Scents 

     Sometimes he felt like a cat following in the tracks. Not that he was stark mad, but this particular manifestation of his slightly frightened him in the beginning. Though it needs to be mentioned that in due course he became convinced in the correctness of his own theory, and he was not afraid of himself ever since. Every time, before approaching a girl, he tried to catch her scent and, based on it, to understand what kind of person she is. That is why he liked to travel in a thick crowd of public transportation for he could innocently draw near and sense everything he was interested in. His gladness was the greatest when behind a smell of perfume – oh, he hated it so much! – he was able to distinguish the scent of a body. Then he knew exactly how he should behave and based on what he should build his game. Like a chess-player, he precisely devised his strategy and brilliantly played his part. The first failed experiments were left behind long time ago; now this was a mature commander, leading his regiments to the enemy’s headquarters. At home, he already accumulated quite a voluminous archive – every time he secretly pressed a well-hidden button and a camera, built into his chandelier, took a shot of his target when she, poor thing, didn’t suspect anything. For every such photograph there was a file – age, occupation, and, the most important, her scent. He didn’t really need to keep this archive though – for now he still remembered everything himself, but he was afraid that as time passed the accumulation of “material”, as he sometimes liked to call his targets, would grow so large, that human brain would not be able to keep everything. Apparently, his concerns were unfounded, for he was in a good shape despite the fact that

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he was far from being young. Sometimes it was a pleasure to seclude himself in his room, to look over this archive, and to sense those scents again. Unfortunately, there were no first targets in it – only later he came up with an idea of such notes and a camera. Though, probably, the very first victim was he himself – the heart is still aching when recalling the first love, then child-like pure and innocent, and that aroma of betrayal and lechery, which hit him later. Yes, it seems like everything started with that smell. Light and almost imperceptible aroma of foreboding surrounded his first love basically all the time, confusing and bewitching. Only after he was so heartlessly and coldly abandoned, he began to think of it and to check his theory in practice. Subtle and dreamy, they have the same scent – delicate, almost imperceptible. They never have excessive amount of perfume and other rubbish on them; sometimes they even forget to put perfume on. Abundance of perfume and creams – this is for insincere ones; without even realizing it, they are trying to stifle themselves and their body. And these ones should be hit with what they want – with deception and compliments. He tried to avoid them – they represented quite an easy prey, it was not interesting for him any longer. The only aroma, which cannot be found in his archive, is a scent of fidelity and home coziness. Not once did he manage to make a woman with such scent to go astray. He believes that this is exactly the way his future wife should smell, and for many years he senses it all around him, and every time his theory gets confirmed over and over again through his failures with such “material”. But the optimism didn’t run short yet, and search is persistently continued…

10-18-95 03:03am