The Scent of Oranges
Miles sat at one of those long tables at the airport with the flashing tablet screens: play games! watch movies! order food! they screamed in colorful graphics. He plugged in his charger and called his mom to tell her not to worry while he was in Tokyo.
“Oh,” she said. “I never worry about you.”
“Right,” he said. “When did you last hear from Theo?”
“He called me three months ago asking for money. I haven’t heard from him since, so he’s either in jail or he’s found a new girlfriend to mooch off of.”
Miles neglected to tell his mother that Theo was the reason for his sudden trip to Japan. His brother had reportedly met a girl there and was getting married. “Don’t tell Mom,” Theo had said. “You’re the only one I’m inviting.”
Why exactly Miles decided that his brother’s appending nuptials were worth the trip half-way around the world was a mystery even to him. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to get out of Des Moines. Out of his life in corporate—eat, sleep, account, repeat—the rhythm of the weeks so worn into him that he felt sometimes as if one part of his brain were performing the necessary tasks while another part screamed in a closet.
It wasn’t as if he were close to his brother. He hadn’t even bought him a gift. Oh shit! Miles thought. I need to get them a gift!
He put his book, phone and charger back in his carryon and walked down the terminal. The stores all sold luxury brands or magazines or duty-free cigarettes. Miles went into a perfume store.
“Can I help you?” asked the woman behind the counter. She had tan skin and dark hair down to her waist. She spoke with a slight accent Miles couldn’t place.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m looking for a present for my brother.”
“We have many fine male colognes.”
“Actually, it’s for my brother’s wife,” Miles said, unsure now that he was in the shop how he would end up finding a wedding gift. “That is, his soon-to-be wife.”
“And what is his fiancé like?” the woman asked. She wore a tight, form-fitting dark-blue dress that accentuated her curves.
“I don’t know,” Miles said. “I’ve never met her.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Nothing,” Miles said. “My brother just told me to come to Japan for the wedding. I literally have no more information than that. I mean, I assume she’s Japanese, but now that I think about it, I have no basis for that assumption other than the fact that the wedding is taking place in Japan.”
“I see,” said the woman. “Well, then, how about I tell you what I like, and we’ll just hope this mystery woman has similar tastes.”
“That seems as good a strategy as any,” Miles said.
“There are three perfumes in this store, that I think every woman should own,” the woman said, leading Miles to the counter in the back of the store. She pulled three bottles, one by one, from below the counter, then took her long hair that had fallen forward into her face and twisted it into a rope that she threw back behind her shoulder.
“This one,” she said, “Is floral.” She spritzed the perfume on a small white test strip and gave it to Miles to sniff. It reminded him of his mother’s linen closet, not unpleasant, but not the scent he imagined his brother would like for his wife.
“I can see by your face,” the woman said, that that is not the one. “Try this next one, it has more of a citrusy scent.”
This strip smelled of what of the orange grove his ex-girlfriend’s grandpa owned. He had visited it with her, once just after college, when they had talked of getting married. “I don’t think this is quite it, just yet.”
“You have discerning taste.” The woman smiled and picked up a small, gold-tinted glass bottle. “I have saved the best for last.”
Miles took the paper to his nose, closed his eyes and sniffed. He was instantly transported to a tropical beach—he could smell the salt of the ocean and something sweet like coconuts or mangos. He could even hear the squawk of seagulls.
Wait, he thought. Did I really actually hear a fucking seagull! And when he opened his eyes, he was laying down on a beach towel in the sand.
“I thought you’d never come,” said a voice, somewhere to Miles’s right, it was hard to see from the glare of the sun.
“Theo!” Miles said. “What the hell happened?”
“What do you think happened?”
“How should I know?” he said. “I was just trying to buy you a goddamn wedding present.”
Theo smiled. “That’s just the story you told yourself to help with your transition.”
“Transition? Transition from what?”
“From life, stupid,” Theo said not in his normal voice, but in a voice Miles hadn’t heard since he was a child.
Miles saw then the accident: the change in lane made without checking his blind spot. The glass of the window shattering in his face. How had he made such a mistake? What had been going through his mind to distract him?
Oh, well, he thought. I guess it doesn’t matter now.