The Book of Smells

  It began when I started buying Maurice coffee.

   Maurice was this homeless guy Donat’s Donuts was always calling in for trespassing. I got it into my head that we might stop trying to arrest him all the time and see if we could reduce the number of visits he made and cut the grief for the baristas there.

  “Two in mugs, we’ll take some stools at the windows.”

   Maurice was tall and shaggy, and the shelter said he always washed and put on fresh clothes in the morning and he always really smelled by the end of the day when he returned.

   “You like it here?” I asked.

   “Allen likes it here. He likes the wi-fi.” Maurice then leaned over and started sniffing me. Ordinarily, when your in uniform and someone starts sniffing you they’re making a slur, but I didn’t think Maurice meant anything by it. Maurice leaned over his cup as if bathing in the heat from the coffee.

   He carried one of those eight by eleven ledger books you see in accounting places. It was stuffed with extra scraps of paper, held to with elastics, smudged and smelly. Maurice carried it like he was guarding it. He put it on our counter for a moment, put his hands on his lap, palms up, and then his eyes rolled back in his head. He sat like that for a few minutes. I sipped my coffee. At the time I figured he had some mental issues that weren’t being treated.

   Overall it was a nice quiet coffee, and as I escorted Maurice out I said, “See?” to Renee, one of the barista’s there.

   “You coming back every morning? He usually gets here at nine-thirty.”

   I came back for two reasons, I hate being challenged, and I was I talking myself into helping others might help my depression since my wife passed.

   After a week or so Maurice would put the ledger between us. He wouldn’t open it up, but I took that he was trusting me.

   Maurice saw Renee throwing a used coffee filter in the bin at her work station. Maurice went over and lowered his hand into the bin and brought up a finger tip of wet used coffee grounds. Renee looked to me but I shrugged without making anything of it. Maurice came back, undid and opened his ledger and smudged the coffee grounds on a page corner. He then lifted it up and smelt it deeply.

   “Allen likes coffee. He’s attracted to coffee.” Maurice said.

   “Who is Allen? I asked.

   “Do you know the Allen?”

   “Is he here?”

   Maurice shook his head. “When he’s here I go there. I stop being here. Allen comes for the book. The book calls him. I made the book for him.”

   Now I’m thinking he’s got some multiple personality thing way beyond my pay grade. But, hey, you know, my job is never about fixing people, just keeping them peaceful.

   One day some creep set a fire in the restroom paper towel waste bin. Renee handed me the fire extinguisher as if I was the only person there qualified to use it. She laughed. “I’ve put out fires before. I know how to use that. I’ve use it. It’s that I see your uniform and I think I’d better give it to him.”       

   It was good laugh that ended when we found Maurice had thrown up all over the floor by the front entrance. I gave Renee a few dollars and an apology and went outside with Maurice.

   “Allen doesn’t like things that burn.” He was holding a napkin dispenser and pulling the napkins out and stuffing them in his nose.

   “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow.” I took the dispenser from him. “Let me put this back.”

   Maurice touched my shoulder. “Charlie, when Allen’s here, he makes me go there.”

   “Where?”

   “Where he is. Where the sky is purple.”

   “Where the doves cry?”

   “No. No, I can’t see anything there. It’s like I’m a big nose.”   

   “Alright, Maurice, is he gone now?”

   Maurice nodded. “The wi-fi’s not as strong out here. Charlie?”

   “Yea, Maurice?”

   “He trusts you.” Maurice tapped his nose.

   “Yea, okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

   And, of course, I didn’t see him the next day. As it happens more often with people on the street, they don’t always make it to the next day. Maurice passed during the night in the shelter. Some undiagnosed heart problem that had caught up with him. When I checked with the shelter, they said there was no one to collect his things. I took the ledger and left the rest.

   I opened it up in the car. It was blank. All the pages were blank, and the extra scraps of paper were blank, too. The pages had dirt, and smudges, and stains, but no words. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. I bundled it back up in the elastics and at lunch put it in my locker at the station.

   When my shift ended, I found my Sargent waiting at my locker with several other personal.

   Ed, from the Canine Unit was there, with his dog, Kenobi. “I’m sorry, we were just passing through and Kenobi started going crazy at your locker.”

   The Sargent took over. “I have to open it, Charlie. Do you want representation present?

   “No, no, go ahead.”

   “Can you open it? We don’t want to break anything we don’t have to?”

   “Yeah, sorry.”

   Charlie complied, and then the Sargent had him step back. Ed moved in and took out Charlie’s Street clothes, passing one article at a time over Kenobi’s nose without result. From the top shelf Ed took out the ledger. Kenobi jumped, and barked, and spun around, and rolled on the tiled floor, and growled, and stretched himself down, and licked at the bottom edge of the ledger, and then whined, sticking his head under his paws.

  “Good glory.” The Sargent muttered. “Bag that. We have to test that, Charlie. You’re not suspended, but it’d make my job easier if you took a few days leave.”

   “Sure.”

   When I was off the deep depression hit me. The counsellor said Maurice’s passing caused a transference of grief from my wife’s passing. Sounded about right.

   The tests were all clear on the ledger for any suspected drugs and I was asked not to keep it in the station for the sake of Kenobi.

  On that first morning back, I took Maurice’s ledger to the Donat’s Donuts one more time. I sat at the counter and opened it up again, and then I started to sniff it. Renee was calling out orders at the counter behind me. I could hear the street traffic. The noises of the city morning hustle. I stopped and leaned over and smelled my coffee as Maurice did, with my palms up.

   The noises disappeared. I no longer could see. The sky was purple. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was purple. I could smell it. When I felt myself come back to the coffee counter, I closed the ledger shaking. I left ledger in the squad car, and spent the rest of the morning issuing traffic violations, trying to get myself back on track.    

   At lunch I went to the station to sit in the lunchroom. Others were there, but I sat alone.

   “Hey, Charlie,“ Ed called. “Janet was asking me if there was intelligent life in the universe, and I said, ‘Hey, if they’re not going to get me a case a beer, or a date on the weekend, what do I care?’” Ed laughed. “What about you, Charlie? You think there’s intelligent life up there?”

   “Yea, I do. And I think they smell.”

   Ed laughed louder. “Well, you better keep them away from Kenobi.”