What Time It Smells Like

I lift one foot from the pavement and wait.

A car passes. Then another.

I have become cautious about crossing streets. Not frightened exactly, but respectful of everything that might make me fall: a pothole, a badly placed stone, a driver who has decided that the three seconds I require to cross belong to him.

I step forward.

A car approaches faster than I would like, and without thinking I raise my hand toward the driver.

Slow down.

The gesture makes me smile.

It is my mother's hand.

Not literally, of course. Mine has rings she never wore and nails she would probably consider too long. But the gesture is entirely hers: the raised palm, the authority, the assumption that the approaching driver will understand that an older woman is crossing and that civilization requires him to wait.

The driver slows.

Even better, he gives me a little nod.

I nod back.

There it is.

I have definitely been welcomed to the other side of life.

I reach the opposite pavement safely and check the time. I am early for my appointment. Very early, actually. There is no reason to go inside yet, so I continue walking.

Slowly.

Walking slowly changes a street.

At normal speed, this is an unremarkable street: apartment buildings, balconies, parked cars, shops with metal shutters, wires overhead, plants attempting to survive in pots. But when there is nowhere I need to be for several minutes, the street begins releasing information.

Onions first.

Someone is frying onions.

The smell comes down from somewhere above me, although I cannot tell which balcony owns it. I look up. Laundry. Satellite dishes. An empty chair. A striped awning. No cook.

Garlic joins the onions.

Now I am certain someone is preparing lunch.

A few steps farther, the smell disappears and is replaced by detergent. Clean laundry, perhaps. Or a floor recently washed. Then perfume—strong, floral, unmistakably belonging to someone who has either just left the building or is about to.

Then tobacco.

Then jasmine.

Every few meters, I seem to cross an invisible border.

Onion zone.

Detergent zone.

Perfume zone.

Tobacco zone.

Jasmine zone.

The buildings look as though they belong to the same street, but my nose knows better.

At one balcony, a woman is pinning a white sheet to a clothesline. She snaps it once before hanging it, and for a second it balloons above the railing like a sail. Somewhere beneath her, cutlery rattles against plates.

Lunch upstairs, laundry downstairs.

Or perhaps the other way around.

A man opens the door of a tiny grocery shop and drags a crate of bottled water onto the pavement. He yawns as he does it. His day looks as though it has barely begun.

Two buildings farther on, someone is already taking in dry laundry.

I keep walking.

Coffee.

I stop.

This one is easy. After-lunch coffee.

I can almost place the tiny cup beside a plate that has recently been cleared. Whoever lives behind that window is already in the afternoon.

But twenty steps later there is coffee again.

This coffee smells different.

Or perhaps I only imagine that it does.

First coffee of the morning, I decide. Someone has woken late. A student, perhaps. Someone who worked at night. Someone whose curtains are still closed while another household two floors below has already eaten lunch.

I check my watch.

The watch insists there is only one time.

The street disagrees.

A woman in pale blue scrubs approaches me carrying a handbag and a plastic bag. Her shoulders have the unmistakable downward pull of someone whose working day is over. Her hair has partly escaped its clip.

For her, this is evening.

She passes me.

Another woman, also in scrubs, comes quickly out of a building while fastening her hair. She is heading toward a car.

For her, the day is beginning.

For a moment I want the two women to notice one another. They could almost exchange something as they pass.

Good morning.

Good night.

A young man rushes by smelling of cologne and cigarettes. A delivery motorcycle stops, and the driver removes a paper bag from the box behind him. Somewhere a child is crying. Somewhere else a television presenter is speaking too loudly. Above me, someone shakes a small carpet over a balcony railing.

A boy in shorts appears on another balcony holding a toothbrush. He leans over the railing, foam still at the corner of his mouth, and looks down at the traffic with the vacant expression of someone not yet fully admitted into the day.

Across from him, an elderly man is eating something from a plate balanced on his knees.

Breakfast facing lunch.

Another wave of coffee reaches the pavement.

Before-work coffee?

After-work coffee?

After-lunch coffee?

First-morning coffee?

Coffee does not care.

It accompanies everyone.

I begin to imagine the apartments stacked above me not as floors but as clocks.

Second floor: 8:15 in the morning.

Third floor: 2:30 in the afternoon.

Fourth floor: nearly bedtime.

Across the street: lunch.

Above the pharmacy: breakfast.

Behind the green shutters: somebody's five-minute pause between one obligation and the next.

All occupying the same building.

All occurring now.

Perhaps that is why apartment buildings have always seemed quieter from the outside than they really are. Their windows line up obediently, one above another, pretending that the people behind them are sharing the same hour.

They are not.

One person has just woken. Another has already lived an entire working day. Someone is hungry. Someone is full. Someone is putting on perfume. Someone is washing it away. Someone is making the bed while someone else is longing to get back into one.

The thought makes me walk even more slowly.

I pass another balcony. Fried onions again, but these are darker, sweeter. Someone has let them caramelize. Beneath them comes the sharp clean smell of bleach. Above that, jasmine.

Then something sweet. Cake, perhaps, or biscuits.

For whom?

A birthday in the middle of someone else's ordinary Tuesday?

I look up, hoping for balloons, but see only a row of towels.

The smells overlap without disturbing one another.

So do the times.

A horn sounds behind me. Someone calls to someone from a balcony. A metal door rolls upward. A spoon strikes the inside of a coffee cup—three small taps, distinct enough that I look toward the sound.

For a moment, I wonder what my own smell says about my hour.

Perfume, certainly.

Perhaps toothpaste.

No onions. No detergent. No coffee.

Appointment.

Can appointment be a smell zone?

I laugh to myself and check my watch again.

Now I should turn back.

My appointment belongs to the official clock, and the official clock eventually wins.

I retrace my steps, but the street is already slightly different.

The woman in blue scrubs is gone. The boy with the toothbrush has disappeared from the balcony. The grocery-store man is arranging packets of biscuits near his doorway. The onions are still frying. The jasmine is still there.

Somewhere, another cup of coffee has just been poured.

At the crossing, I wait again.

A car approaches.

I lift my hand.

The driver slows immediately.

This time I don't smile at the gesture.

It already feels natural.

I cross at my own pace.

On the other side, I look once more at my watch before entering the building.

It tells me exactly what time it is.

But by now I know better.

I can smell what time it is.