GhostsLYNN SMELLED IT IN THE MIDMORNINGS, CREEPING UP FROM MAYBE two balconies down, coming through the laundry room window, into the dining room, across well-scrubbed tiles, where it picked a path among the colors on the carpeting, the scents of dinner, of last night’s whiskey and wine, up her calves, slipping into the easy grooves of her house dress, hanging in the still, bright air and drifting into her nose, from where she imagined it wound its way down into her stomach, through her blood, and into her womb, where her baby, three weeks old, smelled it and perhaps recognized it, too: the durian, king of fruits, large, thorny outside and yellow and thick like spoiled milk inside. “Tastes like heaven, smells like hell,” the foreigners quipped. She could eat a mountain of it when she was a
