Morning all. I slept in a bit. The insomnia monster grabbed me in the night and wouldn’t let go until the wee hours so I hit that snooze button as many times as possible and the scent of coffee in the air is like a magic elixir just waiting to be taken. So let’s jump into the morning prompt so I can down the dose. Ready? Let’s go.
I like the start of this. I’m thinking the bakery closed and he had to take another job where he just exists. It is a good starting point, I’d just need to figure out the rest.
Wednesday, December 14th: why do you smell like cinnamon rolls?
“Why do you smell like cinnamon rolls?” he asked. The question had been bugging him for the last week. He knew it wasn’t polite to ask a person, especially a woman, about their personal aromas. Especially one that he worked with and had no personal connection to, but the more he smelled the delicious treat, the more he had to know.
Sally lifted a hand to her nose and sniffed the back of her wrist. “Do I?” she asked.
“Yes,” Danny said. “All this week, but not before.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry of it bothers you.”
“It doesn’t bother me I just want to know why.” He asked.
“Because I like the scent,” she returned. She stared at him blankly, clearly believing the question to be answered.
“Well clearly, who doesn’t,” he said, hoping to keep her comfortable with his personal questions. “But what did you use to get the scent. Is it a perfume…” he let the thought trail off as he entered uncertain territory. He had no idea what she might have used and he had the sudden thought that it might not be something she wanted to talk about, thus explaining the way she answered.
Sally laughed. “Its this soap I found in the store. It was on a specialty soap rack and I couldn’t resist.”
Danny nodded, feeling intensely relieved. “Oh Soap. I didn’t know soap could carry such a fragrance. It smells nice.”
“Thanks,” she told him. She tottered off, clearly not insulted and Danny was relived bit to have the conversation over and the knowledge squared away in his mind.
In his world there were two kinds of soap. There was the soap that just made you smell clean and soapy and the kind that made you smell like weirdly artificial flowers. His experience with the second kind was mostly due to the small shaped bars at his Aunt Sophie’s guest bathroom. He wasn’t supposed to touch them because they were too cute to use. As there had been no other soap around he had been forced to break the order so that he couple uphold the eternal commandment of ‘Thou must wash thy hands after bathroom use.’ It had not cone well.
‘Cinnamon roll bath soap,’ he mused putting his long ago departed Aunt Sophie out of his mind. While it settled the cause of the scent, it did nothing to settle the commotion it caused in side. While he had no overt affection for soap, cinnamon rolls were a different thing. At the bakery those had been his favorite things to make. He loved the routine and the ritual of them. He knew others loved the routine of the kneading and shaping of other breads, other doughs, but he oved the luxuriousness of that dough on his hands and the liberal use of sugar and spice.
Ten til Midnight 