I purportedly went to my favorite independent bookstore, A Great Good Place for Books to hear Chandler Burr read from his fabulous new novel You or Someone Like You the other night, but really I went because I wanted him to smell me. You see besides being a novelist, a journalist and a screenwriter, Chandler is also the perfume critic for the New York Times. Yes, there is such a thing and no, you can’t have the job because Chandler already has it and will have it forever because he describes perfumes like so: a labyrinth at dusk; less watercolor, more oil painting, peaceful as a Buddha, elegant as linen, fresh as grass cooling in the evening; the smell of smoking tar and mesquite charcoal lingering on a cowboy’s saddle — is like bungee jumping into a volcano.
I mean, come on. They invented that job just for him.
I couldn’t help myself. Five minutes after I met him I asked him to smell me. I was wearing a very subtle perfume, and I knew he would be able to name it. I offered him my neck–from about five feet away. He waved at me impatiently and leaned in for a good sniff and that was when I panicked. Chandler Burr was smelling me? What was I thinking? What if I smelled bad?
“Do you have something else on besides perfume?” he asked very politely. ”Hair product?” he suggested.
This was like when you go to the dentist and the dentist asks what medication are you on and you think to yourself you’re a dentist I’m not telling you what medication I’m on, I mean, really, what does the medication I’m on have to do with my teeth, so you say nothing, okay, Zyrtec, okay fish oil tablets, okay Vitamin B-12 sublingual tablets because they are very quickly absorbed into the bloodstream but that’s it.
“No hair product,” I said.
He leaned in for a longer sniff, his nose wrinkling. “I’m not smelling the perfume,” he said.
That’s because he was smelling the Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Cracked Heel Moisturizing Treatment I had put on just before I left the house. “Well, I did put on some hand lotion,” I confess. Well, heel lotion, but it works really well for hands.
“Mmm,” he said, furrowing his brow. I’m sure he was compiling his next review: dish soap, bread crumbs, day-old Aunt Jemima syrup cemented to the kitchen counter baking in the sun.
“It’s overpowering your perfume,” he pronounced diplomatically.
“I swear I didn’t come here planning on asking you to smell me,” I told him. ”It just happened.”
He shrugged. I took that shrug to mean it happens a lot. Strange women sticking out their wrists, offering up their necks, wanting their scents to be decoded and translated and affirmed.
His novel is delicious. I’m savoring every page.
