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Like mold and sodden material and alcohol, always alcohol.
Or in other words: the exact opposite of the scent currently surrounding her.
Here, it was like an angel had farted. She had to stop herself from taking deep breaths, just in case the perfumed air wasn’t some fancy car diffuser. Because even though it seemed absurd, she was starting to suspect it wasn’t. That it was coming from him, somehow, despite how sweet and light and airy it was.
He’s supposed to smell like engine oil and old turnips, her brain groaned.
But there was nothing she could do for it.
She just had to lean away and breathe normally, so he would never know that she liked getting big whiffs of him. After all, that would definitely count against her on theletting him think she liked himfront. And it was even more of an imperative that this did not happen now while she was here in his ridiculous car, on seats that felt like heaven, while he sat across from her looking almost absurdly polished.
His hair seemed newly trimmed.
She suspected he’d brushed his beard.
Or that someone had brushed his beard.
Most likely a barber who cost more than she spent on rent per month.
And his suit. Jesus Christ, what kind of suit even was that? She glimpsed it out of the corner of her eye, and sort of wanted to cry a little bit—it was that beautiful. Every line of it was as crisp and sharp as a facet of a diamond. Yet somehow at the same time it looked soft. Like it was made out of wool.
Or fuzzy felt, her brain supplied.
Which felt both ridiculouslyI have been poor and obsessed with arts and crafts all my lifeof her and absolutely accurate at the same time. Because sure, she didn’t have the language for any of this. But she did have the language for what it looked like from the perspective of someone who had never had a single bean. And that felt kind of valid if she was being honest about it.
So she kept on with it.
She applied it to his shoes, which gleamed and glowed like the most perfect conkers on the playground. And his cuff links—his actual cuff links—that looked as if they were made out of platinum, or some other fancy metal.
And then finally there was his house, which apparently sat on the end of a driveway so long she thought they’d gotten lost down some country road.I think we should have gotten off at that last junction, she came pretty close to saying. Then there it was: this great big squares-piled-on-rectangles-piled-on-squares thing, looming up like something out of a terrible dystopian future she didn’t want to be in.
It’s like a house from an episode ofBlack Mirror, she found herself thinking, as they exited the car and made their way up to it. And though that seemed wild and rude of her, it did.
The whole thing was white, completely white, in a way that had to be impossible to maintain without the help of some frightening futuristic device. And though there were a lot ofwindows, you couldn’t see through any of them. Which made sense, considering how much he probably didn’t want people peering in at him.
But at the same time, it was creepy as fuck. It made her think of all the weird things that could happen in there without anybody ever knowing. Like if it turned out he was into smearing spaghetti all over himself and slipping and sliding through the halls, he could totally do it, and nobody would ever be the wiser.
Though she couldn’t imagine he was. The place was just too pristine to ever manage to conceal the mess you’d make. You could wipe forever and never get these slick white walls and polished wooden floors clean—both because of the immaculate look of them, and the sheer amount of such surfaces there seemed to be. They went on endlessly, gleaming away as far as the eye could see.
Like she had somehow found herself in a museum.
That for some inexplicable reason had no art.
Does a human being actually live here, she found herself thinking.
And then felt kind of afraid to move, just in case her presence as a person set off some kind of alarm. She just stood in the massive hallway, trying not to sweat or seem alarmed or anything of the sort. Oh, and she definitely couldn’t take off her coat now. Because if she took it off, she’d reveal her disastrous outfit underneath. And though said outfit had seemed like a good idea when Connie had suggested it, it didn’t now, in this gosh darn palace.
It just looked like she was trying too little.
Way, way, way too little.
To an embarrassing degree.
So she kept her coat on as she followed him into what looked like asecondhallway, dominated by an enormous staircase. Then just as she was trying not to gawp at that, he turned abruptly and stared, and she knew. She absolutely wasn’t going to get away with the coat thing. There had been a fancy hanging apparatus back there that he’d put his on. And quite obviously, he had expected her to do the same.
But she hadn’t.
Much to his thankfully misguided distress.
