“I feel her perfume on me still,” K said, fidgeting and gasping. “I don’t know, it’s just…on me.”
The date he went on went poorly. The woman sat politey in her chair and drank the expensive drink K dutifully purchased. Then she went home while he was busy paying the tab. He never touched her – the goal of any date, unachieved. Not even a handshake.
Later, not entirely sure what happened and not necessarily upset about it, he began to feel the effects of her perfume. It was pleasant to the nose (expensive, K could tell), but heavy on the skin, like a flak jacket or the lead thing you wear at the dentist during x-rays.
K spent an agonizing evening on the floor of his modest apartment, air seeping in fits from the holes in his body. She was beautiful and K would have pleasured himself over the toilet, making up for intimate contact denied. But the weight was crippling. So he left even himself untouched.
Sitting in front of me, K’s body leaned like a dying flower.
“Can I have her number,” I asked.
“Fuck off,” he replied with his last breath. “I think she likes me.”