Eau de Parfum

There is a man out there somewhere right now getting ready for a first date. While in the bathroom combing his hair, he finds his roommate’s cologne under the sink. Eau de parfum, it says. He sprays it onto himself, hoping it’s not too strong. He likes this girl. He doesn’t know her too well, but he likes her. They met at a bar, on the outside patio where he saw her with her friends and–in a daring move that was uncharacteristic of him–approached her. He asked to buy her a drink. He asked for her phone number. After a few days of corresponding via text message, he asked if she would like to go out to dinner. She said yes. 
When he gets to the restaurant, she is sitting at the bar. She stands up when she sees him. She gives him a hug. She inhales deeply. She lingers. 
“You smell nice,” she says. 
His brain stays in that moment, even as the host leads them to their table, even as the waiter drops his pen taking their order, even as his date tells him about herself. She talks about her four older siblings, about her physically present but emotionally distant father, about the bus ride to the restaurant, her job as a bank clerk, the water stain on the ceiling of her apartment that won’t go away. He asks questions, and he listens halfheartedly, but even as he absorbs this information, the greater part of his consciousness is still in that previous moment, the way she lingered, the way she inhaled.

“You smell nice.”

At the end of the date he drives her home and gently kisses her goodnight. And there it is again–the slight pause as she draws in a breath. But this time, she pulls away. She says goodnight. She shuts the car door and walks into her apartment building without looking back. What did he do wrong? he wonders. He was polite. He was charming. Did he misread the situation? Then, almost instinctively, he smells himself. Only a hint of the scent remains, barely enough to catch a whiff, even with his face buried in his shirt. He fills his lungs with air and is only able to muster up a trace. 
The next day, as he gets ready to go to his job as a salesman for office equipment, he sees it in the cabinet under the sink again. Eau de parfum. He sprays himself twice. When he gets to work, he texts the woman he went out with the night before. He asks if she’ll go with him to watch a jazz performance in the park the following week. She accepts. In the week leading up to their second date, he starts each day the same way. He sprays a cloud of eau de parfum and then stands within it, absorbing it, feeling it settle into the folds of his clothes. With each passing day, he is more confident that this next date will be a success.
When the night arrives, they meet at the park. She kisses him hello. He assesses her reaction to see if she can sense a difference in his smell. Her expression gives nothing away. They settle in on a bench to watch the band play. He asks about her week. She tells him about a co-worker who bothers her. He always takes too long to count the money. She has to take more customers to pick up his slack. As she tells this story she angles her body ever so slightly in his direction, though her eyes never leave the band.
Over the course of the night she slowly lilts toward him until her head rests lightly on his shoulder. Like a wilting cattail barely touching the surface of a pond, sending out rings of ripples. Her head resting there feels fragile as a heartbeat. He is afraid to move, afraid to sever whatever connection lies there in that barely perceptible resting. He holds his breath. She holds his hand. The music roars and the stars shine, whatever stars are visible past the light pollution. He dares to exhale as she inhales deeply, once again. It’s as if she’s breathing for him. In that moment, with his shoulders stiff and his lungs hollowed out, he is happy. 
The two continue to go on dates, and he continues to use more of the eau de parfum. He covers himself in the scent, terrified that it won’t be enough to mask his own odor, an odor that he is certain must be repulsive. When they have sex, she clutches his hair and buries her face in his neck, smelling it. She refuses to let him go down on her, lest she not be able to breathe in the scent. Instead, he thrusts and thrusts, willing himself not to sweat, until she inhales hard enough to come.
Every day he coats himself in eau de parfum until the bottle is nearly empty. He looks up the scent online. He goes to a department store and buys ten bottles. He ignores the looks from the retail workers as he slaps his credit card onto the counter. He develops a layered system for scent absorption. First he sprays his clothes, as soon as they’re retrieved from the laundromat. Then he sprays himself completely naked, feeling the scent sink into his pores. Finally, he puts on the clothes and fills his bathroom with an all encompassing fog. His throat burns and his eyes water as he invites the fragrance to subsume his inner organs, allowing all undesirable fluids to leak out of him and slink away.
They make their relationship official. He lies awake at night, terrified that one day the eau de parfum will no longer be produced, that all of the existing product will be bought up, and his relationship will evaporate along with it. He routinely checks that the fragrance company is doing well. He calls department stores to make sure they still have the product on shelves. He scrolls through Ebay listings in a sleepless fervor, lovingly noting the low bidding prices.
One night, after one of their sweatless sexual encounters, she turns to him and whispers into his neck, “Where did you buy your cologne?”
He gives a vague answer. He’s not sure, it was a gift, he doesn’t remember the name. Of course these are all lies. Every detail of the bottle is seared into his brain. But he’d never say that to her. He brushes it off. She seems to forget about it. He hides the eau de parfum, just in case, in a shoebox in the back of his closet. They go on in their usual way. They’re happy, the two of them, he tells himself. She sleeps over at his place more often, to avoid looking at the water spot on her ceiling, which has expanded to loom over a large portion of the room. After many of these sleepovers, after one particular midnight Ebay search, he closes the shoebox in his closet, climbs gently into bed, and lets his breathing slow. He watches her sleeping. He can feel her weight next to him, hear her rhythmic breathing. She is solid. She is here. She will not float away. His eyes flutter closed and he finally falls into a deep sleep.
He wakes in the dark at the sound of a door slamming shut. He flails out of bed, the covers constricting, he leaps to his feet and runs to the bathroom. Nothing. He turns on every light in the apartment. Finally, he goes into the closet. Falling to his hands and knees, he finds that the shoebox has disappeared. He runs out the front door, down the stairs of his apartment complex, down down down but he knows it’s futile.
When he arrives outside into the starless night, she is gone.