Nostril Job

"She smells like wine and hairspray. But the expensive stuff."

"How can you tell the price by smelling?"

"I've trained myself, I just can."

It took me years to perfect my nostrils' job, but I'd done it. And an instant—a whiff—was all I needed in order to know everything there was to know. All I needed to know, anyway. Smell is memory, so smell is the past, and everything you're doing will soon become a memory, too, so then smell is the future, so then smell is everything.

You can tell a lot from the way people smell. What odors inhabit their lives. What they cook, how they clean, where they work, how they want to be remembered. I don't remember much about the love in my life, but I remember the way each smelled. Skin and shampoo, hair and perfume, slept-in uncleanliness. I know what I have to do to rid my room of this fried Hawaiian food smell, I know I have to change my shirt. And when I put on a new shirt I should probably put on an undershirt underneath that shirt, because I've been perspiring a lot lately and I don't want people to smell that smell. That smell, one of those smells, that's me. That me is too real, too true, too me. I can't have just any stranger smelling that me. We must leave some things to the imagination.

And that imagination is largely under our control, as the passerby vixen had so clearly figured out. When she closed the door she knew exactly what she was doing, and who she was. Or, at least, who people would think she was. And that is half the battle.

We took long, deep breaths. I turned my head and took a step, I pulled the air to my nose with my hands, I was a real fool. My friend laughed at me. He'd seen this act before.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

I held my breath, kept my eyes closed, as the girl walked away. "Because she's giving us something. Now I know her. Now I will always know her."

We continued walking in silence, and when people passed I noticed my friend's eyes closing, his nostrils opening, his mouth discerning. Sometimes I even saw a smile.