I gave a ride to my japanese friend and colleague who lives really close to my place. People who have visited Japan are often saying that it is not just a really different culture and a very unique country, but it is rather like another planet. Even though I have never been in Japan, I think I can confirm this statement. My Japanese friend does behave like an alien from time to time.
The car was hot from being hit the whole day by strong sun, so I directly opened my window, my friend was sitting in a large hat and she even put on some long sleeved shirts and sunglasses that were covering not only her eyes, but probably more than three quarter of her face too. She explained that she is protecting herself against the sun, she wants to reserve the porcelain whiteness of her skin. We were halfway to home when she took a scarf and arranged it carefully around her neck, explaining to me that the sun is shining too much on her chest. She also explained me that for this reason she needed to use a thick scarf that would not let any sunshine reach her chest, she couldn't just use any thinner and prettier one unfortunately.
So I was driving, we would listen to music and we would try to guess the singers' name on the radio, though neither could her nor myself name more than 3 French singer. In the middle of a sentence she closed her eyes, and I would have thought she is chilling and enjoying the soft caresses of the sun, but obviously this was not the case, because she hardly left any surface of her skin without cover.
The only spot where the sun could knock was her hand. I was kidding her that her hand will tan if she is not careful enough. She opened her eyes and went to panic mode. She grabbed the reversed mirror and turned it towards her to see if her hand was darker than her face. It certainly was.
Not so much surprising, I though, taking into consideration that she puts probably at least half a bottle of baby powder on her face every morning... After a few minutes of incomprehensible murmurs which probably was "Oh my God" in Japanese - like a hundred times, she turned back the reverse mirror to its place and asked me if I don't get the impression that her hands and face look like they are part of different bodies. At this very moment I burst out of laugh and proposed her to stop on the way for buying gloves. She looked at me confused and the next second she was smiling as if somebody had just offered her the formula of Balmain's Vent Vert, than she started to search for something in her bag.
I thought she might have a list of shops offering sun-proof gloves, but no.... She took a pair of gloves out of her bag. And she actually put them on. I was hesitating for a moment to cry or to laugh, I finally went for the latter one, which sounded more like the mixture of two though.
We got into the usual Friday afternoon's traffic jam when we entered Grasse and I could only drive in the speed of walking, but it was ok, since there was sun and nice music and I had a certainly weird but kind company too. I was thinking of the perfume I am working on and wondered if it needed more spices on the top or rather I should just increase the concentration of it. I looked to the left jadedly and for a fraction of a second I thought I saw Jean-Babtiste Grenouille sitting in the bus stop waiting for a ride to Cannes. He was so much like in the movie. He was even more like I imagined him when I was reading the book!
Dirty looking, messed up hair, with an invisible devil-like aura radiating around him. As I was staring at him, I swear he was trying to smell himself under the arm. I wanted to see his reaction when he finds out that he still doesn't have any body smell, like normal people, but the same exact moment my Japanese friend shouted something incomprehensible that could have been "Look, Jean-Babtiste Grenouille is there" in Japanese, but what is really was "Stop, stop, stop!" - as I found it out later. I turned to her but I was already inside the back of the car in front of me.
It was my turn to shout, which sounded like "Oh My God" in Hungarian - maybe completed with some swearwords - for like a hundred times. After that I don't know what happened, I probably went out from my car, I probably saw that the other car had nothing serious though mine is a bit smashed in the front, I probably also gave her my contacts because I found myself in the car holding a small paper with her contact on it.
All I remember is the smell of friction on metal and burned out car light with broken glass.
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