Flower Dust

The room goes bright a second before you see the flowers.

The lights come up and for a moment the air itself is sparkling. Aldehydes: that fizz of cold champagne and starched cotton and something faintly waxy, the effect perfumers have used for a century to make a bouquet feel lit from within. She walks through it, and the brightness catches on something darker. Red berries, crushed, tart, almost jammy at the edges, pressed into the skin of the wrist, the kind of sweetness that makes you check whether you have stained your sleeve. Underneath, waiting, the rose. Not a rose in a vase but rose oil, honeyed and slightly peppery, the flower at its most concentrated, folding the fizz and the fruit into a single soft cloud of petals that seems to settle on everything she touches. By the time she leaves, the flower dust is on the chairs, the coats, the air. Nobody knows who wore it.