Perfume Read Free Page A

balcony three, where she almost never went.
    It was supposed to be an “eyrie,” an eagles’ nest.
    She was a Dove. She nested in her own room.
    Her room was pastel: pale chalky hues like lemon and dusty rose. She yearned for as much color as a Hawaiian beach: for gaudy posters, bright scarves, slaps of primary color paint, richly hued sheets, and rows of shoes in purple, yellow, green, blue, scarlet, hot pink, chartreuse. … But she never bought those. They frightened her, as if she would not be Dove any longer were she to break forth in brightness.
    Nothing in Dove’s room matched. Nothing was even. Nothing came in pairs. Nothing was folded with square corners. Identical things were impossible to endure.
    But she did not enter the safety of her own room.
    She went up toward the sky, like a bird about to fly.
    Her heart was going crazy, beating double, supplying so much blood to her system that it was enough for two.
    Balcony three was carpeted in the nubbly gray that waffled up the stairs and balconies, and here at the top, it could not stop itself, but even covered the walls, forming little steplike seats.
    This was a “retreat.”
    Not that anybody had ever retreated there. It was too open. When they retreated—which in her family was always—they went to their own rooms and shut their doors.
    Dove set her book bag on one of the step seats.
    Next to it, she set her package from Dry Ice.
    There was a handle on the skylight. It was a working window. Carefully, Dove released the lock. She put one hand on the handle and turned it easily. One full turn did not move the skylight. A second full turn and the skylight lifted perceptibly. On the third full turn, the glass began to straighten itself and tilt upright, and then Dove could stand and touch the sky.
    The sky that was blue … the sun that was yellow … the air that was warm with spring … on a day that was gray and chilly.
    Her head stuck out of the top of the condo.
    There was nothing in sight.
    Not a rooftop.
    Not a treetop.
    Not a plane or a bird.
    Not a horizon or a view.
    Just blue, blue sky.
    Some other world entirely; some other time and space.
    The bottle of perfume had tumbled out. It lay like a crystal snake on the soft rug. Venom .
    Dove lifted the perfume. The stopper was crystal. A simple cylinder, glittering.
    She rested the bottle against her cheek, and it was dry ice, burning her with its terrible temperature. It branded her face. She yanked it from her skin and held it away from herself, toward the blue, blue sky.
    A warm shaft of wind curled down the skylight. She could almost see the wind: a blue flag wrapping around her wrist. She shook the wind off her arm. But since she was still holding the perfume bottle by the stopper, the bottle dropped, while the stopper remained in her hand.
    The perfume fell gently to the cushion of the carpet, its snake neck curled so that not a drop spilled.
    But its scent … oh, its scent … like the wind, Venom slipped out of the bottle diffused through the air, settled on Dove’s hair, rested on Dove’s hand, filled her body.
    Her lungs and heart and brain breathed Venom.
    As she had almost seen the wind, she almost saw something else, too: almost saw another person, almost felt another life.
    No body. No flesh. No form.
    Invisible as fragrance.
    But nevertheless, it was there.
    And full of …
    … venom

Chapter 3
    I N THE MORNING, DOVE FELT a flutter inside her head.
    It was a gentle movement, a bird shifting position in the nest at night. She shuddered slightly when the feeling stopped. Stood quite still, not wanting to feel that again.
    She felt it again.
    Something was brushing up against the inside of her skull.
    Dove brushed her hair very hard, to push the feeling away.
    The feeling increased.
    Dove rushed downstairs, hoping to find a parent, but they had left, of course; each had a long commute, in different directions, and they began their days early.
    Dove’s mother, whose car had a telephone and