Volume I: The Interior Life; The Scent

The Scent.

She leaves and something stays.

The elevator doors close. The restaurant empties. The cab is already halfway across the bridge. But there it is—still in the room, still caught in the scarf she left on the chair, still on the page of the book she was reading on your couch. Still there.

A woman can control what she wears. She can rehearse what she says. She can decide when to arrive and whether to stay for the second drink. But she can't control what someone notices after she's gone.

The scent stays behind to speak for her.

I wear mine on the inside of my wrists and the back of my neck.

Not because someone told me to. Because those are the places that get close to people. The wrist when I hand something over. The neck when someone leans in. I wasn't thinking about this when I started doing it. I'm thinking about it now, realizing the logic was always there.

The bottle I reach for is the one that's almost empty. The others sit full—gifts I didn't choose, phases that passed, the one that smelled like someone I thought I wanted to be. The almost-empty bottle is the truth. That's the one I chose, over and over, until choosing stopped being a choice.

My sheets smell like it. My coats carry it. The letters I send arrive with it.

I've left traces of myself in rooms I'll never enter again. On people I may not see again. In memories being made right now that I'll never know about.

That's a strange thing to consider. But it's true.

There's a particular kind of recognition when someone knows you by scent before they see you.

He's in the other room but he knows you're home. She hugs you and holds on half a second longer than necessary, breathing in. The child buries their face in your collar—not looking, just inhaling. This is you. You're here.

That recognition can't be faked. It's accumulated. Months of the same scent, worn the same way, until it stops being something you put on and starts being something you are.

Most women won't commit to that. They rotate. They collect. They match the fragrance to the season, the outfit, the mood. There's pleasure in variety—I get it. But variety is anonymous. Nobody remembers the woman who smelled different every time.

The ones who commit to a signature have made a decision: I want to be recognizable. Not to everyone. To the people who get close enough to notice. I want to leave something behind when I leave.

I can still smell women I haven't seen in twenty years.

Not what they looked like—that's gone soft. Not what they said—I'd have to check old notes. But how they smelled. The woman who interviewed me for my first job. My mother's friend who let me sit at the grown-up table. The teacher who made me believe I could write.

Gone now. But if I passed them on the street, I'd know before I turned around.

Scent doesn't go through the part of the brain that decides what to remember. It goes straight to storage. The memory is made before you've chosen to make it. That's why it's the most honest record. And why it outlasts everything else.

The coat is the first thing strangers see.

The scent is the last thing intimates remember.

I put mine on in the morning, before I'm dressed, when the day hasn't started yet. The same gesture I'll make tomorrow and the day after. Wrists. Neck. Bottle back in the same spot on the shelf.

By evening it will have faded on me. I won't smell it anymore. But someone will. At dinner. In the elevator. On the pillow after I've fallen asleep.

A woman is always leaving. Every room, every conversation, every year. The question isn't how she enters. It's what stays when she's gone.