The persistence of olfactory memory.

I hitched a ride with Zach on my way home from work. The restaurant is his; a third, anyway, the namesake and the menu his baby, with the finances and management the responsibility of the other two silent partners. Zach rides an old, rumbly motorcycle and gives me his helmet when I ask for a lift anywhere. He keeps his goggles on and I cling to him in the hot breeze and say directions into his ear: “Not this right, but the next one – that’s the one you take.”
We stopped for gas today on the way to my house. Fueling a motorcycle is less clinical than fueling a car. The inside and outside of the motorcycle isn’t like sitting inside your sedan or SUV, then climbing out and feeling a distinct change from inner world to outer world. You can smell the gasoline. You can put your hand on your seat and know that hopping back on means no monumental change from your feet on pavement to your feet hovering just over tarmac as you weave through traffic.
“I love the smell of gasoline,” I said, as Zach pumped it into his bike. I inhaled, hard, knowing deep inside my brain there was at least one brain cell collapsing and dying with that breath. He laughed.
“I was thinking today about how when I fuel up, I smell like gas. I use French cologne, though,” he said, “And it makes me laugh to think about smelling like both of those things at the same time.”
“It’s a fun dichotomy,” I said.
At home, later, I stretched out on my couch for a while and watched reruns of Frasier. I checked the time and realized I should nap before my evening shift at the restaurant. When I moved to the bedroom, Mishka was initially, it seemed, happy to have me join him on the bed, even shifting his position so that I could wrap my arms around him, my little spoon, but realizing he was too warm, soon jumped off the bed and padded away into the other room, his nails clicking as he left. I buried my face in the duvet. The smells of Zach’s expensive cologne and the sweet puppy smell of Mishka’s sleep-breath mixed together and I faded into a gentle sleep.