Air Freshener

It's on this street, thought Steven, I'm sure of it. It has a glass door, with a sign hanging up on it, and a raised metal shutter peeping out from under the stripy awning, and a window full of old yellowing posters — posters whose corners, what's more, are just beginning curl up and roll over, like the tips of autumn leaves. But he wondered if he'd made up that bit about the corners of the posters: he did things like that occasionally, not because he was a liar (as people sometimes called him) only because he tended to remember things in accordance with the overall impression they had made on him, that is, with the images they had called to his mind, rather than with the specific details of how they actually were. Either way, the door was definitely on this street, he was sure of that, and behind it was a very nice room. A very nice room? That hardly did justice to the sumptious hall that awaited him, with its comfortable armchairs with cushioned footstools, the kind your heels can really sink into, though of course you had to remember to remove your shoes before using them, which anyway you would want to do, it being far more pleasurable to warm your stocking feet in front of the fire than to sit there with your bloody great boots on, completely oblivious to the disapproving looks of the servants and the other wayfarers. And here it was! He'd found the door! He'd known it was on this street, his instincts were never wrong, and even when they were it was because he hadn't trusted them completely, and instead let his judgement be clouded by all kinds of distracting and spurious considerations.

The drop-in centre was empty. When Steven opened the door a bell rang, two notes, and a woman appeared through a curtain of coloured plastic strips.

"I'll tell you what she said in a minute," called a female voice from behind her.

"Hello Steven," the woman said, "why don't you find yourself a seat."

"Thank you," said Steven, "you're very kind. Perhaps too kind for a world like ours, so" — he grunted as he pulled a plastic seat from under a table that had once been a school desk — "so full of selfishness and cruelty, as I'm sure you know, and yet so beautiful sometimes, without really meaning to be, beautiful in spite of itself you might even say…"

"Cup of tea?" she asked and he nodded profusely.

"Milk and sugar," she said, "like usual?"

"Why yes, milk and sugar," he replied, "like the milk and honey promised to our Hebraic forefathers, so sweet, and yet so redolent of honest toil, of the young goatherdess milking her flock into a wooden pail, or of the wizened old beekeeper, so familiar with his venomous charges that he no longer requires the heavy net veil or the thick leather gloves to relieve them of their produce."

She brought the tea on a saucer and laid it on his table.

"There you go," she said.

He picked up the saucer and the cup began to rattle, louder and louder, until spurts of dark liquid ran down the sides and burned his fingertips. He tried holding the cup by the handle, without the saucer, and though it still shook wildly he managed to reach his mouth. He slurped loudly then sucked the wet hairs in his moustache.

"Thank you!" he cried, putting the cup down with a splash. "Your kindness is unprecedented, and if the truth be told, undeserved. If there is one thing I have learned over the years it is not to let such kindness go unnoticed, and more importantly not to let it go unthanked."

He stood up, removing his battered brown hat, and bent forwards in a sweeping bow. She took a step back: he smelled of vomit, vomit mingled with sweet tea.

"Slice of cake?" she asked.

"Yes please!" he replied, "cake would be lovely!"

She had to go through to the back to get it, and as he finished his tea he heard two women talking.

She returned holding a plate with a slice of cake and a plastic fork on it. She put the plate down beside him and walked to a different table, on the other side of the room. The cake was sponge with a jam filling. She took a bottle of kitchen cleaner from a pocket in her apron and began jetting foamy liquid onto the table then wiping it with a cloth.

"Exquisitely sweet!" he announced, after his first bite of cake. "As sweet as a flower, I declare, and almost — take heed that I add the word almost — almost as sweet as a woman's kiss." She finished the table briskly then made her way to the back. "Indeed," he continued between mouthfuls, "while few comparisons have endured the erosion of cliché like that between a lady and a blossom, as a lover, I have often felt it to be woefully inadequate: to my mind, no bush of blooming roses can match the delicacy of a blush spreading across a young maiden's face; nor can any field of daffodils recreate the trembling sensitivity of a virgin's first —"

When he realised he was alone he stopped talking and finished his cake.

As he left, he said, "adieu, adieu, I bid you fair ladies adieu."

The bell rang and the door closed behind him — quickly at first, then the last few inches slowly. The woman reappeared through the plastic strips. She was carrying a tall aerosol can with a pink cap and a label decorated with flowers. She took the cap off and sprayed where Steven had been sitting.