The Scent Keeper

by Erica Bauermeister

Every once in a while, we arrived at the lagoon to find the beach wildly scattered in seaweed, all the way to the high-tide mark. “Mermaid party,” my father declared, and it made sense. The sand was decorated with such abandon that only the most fanciful of creatures could have done it.

But then suddenly I did—and just like that, everything was different.

Nightingale has been called the Polaroid camera for smells. It is based on a revolutionary development called Headspace Technology, which made it possible to capture a scent in the wild and re-create its chemical equation in a laboratory.

“Coco Chanel used to say, ‘Dress shabbily and they remember the dress. Dress impeccably and they remember the woman.’”

We talked until we fell asleep, midsentence, and woke in the morning with our arms still around each other.

Base notes can come from dark places, but they can create beauty all the same. They are reminders of what we will do to live, and what we can give each other.