Tina loved the way he smelled when he held her. She’d first noticed his particular kind of cleanness, as if he just naturally emitted the scent of fresh air in the mountains, when he’d touched her shoulder standing by the copier and left his hand there long enough to mean something, to definitely mean something.
The first time they’d been intimate, physically, she’d expected to find a whiff of sweat or must or food on him somewhere, and been surprised that the pleasing blankness never let up, even when she put her tongue to his belly, while he leaned back and knocked over the fax. Somehow this freshness, as if he had no taint, helped her overcome her doubts.
She came to think of him more and more. Her mind filled with little details like the way his bangs sometimes fell and he’d brush the brown hair back with one hand and run his fingers all the way to the back of his head. She’d walk by his desk to see him sitting square in his seat, tie and shirt neat, eyes concentrated on his screen. Then he’d smile when he caught a glimpse of her, and she’d smile, too, without slowing down. They had this secret, and when she started to worry that anything hidden must be dirty, she thought of his consistent, clean smell. It became inseparable from her idea of him. He was that cleanness.
When she began to doubt and quail before the enormity of giving herself up for him while he gave himself up for her, this as much as anything kept her going.
Eventually, after a series of conversations sitting in his car in one restaurant parking lot or another, they decided he would leave his wife. They both felt wrong and flinched from the harm they were doing, but it was the only way they could complete their love, which was restless with any gaps. There was turmoil, guilt, long nights cut off from each other when Tina wondered where he was and if he’d told her and how she’d reacted. She wondered if he really loved her enough to do it. Then he came to stay with her, first carrying a single bag over his shoulder and then returning the next evening with a carload of clothes and other necessities.
By the end of their first weekend together, Tina knew that something was off. She felt wary around him rather than giddy—and puzzled by the wariness. She watched him brush his teeth and scoop rice out of her pot with a spoon, and she felt like she didn’t know him at all, and here he was inhabiting her private home.
Then, after she teased him for how clumsily he folded t-shirts, Tina learned one critical fact: his wife had always done the laundry. Then she knew. He smelled different now. He was different.
Something in that other woman’s choice of detergent, her care in hanging shirts and pants on a line while the sun shone, her promptness in folding the garments and storing them in a clean cabinet, was the alchemy behind the scent that had seduced Tina. Maybe he’d used his wife’s soap and shampoo, too. It had all come from the wife. Sure enough, within a few weeks, he smelled like everything else in Tina’s apartment.
Tina often sat on her back patio in the evening. She had no view, but Edgewood Park was only a few blocks away, and she sort of sensed it out there. He liked to watch baseball. He’d brought a New York Mets souvenir cup with him, which he washed and re-used every night. While she watched her patch of yard disappear into gloom, Tina often imagined calling his wife to ask, How? How did you do it? How can I get it back?
