I worry that while I’m on the SNRIs my senses will be dulled. The doctor said, No, you might be a little less sensitive, emotionally, but it won’t affect your physical senses, not at all. But I doubt him. I breathe in the new scents that arrive, and the checklists that used to form in my head – rain, crushed stems, lilacs, peonies, sweet pea, jasmine – just stop, like a road at the edge of a cliff. They evade me now, those other notes; the faint, crucial ones separating one scent from another, which I used to be able to catch.

The one thing I will not throw out, despite the SNRIs, is what Andrew calls my ‘old ladies’, my collection of original perfumes – Shocking, Mitsouko, Shalimar, Fracas. There are modern versions, but they aren’t the same. Too many of the original ingredients have been banned because they’re toxic, or were scraped from the anal glands of some endangered animal. And most people don’t like them, anyway. Too strong, too much. Overpowering. Andrew sniffed the stopper of one, said it was enough to wake the dead, washed his hands, and then all afternoon kept smelling his fingers, saying, How do you stand it? The smell? It never goes away.

That’s called the drydown, I told him. There’s the initial burst, the top notes, then the heart notes, and then the base notes – the drydown. And if it lasts and lasts and won’t disappear, even after a shower, well, that’s a good thing.

He shook his head. Said, Fine, keep them if you must.

I lined them up on the dressing table. The next day, he moved them to the cabinet of the guest bathroom.

I thought you couldn’t bear to touch them, I said.

I wore rubber gloves, was his reply.

He never smells them on me, anyway. I am almost always wearing something I have to wear for work. What’s that? Andrew will ask some days, when he picks me up in his sleek sedan. It’s nice, he’ll say. Sweet. Feminine. Pleasant.

Recently he made his special dish, whiting with a white wine and parsley sauce. He set an LED candle in the middle of the table. My gut didn’t sink, the way it would have, once. It just rolled a little, like when you step into an elevator that travels more quickly than you were expecting. He talked about work, about the golf game he had planned for the weekend, about the holiday we would take in June, about the discount he got at the resort.

Then: Do you ever think about marriage?

My mind blanked, a train entering a tunnel.

Sometimes, I said.

I want to know if it’s something you would want, he said.

Are you —