Perfume Read Free Page B

a fax machine, would be putting her lipstick on at the red light and making her first business call of the day at a comfortable sixty miles an hour on the turnpike heading north.
    Dove’s father would be using his time well: This was very important to Dove’s father. He was learning another language from a set of expensive cassette tapes. Dove thought it was Japanese; last year he had learned German. He looked most odd when driving, his mouth curling around foreign syllables, with nobody in the passenger seat to be talking to.
    In the empty kitchen, Dove’s head was full.
    Like a full stomach—as if she had eaten too much.
    But in her head?
    Had she thought too much?
    Studied too much?
    Daydreamed too much?
    Her head was stuffed and cramped.
    Dove suddenly hit the side of her head with the bottom of her palm. It seemed to work. Her mind settled down, like a bed being made: sheets momentarily fluffed and then resting.
    “Oooh, boy, do I need breakfast,” muttered Dove to herself. She fixed something very sturdy: instant oatmeal black with raisins.
    The raisins stared at her like eyes.
    She put a spoonful to her mouth and thought, If I eat this, my stomach will be full of eyes.
    She went to school hungry.
    In school, Dove could see and recognize all her friends. She was able to say hello and respond normally when they said, “Hey, how are you?” But in the thickness of her head she felt cramped and distant, as though she actually occupied some other place, and had to communicate with her friends long distance.
    The flutter in her head got up and looked around.
    Dove wanted to scratch the inside of her brain. She knotted her fingers to keep from ripping out her hair.
    This is how stags feel, thought Dove, when they first get antlers, and have to rub themselves against the trees to get the velvet off.
    What would they do if she rubbed her head against the classroom walls?
    “The brain, you see,” said the biology teacher, “is similar to an onion.”
    Dove detested onions. If you chopped them, your hands smelled. If you cooked them—and the Daniels often did; her father was fond of small white onions in thick white sauce—they were like baby golf balls soaked in glue.
    “There are also many layers to the brain,” said the biology teacher.
    Dove connected with that. Her brain did have many layers. She could feel the flutter inside her head lifting each brain layer, like blankets on a bed, deciding where to rest for the night.
    At the table they shared, Laurence moaned slightly. Laurence was adorable to look at, but tiresome to be around. He had been that way since they were little kids, and was unlikely to change. Girls were always getting crushes on Laurence and then changing their minds. Laurence was proof that looks were not everything. “Wrong,” murmured Laurence. “There is nothing layered about the brain. Convoluted, yes. Layered, no.”
    Dove raised her hand. The teacher, always eager to coach an inquiring mind, recognized her. “Yes, Dove?” he said happily.
    “You know how sometimes babies are born with two of something?” said Dove. “An extra heart or an extra kidney?”
    “An extra eyeball,” agreed Timmy O’Hay, pretending to have one. Timmy was the opposite of Laurence: tiresome to look at but terrific to be around. After a while you forgot that Timmy was rumpled and wrinkled and just enjoyed him.
    The teacher sighed. “I have never actually heard of extra hearts, Dove, but yes, sometimes there are major deformities at birth.”
    “Have you ever heard of an extra brain?” she said.
    “Dove, please. Let’s be logical here. There isn’t room in a skull for an extra brain.”
    “Sure there is,” asserted Timmy. “Take Laurence here. The trick is that both brains are very small, see. They don’t take you very far. Won’t be long, Laurence’s brains will fold up shop. It’ll be an institution for Laurence, a bed with rails and a nurse with injections to keep him