“What if someone’s heart’s desire is, like, a lifetime’s supply of Caramilk bars or Jolly Ranchers or something?”
“Why would that be someone’s greatest desire?”
“I don’t know. People are weird.”
I shrug. “Then I guess they get ready to deal with the cavities.”
Ana looks awestruck. “You truly are magical.”
We laugh, then pay and head out, her to her mother’s and me to the lab, where I poke through my materials. I run my finger along the white label stuck to the iris accord. I need to tell Mom about what I’ve discovered, but much like my other moli news, it’s something I need to do in person.
My hand keeps going along the vials. Tobacco Absolute 10% dil alc. After dipping in a blotter, I pull it out to sniff Rafe.
I miss him. I miss being with him. Here, alone, I can see he was right. I was acting like a child and, like a child, broke the things I cared about because I was hurt and lonely. Unlike a child, I need to find a way to fix this.
Rafe said that moment in the garden when we were twenty had helped him understand he needed to change his thinking. It’s like I’m having my moment now, years later, and I have a lot of learning to do.
I put the blotter aside, then bring it back. I had a glimpse of what I wanted my new fragrance to be when Ana laughed with me. Part of what makes joy so precious is the knowledge that it’s fleeting. I wonder how all those who found their heart’s desire coped with it. It could never be the perfect happy ending, because there’s always more work to be done and choices to be made. Yet it’s the work that makes it worthwhile. I put the tobacco to the side. I’m not going to use it, but it will be my private reminder that a sacrifice can be worth the result.
Time passes. I leave the table to walk around the dark store and then outside to breathe in the night air. I’ve been sniffing and writing notes for at least two hours straight, and I need to rest my fatigued nose.
I pluck a few weeds out of the garden under the streetlights and listen to people walking by on their way home from dinner debating whether or not they could survive a zombie apocalypse. (Their consensus is it depends on the kind of zombie, but urban areas would be a slaughterhouse.) Then I go back into the store to assess what I have so far. The lure of working, of creating, is pulling me under, and I gratefully let it happen so I can stop thinking.
This is a gift my mother gave me.
37
Hua Meilin
1990, Brian Mulroney era
Vancouver, Canada
First, gel. Then hairspray. Meilin had worked hard on the swoop ofher bangs—high above her forehead, but with a thin fringe to her eyebrows—and trial and error had taught her the exact order of products required to make it perfect. She’d tried mousse, but the lack of staying power meant by the end of the day, her bangs would be a soft wave, and a total travesty.
Hopefully, Kevin would notice. She thought he would. He was the kind of person who noticed everything, and she liked that, especially when it was about her. She didn’t know the last time someone looked at her and saw Meilin. Not a Chinese girl or a Hua daughter. He saw Mei, someone he liked to spend time with because he thought she was funny, and sweet. That’s what he’d called her the last time they met, and he’d bought her ice cream.
“Sweet like you,” he’d said as he handed the cone over, and Meilin knew she’d gone red. She might have giggled. Kevin did thatto her.
She smiled at her reflection and added some more Toast of New York to her lips before blotting it off. Kevin didn’t like too much makeup. It smeared on his face while they kissed, he’d told her last time, handing her a tissue.
The butterflies that rose every time she thought of him fluttered high into her chest. They’d met through friends, at a dance club downtown, and he’d bought her a drink, then another, smiling as she tried to make him laugh by lip-synching to Roxette. He was the most handsome man she’d seen—Chinese, which was surprising since most of the people she knew were white—and from Shanghai, although his accent sounded almost British. He’d come to Canada for school. He was a few inches taller than her, and his black hair was long on the top. Sometimes it flopped over his eyes, a look she loved, although he shoved it back with an impatient hand.
He’d gotten her number from her friend, and soon they were talking on the phone every night. He wanted to be an accountant or something to do with numbers, in an established firm, the kind where he had to wear a suit. Most of her friends were working in retail, so Kevin’s dream of a solid job was almost exotic. Kevin didn’t seem to have many friends or go out much—he was always studying—and he’d only been at the club because one of his roommates insisted he come.
Meilin, of course, was working at Yixiang. Although she’d resented being forced to spend all her free time there in her youth, now she loved it. Knowing it would someday be hers meant each morning when she opened the door, it was like walking into her future. This location was all she’d known, although she’d seen the original storefront in Chinatown. Her mother said the old store had been too small and cluttered, although spotlessly clean. She often complained about how her own great-grandmother had made sure of that. In that store, the only customers who crossed the threshold arrived thanks to wordof mouth.
The same wasn’t true here. The old customers still came, but now they had people walk in off the street, intrigued by the idea of buying exclusive perfume not available anywhere else in the world. Meilin wanted to play this up further. She wanted to change the flowered wallpaper to dark green, or possibly burgundy, although that was less flattering to her skin tone. She wanted to get new floors, and beautiful wood counters and displays to showcase their fragrances. Her mother agreed, and some of Meilin’s favorite days were when the two of them would make the rounds of other stores, noting what worked and, even better, gossiping cheerfully about what didn’t.
When Kevin came by the store, it had been unexpected, so much so that she’d simply stared when he’d walked in, briefly unable to identify the familiar face. She’d taken the lilies he handed her, and breathed in their funeral scent as she followed his glance. In his eyes was reflected not the glimmering future but the pragmatic present. Kevin wasn’t the kind to dream about what could be, and when she told him of their renovation plans, he had immediately started asking about their financing and other boring things. She tried to distract him by explaining all the perfumes to him. He’d sniffed a few, pointing out when one was too strong or too light before telling her she should close up early and come to dinner with him.
Her mother had come out from the back of the shop and stared at her, and Meilin had said no.
After Kevin left, her mother had turned to Meilin. “Is he a perfumer?”
“You know he’s not.” The lilies would look nice on the counter. Meilin fetched a vase.
“Take those away; they’ll interfere with the scent of our perfumes,” her mother commanded.
