Scents

Sweet to remember the tiny elevator I used to take to the garret someone had loaned me as an office and the way three people would crowd into its one-meter square and share our scents¹ and stinks²（恶臭） and emanations（散发）, even the half-thug from the floor below whose rock radio stations raged up through the ceiling at me but who must have spent half his pay on whatever cologne（古龙香水） he soaked himself in, so raptly buoying³ it was.

 

And the woman who perfumed herself with something that threw me centuries back to some lost time of life I never lived but would passionately⁴ have liked to, and whom I suspect suspected by the way I inhaled⁵ her perfumes and powders and flesh scents, trying to keep them, keep them, that I was a clod（土块，笨蛋） and so manifested an edge of contempt in her glance at this pervert⁶（堕落者） she was forced to slip past to get off.

 

And descending⁷ at lunchtime our rattling⁸ conveyance⁹ as patient as a donkey with two men from some Middle East country whose language I couldn't even name, how the rich reek¹⁰ of the meal they'd just eaten -- onions and lamb -- infused the minuscule¹¹（极小的） volume of our shared air.

 

And once, outside on the sidewalk, a girl kissing her boyfriend goodbye, twice, thrice, who, as she swung before me, lifted the mass of her hair from her neck as though the day were terribly hot, which it wasn't at all, and I fancied the bouquets¹² from that smooth nape trailing behind her like the cloud puffs¹³ from a skywriting airplane, so clear to me I felt if I walked a little higher on my toes, I could plunge¹⁴ my face in them and become a scented¹⁵ cloud myself.

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