The Scent Keeper

by Erica Bauermeister

I remember the way the rain seemed to talk to the roof as I fell asleep, and how the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet.

The fables inside were fantastical, intricate things, filled with girls who slept forever and houses made of candy and lies.

What was on those papers was far more mysterious. Memory.

Atleast not murdered people's scent like I anticipated

You’ll be okay, little one. Henry’s voice, calling out to me over the roar of the motor. Hang in there. Little lark, I’d wanted to tell him, but I hadn’t, and nobody had ever called me that again.

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.

The magical machine of my childhood was a flawed piece of science. My father was a failure. I had a mother.

Sounds like betrayal to me

Assess the situation, Emmeline. Eliminate the variables. Determine the best course of action.

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

I still thought of him far too much, spent too many hours not writing letters to him in my head, not wondering who the new girlfriend was, not holding on to his shirt when I slept. I missed him in my bones and my lungs and my skin. He was like the scents in the bottles, murmuring, waiting, eager for me to crack the seal. He doesn’t want you, I told myself. You are beautiful, the face in the mirror said.

Just for fun, I released odors of metal and electronics outside a bookstore, and watched people race inside and put their faces deep inside pages, searching for the rustle of paper, the welcoming scent of ink.

With the right ingredients, I could make people do anything.

In the end, it wasn’t the flavors or the alcohol that made people relax—it was the experience of being seen and understood.

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.