A bell tinkles when I open the door and I’m hit by the smell – a powdery, fudgy, floral nostalgia-blast, encoded in my brain at some long-ago point to signify ‘femininity’, and I realize with a vague sense of disenchantment that this phenomenon – femininity – has not manifested itself at all as I expected, in the form of vanity table, crystal perfume atomizer, kimono suspended from silk-padded hanger, et cetera, but instead as a tangle of greyish underwear, old sports T-shirts for nighties and an unruly Boots-special-offer-dictated assortment of half-finished moisturizers, packets of face
...more
