having sprung, the smells

The month of March has come and gone and cigarette season is almost over. The faux fur lining in the Barbour jacket is out and the thing feels ten pounds lighter but no less warm in the face of blustery winds that, at last, portend spring. There's no turning back now: the windows are wide open, it's ten to midnight, and there's lightning and the sound of rain to fall asleep to. I've bleached the whites that A. gave me - towels and a comforter - and the room smells faintly of chlorine. I'm not sure if that's bad for me, but it masks the musty smell coming from the protective case for my cello, lined with sheepskin with a blue shell made of the same material they use for circus tents. This case makes an appearance from whatever basement it has been in over the last ten years to transport the cello on flights without my having to spring for another seat - and I've never had so much as a loose string after all the baggage handling. But now I don't have a basement and the "behemoth" (as my grandmother affectionately calls it, for it's spent most of its days in her basement) now sits in my dormitory room, exuding the odor of another, stranger part of a house. A part of the house for luggage and junk and memorabilia but not for people.