Like A Slow Fire Burn

It wasn’t so much that the perfume she wore reminded him of his ma—it was apples and oranges, literally, even, given that Miss Pauling wore something citrusy while his ma preferred flowery stuff–it was just that strong enough to mask the cold metal smell of the bases when she was there. Just a breath and he remembered nineteen-fifty-five and the gossip of ladies, back when the war was the Cold War and he was going through the daily drills of hiding under his desk, and not his old friends and neighbors dying down in Vietnam.