The Scent Keeper(76)

Was this what it was like for other people? I wondered. How could they stand it?

Maybe I just needed to get started, and the scents would come along with me. I began combining accurate proportions of top, middle, and base notes, but it was like fitting square blocks into square holes, no more or better than that. I mixed one fragrance after another, my efforts speeding up, becoming frantic. Each one emerged dull and dishonest. A thing, not a story.

I worked for hours, but it never got better. I made passable fragrances—but I could still smell enough to know the difference.

Finally, I stood. I had to get out of there. I needed green. I needed trees.



* * *



I hadn’t been back to the park since I’d met Victoria. Months had gone by while I worked in my little white office, and I’d barely noticed. The closest I’d come to nature was my walks along the wharf, and I hadn’t done that since I’d spotted Fisher on the balcony of The Island.

It took almost half an hour of searching and backtracking before I turned a corner and saw that great green meadow in front of me. I could sense the air beginning to lift and move in the open space—and yet, this time something felt different. I looked at the trees and what I saw now was their meticulous, even spacing. I saw the concrete, not dirt, of the gently curving paths; the signs that told you where to go, how to be, the name of each tree and bush.

When I’d been in the park before, I’d been happy to find anything that felt like home, but this time it all reminded me of the grocery store Victoria liked, the one with the hothouse tomatoes whose stickers read limited edition, and the mason jars decorated with red-checked ribbons, each one containing a single cup of organic oatmeal. Like a memento, or a proxy. The real thing had dirt on its vegetables, underbrush between its trees that tangled and whispered against your pant legs as you pushed through. It had dogs that swam in salt water, and brought the smells home whether you liked them or not.

What was I doing in this city? I’d been leaping from one thing to the next, chasing Fisher, following my mother, filling my loneliness with her assurances that I was special. And I had been; I’d made masterpieces—but they’d been crafted for her approval, and they’d manipulated other people in the process. In the end, I’d been no more faithful to the scents I’d loved than I’d been to my dog, and now I’d lost them all.

The fairy tales my father read me had made sense when I was young. Within their pages, the lines of the world were simple. Stepmothers and queens and little crooked men were evil. Children triumphed, and there was invigorating clarity to the way things ended.

But how did it work when you were the one who’d left others behind in the woods? When you crafted the potions? Did it matter that you didn’t mean to? That you were sorry?



* * *



I’d been walking the concrete path as I’d been thinking, and I found myself next to an old kiosk, left over from when the park had had a small enclosure of animals—a few to ride, some to watch from the other side of fences. There was still a pair of swans in the pond, holdovers that had claimed the water as their own even after the ponies and chickens and the baby bear were considered too expensive to keep.

The kiosk had the lovely, mournful quality of a building that’s half given over to nature. A series of faded promotional posters in glass frames still clustered around the darkened ticket window. I went over to get a closer look. The artwork was from another time, fantastical and friendly. The ponies were cheerful, with feather headdresses; the bear posed on a striped ball, although I doubted that trick had ever actually happened.

As I turned to walk away, I saw a movement in the reflection of the ticket window. I thought it was my mother—the pale skin and dark curls, the chin making a quick lift of dismissal, as I’d seen hers do so many times when a fragrance, or an employee, or a head of lettuce did not meet her approval. But it wasn’t my mother’s chin this time; it was mine.

I’d spent so many months wishing to be her. And now—when I was no longer sure I wanted to be—I was.

It made me think of that evening I’d seen Fisher on the balcony of The Island, cigarette in hand, staring out at the water. A living incarnation of his father. I’d shied away from who I thought he’d become. Never given him a chance to explain.

But now I had to ask myself—was I any different from him? If I could not even recognize my own reflection, what did that say?



* * *



I headed back out of the park, toward the wharf. I needed to see Fisher. I knew I was risking hurt, but I didn’t care. I’d already lost Dodge, and it appeared I was in good danger of losing myself. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake three times.

It was almost five o’clock when I left the big green meadow behind and reentered the bustle of the city. I walked past the buildings rising high above me, the cars flying by on the streets. When I got to the wharf and felt the wood of the walkway beneath my feet, I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t home, but it was something.

I wasn’t sure what I would do when I got to the bar. Fisher might not even still work there; it had been months, after all. And if he was there—if he was suddenly in front of me in flesh and blood—what would I say? I’d spent so much time preparing retorts, pondering scenarios of what might have happened, what might happen.