By Matthew Zink

nuclear-powered incense

At a recent meeting with fragrance professionals, a young man approached me in the crowd and handed me a 2 ml decant spray neatly labeled, “By Matthew Zink by Yann Vasnier.” He said that he had checked with the perfumer that it was OK for me to have the sample, and in any event the fragrance was commercially available. I put it in my breast pocket and promptly forgot about it, until a message came today from the young man explaining who he was: a physicist and mathematician working in perfumery with whom I had corresponded before.