Perfume (2 page)

“It’s interesting,” said Luce, frowning, “but not …” Luce had no words for this scent. She said, “
You
know …” which is what people say when they don’t, and neither do you. “It’s not very attractive, is it?” she said finally.

Dove reached for the open snake. She told her hand not to, but it went forward anyway, clasped the glass, and lifted it to her face.

Two vapors entered her body: the dry ice and the perfume.

“Are you going to get it, Dove Bar?” asked one of her friends.

She could not tell them apart anymore. Nor remember their names.

The store gloated.
We knew we would get you
, said the store.
Didn’t we tell you it was only a matter of time?

Dove felt that her life had been a prelude to this moment.

Had never counted until this breath of perfume.

Venom.

Whose venom? thought Dove. What bit me?

And she knew that tonight, at last, there would be something under the bed.

T
WO HUNDRED SHARP-EDGED, IDENTICAL
condominiums.

Tailored gray and white, the condominiums marched up and over a steep jut of land, from which both sunrise and sunset could be admired.

Sky Change Hills.

It was one of those foolish development names, like Rockrimmon Valley, when there were no rocks, no rims, and no valley. Or Fox Hollow, when there had been neither foxes nor hollows in two generations.

And yet the sky did change, and it seemed to Dove that it changed more often and more vividly than anywhere else, the way autumn leaves in New England are more scarlet, or more orange, than anywhere else.

Today the sky was also gray, with rims of pale clouds, like swathes of uncut satin, softly folding to the horizon. The color match between the condominium units and the sky was so exact that one filtered into the other with only a change in texture: hard building, soft sky.

The sun must still exist in the universe, but there was no sign of it: No piece of sky was bright; nothing glowed; nothing struggled to pierce the gray.

Luce, as always, let Dove out at the narrow guard box. Her car was so low-slung, she couldn’t drive over the speed bumps. Nobody ever manned the guard box. It was just there to hold flowerpots. It was early in the spring, and the flowerpots had been planted but had not bloomed; but at least the pots were terra-cotta, a warm dark Mediterranean brown.

Connie got out to let Dove out. Dove emerged with her heavy navy-blue book bag in one hand, and a tiny shopping bag in the other. It was made of heavy slick paper with the Dry Ice emblem on it, and the handles were silky cords with tassels. White tissue paper peeked out the top, brushing against Dove’s wrist. The perfume bottle hardly weighed a thing.

“I can’t believe you actually bought the
Venom
,” said Connie. “I mean, I love the name of it, too, but a person wouldn’t actually wear that stuff.”

“Subtle, Connie,” said Luce, giggling. “She’s not going to wear it, are you, Dove Bar? If she did, she’d have to change her whole wardrobe and her whole personality. That is not the perfume for a cooing dove.”

I’m the same color as the sky and the buildings, thought Dove. I might vaporize even as we stand here, diffuse like the perfume into all that gray.

“’Bye!” called Luce, revving the engine.

“See ya!” shouted Connie, rolling down the window and waving.

Dove seemed unable to think of anything to say, as if Dry Ice had drained away her vocabulary. She smiled at them vaguely, but they didn’t see, didn’t care, were already driving off, consumed with whatever new topic they had launched.

I’m all alone, thought Dove.

And yet she felt strangely occupied, like a couch with a person sitting there.

The condominiums seemed to look at each other and shrug knowingly, exchanging glances above Dove’s head.

But they were new, these buildings. They had no history, no past. How could they know anything at all? They had lived through only one winter.

Like row upon row of identical twins, every Levolor blind lying evenly inside every neat window, the units were bland as pieces of paper.

Not one of them was a home. They were a huge indistinguishable litter of front doors.

Dove walked among them like a stranger selling cosmetics.

Where do I live? thought Dove, trembling.

Dark doors looked at her, no expressions on them, no interest; slabs of wood painted slate gray.

The air was raw and mean. Spring had collapsed; had let winter pierce it like a pin in a balloon. There was no safety in spring. Spring could double back and vanish into winter without giving notice. I hate seasons, thought Dove. You cannot trust a season.

She swallowed.

What number is our unit? she thought, lost in her own home territory.

Even the numbers seemed identical. Too high. Too many digits. Was it 11881? Was it 11331? Was it 88118?

She walked for some time. She could not tell if she had circled the entire complex once, or twice, or if she were only halfway around. She could not even tell if she had been anywhere at all.

Suddenly, her heart did something anatomically impossible. It made a double beat. She looked down at her chest.

The heart did it again.

It was not that her pulse was going faster.

Her heart had doubled.

Dove set down her book bag and extracted her purse.

Seventh grade—the first year Dove carried a purse—she had been so thrilled with the opportunity to bring necessities with her that she had used a purse large enough for her entire life: an overnight bag of a purse. The joy of lugging this around palled and now, each season, her purse grew smaller. As she drew closer to sixteen—magical number; infinitely older than callow fifteen—she was down to a slim rectangle on a thin leather rope: a bright tapestry of colors, like a pile of autumn leaves. These were not her usual bland colors, and they gave her hope that the real Dove, the bright and shimmering Dove, might emerge on that magic birthday and stun the world.

I don’t want to be a gray old Dove Bar and blend in with the sky and the soap, she thought. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who can’t even find her own front door. I don’t want to be pathetic.

Inside the little handbag was her emergency notification card, with her address neatly printed. She was 11844. How could she have forgotten such a crucial thing?

Her heart double-timed again, and Dove said, “Stop that.”

A woman Dove had not noticed, stooping over her one blossoming shrub to pluck its one remaining blossom, stared at Dove. “It’s my bush,” the woman said defensively. “I can pick the flower if I want.”

“I meant my heart,” explained Dove. “It’s gotten away from me.”

“Hearts do that,” said the woman. She smiled gently, remembering a love of her own.

But there was no love involved in Dove’s double beat.

Dove backed up until she found 11844.

Her key fit.

She went in.

Like every other unit at Sky Change Hills, it featured white walls, soaring ceilings, long-chained chandeliers, and layers of narrow balconies.

The nubbly carpet that covered the five staggered levels of floor and stair was also gray, with black and white speckles. It reminded Dove of parking lots.

Identical twin couches were covered with white leather. A large low coffee table, like a slab of smooth fake granite, hunched between them. Two long swings of black metal arced over the couches to provide reading lights.

How neat, how sparse, how
anybody
this living room was.

If her family were to move away, nobody would know the difference. They had left no mark. The condo was more like a tin can than a house; any old vegetable or soup could be packaged in it. It could always be recycled.

She walked as slowly as a burglar wondering what to steal.

The stairs were a bright, space-taking well of carpeted steps. They led down to the playroom in which nobody played, and down below that, to the garage in which two cars would be parked when her parents got home from work. Up the steps was balcony one, and up more steps was her parents’ suite, then balcony two, and finally her own bedroom.

She tilted her head to stare up the shaft that was the stairwell and skylight.

The sky showing in the skylight was blue.

But—

Dove turned, frowning, to look back outside.

Through the narrow, half-tilted window blinds, she could see the opposite matching condos and a long slice of sky.

Gray, like a flock of lost doves.

Sky Change Hills.

It must have meant today. For indigo blue, thick as pudding, filled the sky in the skylight.

Eyes locked on the blue square, Dove began climbing the stairs to the top. To balcony three, where she almost never went.

It was supposed to be an “eyrie,” an eagles’ nest.

She was a Dove. She nested in her own room.

Her room was pastel: pale chalky hues like lemon and dusty rose. She yearned for as much color as a Hawaiian beach: for gaudy posters, bright scarves, slaps of primary color paint, richly hued sheets, and rows of shoes in purple, yellow, green, blue, scarlet, hot pink, chartreuse. … But she never bought those. They frightened her, as if she would not be Dove any longer were she to break forth in brightness.

Nothing in Dove’s room matched. Nothing was even. Nothing came in pairs. Nothing was folded with square corners. Identical things were impossible to endure.

But she did not enter the safety of her own room.

She went up toward the sky, like a bird about to fly.

Her heart was going crazy, beating double, supplying so much blood to her system that it was enough for two.

Balcony three was carpeted in the nubbly gray that waffled up the stairs and balconies, and here at the top, it could not stop itself, but even covered the walls, forming little steplike seats.

This was a “retreat.”

Not that anybody had ever retreated there. It was too open. When they retreated—which in her family was always—they went to their own rooms and shut their doors.

Dove set her book bag on one of the step seats.

Next to it, she set her package from Dry Ice.

There was a handle on the skylight. It was a working window. Carefully, Dove released the lock. She put one hand on the handle and turned it easily. One full turn did not move the skylight. A second full turn and the skylight lifted perceptibly. On the third full turn, the glass began to straighten itself and tilt upright, and then Dove could stand and touch the sky.

The sky that was blue … the sun that was yellow … the air that was warm with spring … on a day that was gray and chilly.

Her head stuck out of the top of the condo.

There was nothing in sight.

Not a rooftop.

Not a treetop.

Not a plane or a bird.

Not a horizon or a view.

Just blue, blue sky.

Some other world entirely; some other time and space.

The bottle of perfume had tumbled out. It lay like a crystal snake on the soft rug.
Venom
.

Dove lifted the perfume. The stopper was crystal. A simple cylinder, glittering.

She rested the bottle against her cheek, and it
was
dry ice, burning her with its terrible temperature. It branded her face. She yanked it from her skin and held it away from herself, toward the blue, blue sky.

A warm shaft of wind curled down the skylight. She could almost see the wind: a blue flag wrapping around her wrist. She shook the wind off her arm. But since she was still holding the perfume bottle by the stopper, the bottle dropped, while the stopper remained in her hand.

The perfume fell gently to the cushion of the carpet, its snake neck curled so that not a drop spilled.

But its scent … oh, its scent … like the wind,
Venom
slipped out of the bottle diffused through the air, settled on Dove’s hair, rested on Dove’s hand, filled her body.

Her lungs and heart and brain breathed
Venom.

As she had almost seen the wind, she almost saw something else, too: almost saw another person, almost felt another life.

No body. No flesh. No form.

Invisible as fragrance.

But nevertheless, it was there.

And full of …

…
venom

I
N THE MORNING, DOVE FELT
a flutter inside her head.

It was a gentle movement, a bird shifting position in the nest at night. She shuddered slightly when the feeling stopped. Stood quite still, not wanting to feel that again.

She felt it again.

Something was brushing up against the inside of her skull.

Dove brushed her hair very hard, to push the feeling away.

The feeling increased.

Dove rushed downstairs, hoping to find a parent, but they had left, of course; each had a long commute, in different directions, and they began their days early.

Dove’s mother, whose car had a telephone and a fax machine, would be putting her lipstick on at the red light and making her first business call of the day at a comfortable sixty miles an hour on the turnpike heading north.

Dove’s father would be using his time well: This was very important to Dove’s father. He was learning another language from a set of expensive cassette tapes. Dove thought it was Japanese; last year he had learned German. He looked most odd when driving, his mouth curling around foreign syllables, with nobody in the passenger seat to be talking to.

In the empty kitchen, Dove’s head was full.

Like a full stomach—as if she had eaten too much.

But in her head?

Had she thought too much?

Studied too much?

Daydreamed too much?

Her head was stuffed and cramped.

Dove suddenly hit the side of her head with the bottom of her palm. It seemed to work. Her mind settled down, like a bed being made: sheets momentarily fluffed and then resting.

“Oooh, boy, do I need breakfast,” muttered Dove to herself. She fixed something very sturdy: instant oatmeal black with raisins.

The raisins stared at her like eyes.