Aroma Man

Aroma Man

By

Tom Mollica

At a table inside the Happy Perch restaurant, Arnie Melvin looked across the table at his Mister Cupid dating site match Sonia. She was a handsome woman, but so far, she did not have a pleasing personality.

After meeting in the bar, enjoying a cocktail, and introducing themselves, the two went into the restaurant. When the hostess was putting menus down, Arnie pulled Sonia’s chair out for her.

She did not sit, but said, “The spiritual path I follow requires me to do an ‘honor the Gods song and dance’ before I consume food.”

“Oh, sure. Go ahead,” Arnie said, moved to his side of the table, and being a gentleman remained standing while Sonia did a dance that resembled the Funky Chicken. She chanted and sang with an Eastern European accent, which Arnie found odd as she did not speak with an Eastern European accent. He stood uncomfortably as other diners watched.

“Oh, my,” said the hostess.

“Swing it, sister,” a middle-aged man wearing a bad toupee yelled out.

The man stopped when his wife gave him a dirty look.

When finished, Sonia sat down. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Arnie sat too. The two ordered a second round of drinks and continued the clumsy conversation that had begun in the bar.

“It said in your Mister Cupid profile that you work with computers or something,” Sonia stated in her monotone, lacking excitement voice.

“I’m the supervisor of the IT department for Sooza Technology.”

“That seems like a boring job.”

“You’re a cook at McDonald’s.” Arnie thought he would try to lighten up the mood. “Before I joined Mister Cupid, I ordered a Russian mail order bride. It didn’t work out too well. They forgot to punch holes in the box when they shipped her.”

Sonia glared at him with her normal dour expression, seeming now to be angered. “My grandmother was Russian. She was a mail order bride and married my grandpa Ollie.”

“Oh,” Arnie answered. He had been thinking of pulling out his sock puppet, Mister Cheetos, from the inside of his sports coat that he brought to help if the conversation got slow, but now thought against the idea.

Sonia began a tirade about the city’s recent crime wave. “Why yesterday, my friend Pearl had her purse stolen.”

What Sonia or anyone else didn’t know was that Arnie had a secret identity and he knew first-hand about the city’s wrongdoings. Arnie’s superhero alter ego was Aroma Man, Green Bay, Wisconsin’s top crime-fighter. As Sonia droned on about how she liked English Muffins instead of toast in the morning, his thoughts drifted back to six months ago when Aroma Man began.

He had a steady girlfriend back then, Nellie Klegerman. If they were still dating, he thought, he would not have had to join the Mister Cupid dating site and be on this date with the surly Sonia.

*****

Arnie and Nellie Klegerman were on a vacation in Sumatra, Indonesia. The two hiked through dangerous, steam-room-like rain forests in search of exotic plants and flowers. Nellie was the president of the Green Bay Botany Club, and a lover of tropical plants, even though none of these would ever grow in Green Bay.

This wasn’t Arnie’s idea of a fun vacation – trudging for hours and hours through thick and hot vegetation. His idea of a fun vacation would be going to Epcot at Disney World and “Drinking Around the World,” trying beers from Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Morocco, Japan, the United States, Italy, Germany, China, Norway, and Mexico.

“This area is seldom seen by humans,” said their guide Banyu Gunawan. “You may be the first Americans to see it.”

“How exciting is that, Arnie?” said Nellie. Glee showed on her face.

“It’s great - very exciting,” he answered, with little enthusiasm, and wiped his sweat-soaked forehead with the back of his hand. A dime-sized bug landed on his nose and bit him. From a tree, an orangutang threw a half-eaten mango. It connected and splotched on the back of Arnie’s neck. A hungry tiger roared nearby just before a branch swatted his face.

Banyu stopped and pointed to a flower cluster. It had a cream color on the outside that tightly enclosed the deep crimson flower cluster. “Here we have a corpse flower. Unfortunately, corpse flowers blooms for just two to three days once every two to three years, so we will not be able to smell it.”

“What does it smell like?” Arnie asked.

“Like rotten flesh, smelly feet, or diapers,” Banyu answered.

“That’s too bad. Nothing better than getting a good whiff of rotten flesh,” Arnie joked.

Nellie gave Arnie a look like he should stop saying dumb things in front of Banyu.

“The smell is meant to attract pollinators like flies and carrion beetles,” Banyu continued.

The three walked on through the humid jungle. Many plants had sharp and itchy leaves, which seemed to find Arnie. Spiders the size of toasters crawled around and hung on webs from trees waiting to bite. The air was so moist it was like walking around in an outdoor steam room.

“Are there snakes here?” Arnie asked. He hated snakes.

“Yes, the venomous snake Black Spitting Cobra lives here. It can kill you with one poisonous bite. Be on the lookout for pythons hanging from trees. They will grab you with dozens of their sharp curved teeth and then squeeze you to death before swallowing you whole,” Banyu answered.

Arnie gulped.

“If we have some luck, we may be able to see a python eat a monkey,” Banyu continued.

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Nellie said.

A little further, Banyu stopped. He looked in awe at a flower. “Look at the size of this corpse flower. It is the biggest one I have ever seen.” Banyu grabbed his phone from his pocket and took pictures.

Arnie stepped a little closer to see what the big deal was. Without warning, the corpse flower bent over, and the plant’s petals snatched him much in the manner of a Venus Fly Trap. In an instant, it set him in the flower’s center. The petals closed and trapped him inside.

The smell was horrible – worse than the Limberger Cheese Arnie’s grandpa used to eat. He wished he could hold his nose, but the leaves had his arms pinned to his sides. Able to see through a little gap in the petals, he cried out in a muffled voice, “Help!”

Banyu looked up at him. “This is such a beautiful plant. I do not wish to damage it.”

“We do not come to foreign countries and destroy their flora, Arnie,” said Nellie.

“Get me out of here!” Arnie screamed.

“Maybe if we each grab a petal and pull it down your boyfriend can escape,” said Banyu.

“Are you sure we won’t damage the plant?” asked Nellie.

“Get me out of here!” Arnie again screamed.

The two each pulled on a large petal in front of Arnie. At one point, Nellie’s hand slipped and clasped Banyu’s.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said, but did not let go.

Through his gap in the petals, Arnie noticed the two giving each other googly eyes. “Get me out of here!” he screamed for the third time. The repulsive smells were making him woozy. His knees buckled. Tears rolled down his eyes. “I’m going to die inside a smelly flower.”

When Nellie let go of Banyu’s hand, he said, “Okay, one, two, three, pull.”

With effort, the two managed to pull a petal down and Arnie fell out. Getting up, he went to hug Nellie.

She pushed him away. “Don’t touch me. You stink.”

Later at the grass hut they were staying in, Nellie said, “I’m going out. Even after a shower you still stink. I need some fresh air.”

Being exhausted from the long day and his horrifying experience, Arnie fell sound asleep. The next morning Nellie was not in the room and her luggage was gone. He looked in the bathroom. “Nellie?” He looked into the hall. “Nellie?” She was nowhere to be found. Walking back into the room, he found a note on the dresser.

“Dear Arnie. I will not be returning to Green Bay with you. Banyu and I have fallen deeply in love. You must forget me and find new love. Maybe join a dating service. Yours truly, Nellie.”

A forlorn Arnie returned to the United States. Long baths of tomato juice got rid of his unpleasant odor. He soon discovered from being squeezed inside the corpse flower that he had somehow developed the ability to aim his right palm, project an offensive odor, and incapacitate villains. After using his new power to stop a thief who was stealing an Amazon package off a porch, Arnie thought he would be a part-time crime fighter.

He made a costume in his mom’s sewing room while she and his dad were on vacation. A Green Bay Packer custom-made jersey had the number one and Aroma Man written on the back. A Packer helmet with a tinted face shield hid his identity. Black tights and hiking boots completed the outfit.

Arnie soon became Green Bay, Wisconsin’s top crime fighter.

Sonia rapping her knuckles on his head snapped him out of his daydream. She had walked around the table and was next to him.

“Helloooo! Are you in there?” Sonia yelled. “I was telling you a story about my Aunt Moola’s lumbago.”

“Oh, yes. I’m here.”

Sonia went back to her seat and finished her Aunt Moola story then added more long-winded, dull narratives in between slurping down a bowl of minestrone soup, and dining on the meatloaf platter.

How do I end this, Arnie thought.

Before Arnie could reply to Sonia’s story about how she made her own shoes, three men wearing black hoods and holding guns stormed into the restaurant.

“This is a robbery!” One of the hoodlums shouted. “Everyone put all their valuables on the table, and you won’t get hurt.”

When diners were slow to respond, the second robber fired two shots into the ceiling. “We mean now!”

Arnie had to get to the parking lot and the second-hand van he bought to help his crime-fighting and get into his Aroma Man costume. Sonia watched him crawl under other tables and make it to the bathroom without being seen. Going out the window, he hustled to the van. The Aroma Man outfit was already on under his clothes. Switching his loafers to boots, he put the Green Bay Packer helmet on, pulled down the tinted face shield, and stepped back into the restaurant. “Go get them Aroma Man,” he said to himself.

Inside the Happy Perch restaurant, Arnie shouted, “Halt thieves!” The voice-changing software in the helmet’s shield made his voice sound lower and more menacing. “I am Aroma Man, and you are all under arrest.”

The thieves laughed.

“We are so scared,” One hoodlum answered.

“Look at this joker,” another said.

The third pointed his gun at Arnie. “I’ll put a few slugs in this character and shut him up.”

Arnie targeted this one first and aimed his right palm. “Take this.”

An invisible beam of odor shot out, smelling like Brussel sprouts cooking.

“Ahhhh. I can’t take it,” the thief said before fainting and falling to the floor.

With lightning speed, Arnie fired aromas into the other two robbers’ nostrils. They both took a sniff and fell to the floor.

Arnie stopped at the podium and told the hostess, “Please call the police, ma’am and have them arrest these hooligans. They should be out for about twenty minutes.”

“Thank you, Aroma Man. You saved our lives,” the hostess replied as Arnie left the restaurant.

He changed clothes, climbed back through the bathroom window, and returned to the table, trying to act nonchalant.

“Where did you go to?” Sonia questioned.

“I had to use the restroom.”

“You ran out of here like a scared snapping turtle.”

“Did something unusual happen?”

“Did something happen?” Sonia pointed. “See those guys laying on the floor? They were robbing the place. Aroma Man saved us from certain death.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Arnie replied. “How scary.”

There was little talking during the rest of the dinner. When Sonia did speak, she discreetly hinted that Arnie was a fraidy cat. That he saw the hoodlums and ran to hide in the bathroom. They finished the meal. Sonia said she had to work early and was going home. She stood, did an after-dinner dance at the table, and walked out of the restaurant without saying another word.

Arnie waited until she was gone, finished his brandy old fashion sweet, and left the restaurant. There was crime to fight on the streets of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The End