The Nose
No.492 in 'A Story a Day for a Year - and then some!' (Coming towards the end of this wee project!)
THE NOSE
When the waiter asks if sir would like to try the wine first, Melanie always insists the waiter pour the Trivento Eolo Malbec Reserve into her glass. Then she makes a whole show of it, swirling it around and holding it up to the light to show off the intense purple colour; then lowering her nose to the rim of the glass so she can breathe in the pronounced aromas of raspberries and dark chocolate and cream. She keeps her eyes closed and has the look of saints in ecstasy. She says she can tell just by the smell how the wine will taste on her tongue.
The waiter gives us a lot more attention after that and nothing is too much trouble and the chef comes through at the end of the meal to make sure we have also enjoyed the food, seeking compliments.
She has the nose, you see. I can’t smell cheese or feet or armpits, but Melanie’s nose is an instrument – fine-tuned like a harp with all its strings thrumming. A thing of such exquisite sensitivity. She can smell lost wallets or keys. And what day it is and the time. She says she can smell what I had for lunch when I come home from work and what shop I have stopped in on the way and which route I took from the office.
It’s like a party-trick and I sometimes try to confound her by going into two shops or three, or walking through the park or by the river. She’s never wrong.
Then tonight when I’m home she sits in a sulk at first, her legs pulled up from the floor and her eyes hard as stones. She won’t say what it is, not though I kneel before her talking in a voice that might coax a small creature out from a dark hole. I go to kiss her and she turns her head away and she says, ‘Don’t’ and the word is hissed and spat.
The clock on the wall tut-tuts and the second hand seems like a wagging finger against the wrong I have done and the night creeps into the corners of all the rooms of the house.
Then she sighs and she asks if I have anything I think I should tell her.
I swallow and I am sure she can smell the guilt.
She says I walked home via Mindy’s, which is a bar on Castle Street, and I had a warm glass of Bradshaw Sauvignon Blanc, maybe two. And stale peanuts from a bowl on the counter. And she says I did not drink alone and the woman I was with wears Flowerbomb by Victor and Rolf and she washes her hair with a coconut and almond shampoo. And on and on she goes, filling in all the details of my infidelity.
She has the nose, you see, and she’s never wrong and I wonder what she smells as I close the front door behind me – if loneliness or stupidity or regret has a smell.