“Hey, Peter. Peter.”
“Hm?” She was shaking me, and with each shake I was pressed for an instant closer to her, the skimpy pillow compressed between my head and her hip.
“It’s the commercial,” she said. “What were you going to tell me?”
“Oh. Um—” I didn’t remember, but that didn’t matter. I had other things to say to her. “Did you ever think about the way we smell things?”
“No,” she said, shaking me again. “I didn’t. What about it?”
“Well, when we smell things, there are molecules of the thing, whatever it is we’re smelling, like cabbage soup or perfume or whatever, in the air.”
“Mm.”
“And when we smell them, we take them in, we breathe them in. Molecules of the thing. Whatever it is, the thing we’re smelling.”
“No kidding.”
“Yes. I mean no. And just now I’ve been—”
“Uh-oh. Shhh. It’s coming back on.”
“But—”
“Next commercial.”
I slumped back down against her again. I wiggled a bit, twisted my head against the pillow to shift the stuffing aside and thin it out, to get closer to her hip, and she tightened her grip on me to make me stop squirming. I lay there, inhaling her and waiting for the commercial. I had no patience for the movie that day. I lived for the commercials. I loved the commercials. I loved the instant when I realized that one was coming, the interval between the cessation of the image of the movie and the commencement of the image of the commercial, because in that moment when the screen was empty, Ariane stretched, yawned, rolled, shifted in a dozen delightful ways that I, resting as I was against her, felt reverberate through me like deep waves along a fault line (Volume E). That instant of recognition was the thin boundary between the anticipation of pleasure and the onset of pleasure. During the movie, Ariane wanted to watch, and she would tolerate no interruption, but the commercials bored her, so she was willing to listen to me then; she’d allow me to put on my little show, display my nickel’s worth of learning. In the commercial breaks, I was the entertainment.
“So?” she said. “About the way we smell things?”
“Oh.” The commercial had taken me by surprise. “Well, these molecules— You know what? It’s not just about that. It’s about the commercial, too.”
“What? This commercial? This stuff for dainty feminine hand-washables?”
“Not just this one. All of them. There’s a second where the show stops but the commercial hasn’t started yet. Less than a second. It’s a time when there’s just nothing, well not nothing but just the snow—”
“What on earth does this have to do with how we smell things?”
“It’s all tied up together. See, when something has a smell, it’s got a cloud of molecules of itself spreading out from it, so you could say that it’s not just where it was anymore. It’s all over. Well, not all over, but it’s much larger.”
“You mean the cabbage soup is filling the house.”
“Yes, yes.”
“It’s not just in the pot anymore, it’s kind of all over.”
“That’s it.”
“Disgusting.”
“But wait,” I said. “It’s us, too. And used cars. Depreciation. And diffusion. It’s about where we stop.” I sat up suddenly. “It is!” I said. I had surprised myself. I’d discovered something about the question. “It is! You think you stop here, at your skin—”
I touched her. Without thinking about the liberty I was taking, I put my hand on her leg. Of course, I wasn’t actually touching Ariane; I was touching her stocking. Still, I was much closer to touching her than I had been with the pillow between us. Apparently I was too close, because she slapped my hand and said, “Down, boy.”
“Sorry,” I said, though I was not sorry at all. “But the thing is that you don’t stop here.” I hesitated a moment, then touched her finger, just barely touched it, to show her what I meant. “This isn’t the edge of you. It looks like it, but it isn’t. Little bits of you are spreading out. All over the room. I know they are, because I can smell them.”
“That’s sick.”
“No, no. It’s not,” I said. “You smell great. I love smelling you.”
“Peter!” she said with a grimace. “If you don’t cut this out, you’re going to have to go home.”
“No—wait—listen,” I said. “When I smell you, I—well—you and I—”
“What are you getting at?” She looked suspicious.
“Some of you is in me,” I said breathlessly.
“What!”
“It must be,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe it goes back out when I breathe out, but for a while some of you is in me. We’re all mixed up. I know it doesn’t look that way, but it’s true. It must be.”
“You’ve got a strange mind, Peter,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I wonder—”
“That’s enough,” she said, nodding at the screen, where the movie was back on. “Next commercial.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” I had been about to raise the interesting question of where our boundaries would lie if I licked her. It was probably best that I didn’t. She would probably have sent me home. I settled down. She pressed that firm, steadying hand on me again. During the commercial break, while I was speaking so excitedly, the pillow had fallen to the floor. Throughout the next stretch of movie neither of us said a word. Neither of us seemed to notice that the pillow was gone. At least one of us was pretending.
WHEN I GOT HOME that evening, my mother gave me an odd look and sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Whew!” she said. “Where have you been this time?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Did she know? How did she know? Was it written all over my face?
“You smell funny,” she said. “Like cabbage—and—” She sniffed some more.
“Oh,” I said, backing away before she could guess the other scent. “I was at Raskol’s. They’re cooking cabbage soup.”
“I think you brought it all home with you,” my mother said. I was already on my way out of the room. “Go change your clothes and wash up. Put your sweater in the bag for the cleaners.”
I went up to my room and got changed, but before I went back downstairs I held my sweater to my face and took a long draft of cabbage soup and Ariane.
[to be continued]
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