I smelled her before I saw her. Crushed rose petals drifting over Marie Antoinette’s dinner party. The burned sugar and velvet of violets dabbed on a porcelain neck. The warmth of a fire blazing in a Venetian hearth. The sweet almond scent of a woman’s thighs wrapped around my neck. It was as if my life had been marked by her absence as much as this moment was marked by her presence.
