Excerpt (2)

Five minutes ago, in a different part of the city. She was listening to a song she loved before she understood what it was about. Before the critical switches had flipped into discerning taste. When music was meretricious with visceral appeal. Cherished and chuckling wistfulness within one song. Just the wrong song. Or just the right song. Or a song that never meant anything to her in time, but embodied the cadence of her last truly free, unappreciated summer and that winter six years ago she worked at the ski hill. This was the span of her four minutes and twenty-six seconds. The remaining thirty-four seconds found the thread of a single scent weaving among the crowd. The smell of ten days in Greece and places she had never been.