as I wandered deeper, following a concrete path that led in soft, sloping curves, I could feel the scents changing. Even though it was still winter, there was life here. I spotted a Douglas fir and went to it, putting my nose deep into the crags of its bark.

Hey, you, I whispered. I could feel my breath warming the trunk, surrounding my face. I made my way from one tree to the next, greeting each, inhaling spruce and cedar, cherry and apple, and some I didn’t yet know.

When it started to get dark, I found the trail again and headed back to the hostel. I had more buses in my future, but I carried the scent of sap with me on my fingertips.



* * *



After that afternoon in the park, I redoubled my efforts to find Fisher. I told myself I couldn’t afford to do otherwise, and it was the truth. I went from one dead end to the next. The world was concrete and jostling seats and buildings that all looked alike.

On the tenth morning, I went to the forty-seventh nursery, on the far outskirts of the city. I’d learned by this point not to talk to management—all the good stories came from the people with dirt on their hands. I found a young woman, her hair up under a baseball cap, wearing an apron with the nursery logo on it. We stood in the greenhouse, the air heavy with flowers that shouldn’t have been blooming yet. Spring is here, they said, in stark contradiction to the weather outside.

“Is there a guy named Fisher working here?” I asked. By that point I could have said it in my sleep.

She shook her head, moved the watering hose from one pot to the next.

“Red hair?” I persisted. “Green eyes?”

“Oh,” she said, “you mean Jack.”

My heart leaped. Of course, I thought. Of course he’d choose that name.

“Is he here today?” I asked, my voice hitching with excitement.

“Oh. No. They fired him about three months ago. There was this thing with a girl…” She caught my expression. “Oh hell, I’m an idiot. He’s a friend of yours?”

I nodded, but I wasn’t listening anymore.

He found someone else.

I didn’t know what to do with the thought. Fisher and I had never been like the other kids in school, who picked up and discarded partners as if they were shells on the beach. He and I were two halves of a whole—always had been, from the first moment we met. We could be separated, but never replaced. I had believed in that, in a way I had believed in nothing else since my father died. It had been my North Star for almost five years.

When Fisher left, I’d imagined so many scenarios, so many things that could have happened to him in the city, but never that one. Never the most obvious one in the world.

How stupid was I? Of course he’d found someone else. Someone who wouldn’t betray him. I should have known.

“What happened?” I asked the girl in the baseball cap.

“Look, we aren’t even supposed to talk about it. It was kind of a mess.” She walked over to turn off the hose. I followed her.