Mr D smells.

On Saturday, Mr D txted me in Vietnamese, and asked me to give him a small bottle of perfume.  I suspected a phone jacking. I was going to ask him about it on Monday morning, but he was looking so bedraggled in the rain that I felt too sorry for him to tease him about it.  And he didn't mention it - giving more credence to the phone jacking theory.  I don't know why he let himself get so drenched either - he usually carries a rain cape in the compartment under the seat.

I was hoping that that might be the end of the whole weird episode.  But then on Tuesday night when he dropped me home, he asked me again.  In person. 

I don't know.... of all the things I might ask my boss to give me, a bottle of perfume is just not up there.  He's been working for me now for two years, and has never asked for anything before.  It was such a strangely specific request, that I said yes - I will give him perfume tomorrow. 

I had to speak to him in Vietnamese about it.  Are we all proud that I knew enough to ask him whether he wanted perfume for a man, or perfume for a woman? 

For a man. Specifically - for him.  He pointed at himself.  Perfume for him.

So, since I was home alone anyway, I went out to the shopping mall.  First I looked at the real perfume shop thinking I might be able to buy a little travel size bottle from a proper perfume brand, but they were all too expensive.  I just can't justify spending more on cosmetics for my motorbike driver than I would ever spend on myself*. So then I went to supermarket. Surprisingly, they had about 30 different kinds of cheap men's perfume and I umm-ed and ahh-ed for ages over it. Eventually I chose two similar looking black boxes (each containing a bottle). Behind me there was a boy standing high up on a rickety ladder - as you might reasonably expect in a shopping mall supermarket. So I waved the two boxes to him and asked which one he liked best.  I've never tried perfume, he said - handling the boxes gingerly. A girl came along.  The boy was taking too long to choose and she obviously really wanted to be the one to choose, so he capitulated.  That one - she said. It has a brand. 

The brand is: X-MEN.

So, yesterday morning I gave Mr D the little box of X-MEN perfume.  He tied it to the handlebars of his bike and off we went. 

He seems happy... and no, I can't tell you what X-MEN perfume smells like.  Probably wolverine musk.

*I admit to some duplicity in this sentence - I have, on occasion, spent a king's ransom on cosmetics...  for myself.  Ssshhhhh!