Chapter 2 - What Do You Smell Like

CHAPTER 2: WHAT DO YOU SMELL LIKE

Three weeks built themselves a rhythm.

Nine o'clock, give or take — after Mme's call, after the supper dishes — his voice note would land. Low, unhurried Sesotho, worn smooth at the edges by mine-town years. Some nights she answered from the bath, phone propped on the towel rail, his voice low against the steam.

They covered the syllabus. Worst customers. Best gravy. Whether Maseru cold beats Rustenburg cold. (It does. She had data.)

One night, close to eleven:

"What do you... no. Forget it."

"Say it."

"What do you smell like? Right now." A pause. "That's a strange question. You don't have to—"

She looked at her wrist as if the answer lived there. "Amber. Something with amber in it. I save it for weddings, but I wore it today."

"Why today?"

She didn't answer. He didn't ask again. Two fools, smiling at separate phones in separate countries.

Somewhere in week two, fathers came up the way potholes do — suddenly, and you feel it in your spine.

"He worked the mines," she said. "Platinum side. He passed, four years back."

The pause stretched a beat too long. Then: "The mines take and take." And quieter: "I'm sorry, Palesa."

The subject changed itself after that. She thought: a man who knows not to fill a silence. She was collecting reasons.

Then the pharmacy council emailed about a CPD workshop. Sun City, of all places — apparently pharmacists also deserve chandeliers. She read the venue twice and told herself the flutter was professional development.

She sent him the dates. The guesthouse she'd booked in Rustenburg town — cheaper than the resort, she told herself, and closer to nothing in particular.