Page 5 of Sleeper: The Palisades Edition

I feel like the oldest twenty-eight-year-old guy in LA and I just graduated from playing college students.

Fuck you, insomnia.

WILLA TODD SCENT DIARY

MONDAY MORNING

It’s almost spring, and Los Angeles smells like jasmine, skunk, dry shampoo, and the unspoken need for attention and approval.

Downtown has the vague scent of urine every now and then in certain parts, but it’s nothing compared to Paris. However, it also does not hold quite the same illustrious history. I mean, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway probably peed on the sidewalks of Paris. Although, I think Fitzgerald lived in LA for a while. He may have relieved himself all over Hollywood too.

But enough about pee.

My brother’s apartment smells of Nag Champa incense, burnt toast, the lemon oil of his guitar polish, testosterone, a leather jacket that has been clung to and removed by more girls than I’d care to imagine, and a weeks’ worth of sibling tension that has now been heightened by his inability to bring skanks home whenever hewants to.

This morning, I am missing nothing in particular about France and everything in general.

That’s wrong.

I miss the scent of every boulangerie I ever walked into or past. Every part of me aches for a freshly baked baguette and a pain au chocolat. Los Angeles is the most gluten-free city I’ve ever been in, and I hate it.

To transport myself, I’ve spritzed Frederic Malle En Passant onto this page. If I close my eyes, I’m walking past a lilac bush alongside of a wet sidewalk, moments after the rain has stopped but the storm clouds are still overhead. The wheat note hints at a nearby boulangerie, and the cucumber note keeps it clean and airy. If I could create one fragrance that is as delicate, evocative, and mysterious as this, I would just shit myself. Or something a little more professional and ladylike, hopefully.

To ground myself here to this new reality and cheer myself up, I’m going to burn a simple essential oil blend of lavender, lemon, and Virginia cedarwood and wait for my lazy ass brother to drag himself out of bed so I can make breakfast.

* Note: should have used Texas cedarwood. That blend smelled horrible and made me want to puke.

TWO

WILLA

It’s almost ten.

After a week, I’m pretty much over my jet lag, and I appreciate that Nico was so considerate when I was sleeping at odd hours while he was at home, but now that I’m on LA time, I cannot believe this guy’s schedule.

I mean, he got home at two, so I guess it’s not crazy for him to sleep until ten, but he’s twenty-eight years old. I haven’t stayed out past midnight since I was twenty-one. My grandmother has always told people how similar we are. He’s an actor-turned singer-songwriter, and I’m a fledgling perfumer. He interpreted characters and became other people as an actor. Now he creates moods and moves people with his voice and lyrics and musical notes. As a perfumer, I help people feel like the person they want to be, creating moods and moving people with layers of fragrance notes. It’s a pretty theory, Grammie, but my brother and I couldn’t be more different, and just because he has online fan clubsand I don’t—my approach to everything is better than his.

That’s not sibling rivalry; it’s a fact.

Okay, it’s a little bit sibling rivalry.

But I’m winning.

Just because he’s been making money off his talents since he was a teenager and has this awesome loft in downtown Los Angeles and a bunch of famous friends, while I’m currently unemployed and homeless and have one friend in this part of the country, that doesn’t mean my seven years of post-secondary education and life experience in Europe are useless. They just feel useless right now. My carefully measured blending of science and art will prevail. Until then, I’ll remind my brother of my infinite sophistication by brewing a way better pot of coffee than his ridiculous pod thing could ever piss out.

I add cinnamon, a touch of cardamom, nutmeg, and a couple of cloves to the freshly ground medium roast coffee, pour hot, not-quite boiled water into my French press pot, and gently stir it with a spoon. The aroma is heavenly. I’ve already had two cups of Earl Grey tea, but this is the bomb.

Do people still say “the bomb” here? Whatever. That’s the other thing about staying with my brother—after four years at college and three years in France, I just feel like a dorky little pipsqueak all over again.

The slumbering beast has finally awoken. Still in his wifebeater and pajama bottoms, rubbing his eyes, he shuffles straight from his bed, which is surrounded by heavy canvas privacy curtains, to the bathroom, to the turntable in the living room area where I have taken over the futon. He puts on some acoustic song that Idon’t recognize but I’d bet a hundred Euros that the singer has a beard. Nico Todd is exactly as bearish first thing in the morning now as he was when he was a teenager.

“Morning, Sunshine!”

His endless yawn becomes a growl, even as he puts me in a somewhat gentle brotherly headlock and gives me a noogie. “You makin’ breakfast?”

“No, I’m cooking eggs and turkey bacon for a new eau de toilette. It’s calledDuh, Obvi.”

“Sarcasm only makes you dorkier. Pour the coffee.”