a deep breath

I smelled his neck,
She said.

Dancing around me in circles
we were
listening to early U2.

Sunday Bloody Sunday.

The neck belonged to Bono.
The Zoo TV Tour.
She was 15 years old and staking out the band at their hotel.

Bono had singled her out of the crowd of fans, and arms flung open to pose for the cameras, pulled her in close, to the nape.

She had mumbled into it,
“You smell good”.

He smelled of cigars and whiskey and aftershave.
I could see the remains of that schoolgirl in her guarded grin.
Just how I imagined a rock star should smell.

“Well”, he had said. With that accent of his. “Take a deep breath”.

And she had inhaled the musky scent so deeply that all of her other senses dissolved. She became colour blind and deaf. Her skin numb, her tastebuds taken.

The song finished. Another 80s track came on. Simple Minds.

All these years later, I could still sense that smell faintly on her skin. The brush with fame. Lingering still.
The way a scent does.