Old Perfume // Larry Stylinson

Chapter One

It’s a Tuesday the day Louis’ grandmother shoos him downstairs for cleaning purposes. Spring break, so far, hasn’t consisted with much more than conversations over tea with his grandparents friends, all asking him the same questions as usual. “How are you doing?” “How’s school?” “Got a girlfriend? You must have the girls clawing at your feet.” To which Louis would always respond the same. “I’m doing fine, how are you?” “School is fine.” “No, I don't have a girlfriend.”

 

So Louis decides that dusting up old furniture and mopping the floor won’t be that bad, and it’ll at least get him out of dinner with his so called, “distant relatives.” Louis takes the rags and cleaning products his grandmother gives him and heads down the creaky steps. He flips the switch to turn the lights on, and the bulb flickers in protest until it finally turns on, casting a dim glow across the small and enclosed room.

 

Louis walks to the furthest side of the room, adjacent to the stairs, and begins to wipe down the cracked wooden table that used to sit in their dining room until they purchased a new, nicer looking one. He begins to dust it even though they most likely will never use it in the future, but, it’s what his grandmother had ordered him to do, clean. Once Louis’ cleaned all the surfaces of their old furniture, he tends to the floor with a mop stored under the staircase. He fills a bucket with water and gets to work, making sure not to step on the newly washed, and wet areas he’s already washed up with his socked feet. Louis doesn’t usually wear socks, but the floor is concrete and it would most likely chill his feet if he didn’t wear any. He supposes he could’ve just worn shoes.

 

That job is soon done as well, and Louis decides to organize the stacked boxes on the left side of the room. He kneels down onto the still somewhat damp ground and begins to pull a few boxes that were against the wall to him. He doesn’t really know what each one contains, and he decides that it could possibly be quite interesting to indulge into whatever his grandparents keep hidden away down there.

 

The first box is cute. Within the box, they’re a few more boxes and inside each individual, pastel colored containers hold a few old fancy looking hats Louis assumes his grandmother must have used to wear them to church, or to other fancy events. He carefully puts them away and continues to look through everything, organizing as he goes.

 

He goes through lots of things and he sort of feels like he’s in some sort of antique shop, and that’s not a bad thing. Old articles of clothing, random little knick knacks, pictures, works of art, it’s quite interesting and endearing. It’s all sort of fun until, tucked away far behind everything else, he finds a small shoe box. Louis pulls it out and looks down at the table that had been plastered across the top. It read; Jay, May.

 

Louis opens the box out of pure curiosity, and more because he had been told his mother’s name is Jay, and because he knows absolutely nothing about his mother. Whenever the topic would come up in conversation with his grandparents, they were always quick to change the subject. So Louis just assumes both of his parents are dead, and that’s just what he tells his friends.

 

The first thing Louis see’s in the box is an assortment of notes or letters all bundled together and secured with a red ribbon. Louis unties the ribbon and sets the bundle down onto his lap. He reads the first letter.

 

Dearest Troy, the letter reads in small, carefully written cursive handwriting.