The Scent Keeper(82)

“What?” she asked.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay.”

Fisher shot me a look; I gave him an apologetic shrug, but the woman leaned across the bar toward him.

“All right,” she said, her voice loud as a gaggle of geese. “Go for it. Guess my drink.”

The crowd shuffled, necks craning for a better view. Fisher handed the shot of scotch to a bearded man, then paused to consider the woman again. He took longer than he needed; I could tell by the ready twitch in his right index finger that he’d known what he’d make from the moment he first saw her, but finally he nodded and started pulling down bottles, keeping the labels hidden. He took out a cocktail glass with an open, shallow bowl, his hands moving smoothly from one bottle to the next, the contents of the glass shifting from clear to pale yellow to a warm, dark amber. With a deft twist he dropped a slip of orange peel on top and slid it across to the woman.

She let out a snort. “I drink beer.”

“Yup,” Fisher said. “Miller Lite, I’d guess.”

Surprise washed the triumph off her face. “Yeah.”

“Try this instead.”

She sniffed it; I could smell its fragrance, sharp and smooth, citrus and herbs and something almost metallic. The woman took a sip and glanced up, cocking her head at Fisher.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Death and Taxes,” he said.

She took a bigger sip and grinned. “Well, shit. Guess I have to pay.”



* * *



After that, it became a parlor trick—everyone wanted Fisher to guess his or her drink. People didn’t mind waiting when there was entertainment to be had. Construction workers chatted with girls in yoga pants; the regulars exchanged names with people they’d sat next to for years. Sometimes the new drink was just a slight left turn—rye instead of bourbon, the extra flowers softening the hard exterior of a glowering man. Sometimes the drink was something entirely different—an umbrella drinker, as Fisher would call them, switching over to a straight botanical gin.

“I don’t know how you’re doing this,” Izzy said to Fisher at the end of one evening, “but keep going.”

He did, night after night. For a full week, I cut out of work as soon as I could to get to the bar. I loved watching Fisher change the atmosphere around him. Everyone else thought it was magic, but I knew better. In the end, it wasn’t the flavors or the alcohol that made people relax—it was the experience of being seen and understood. And Fisher opened up right along with them. He was finding himself again, and I could sit there all night, watching.

Each morning I would go back to Inspire, Inc., and try to think about car dealerships, and each morning it grew harder. I’d told Fisher about Victoria and my work; I even told him about the trouble I was having with the fragrances, in the hope that confessing might help. But it hadn’t. The scents remained quiet in their testing bottles, devoid of the alchemy that made new fragrances possible. I could almost avoid thinking about it while I was with Fisher, but when I was in my lab, it was there in front of me at every moment. The scents had become the olfactory equivalent of white noise—a freeway in the distance, the hum of a refrigerator. No surprises; no communication.

I’m sorry, I told them. I’m sorry. What do you need from me? But I think I already knew.

Victoria had taken to dropping by my office a couple times a day. I wondered how many more times she came when I wasn’t there. I felt badly for not telling her what was going on, but I couldn’t, for so many reasons. I was still trying to figure out how the person I became around Fisher fit into my life with her. But even more than that, I was afraid of what she might think of me, what they all might think of me, if they knew my talent had disappeared.

“How’s it coming?” she asked one afternoon as she poked her head in my office door. “I’ve been getting calls from the car people. They want to know when the fragrance will be done.”

“I’m working on it,” I said.

Victoria considered the shelves of unopened bottles; my face, devoid of makeup.

“I trust you,” she said, and left.

I spent the next hour shoving scents together, but each fragrance came out flat as a billboard and twice as obvious.

Bring me a scent that will break down the walls, I thought, but none came. Eventually I gave up and headed for The Island.



* * *



It was a Friday night, the busiest of the week. Word had gotten out about Fisher, and a semicircle five deep had formed at his end of the bar. There was laughter, even cheers as Fisher got one customer after another to change his or her order.

“Who knew?” a fisherman said, holding up a martini glass filled with bright yellow liquid.

“Lemon Drop,” Fisher murmured to me. “Kills the smell of fish. And the guy could use a little more sugar in his life.”

A man shoved his way up to the bar, towing a blonde in a low-cut shirt. I recognized the dog owner from my first night. As far as I knew, he hadn’t been in since, and this time, there was no dog. Just the blonde, who was leaning against him in a way that seemed to have more to do with her spike heels than affection.

“Frank,” Fisher said, the word both a question and a greeting.

“Guess hers,” Frank said, motioning toward the blonde.