Sometimes we are swept back in time by a fleeting aroma. I was near the old street car terminus looking into a pawn shop window, waiting for Amanda. She was late and I was beginning to get irritated with her. Things weren't going that well with us. I had an unsupported feeling that she was keeping something from me.

I walked into the shop and was idly looking at the watches in a glass top counter when I noticed a rack of leather coats and jackets at the far back of the store beneath a wall of ancient trophies. I don't know why they attracted me but I moved to the rack and began to look through the items there. One coat, a women's long macintosh, was made of green suede. I instinctively pulled it to my face and took a long smell of the soft leather. A whole set of visual memories passed before my minds eye.

When I was very young my mother used to take us to visit her older sister in Los Angeles. The apartment building had a long porch spanning the entire front. There were four doors leading out to the porch. The two outer doors served the two ground floor units and the two middle doors gave access to the upper units. We called them flats. My aunt lived upstairs in the left unit. A long dark stairway rose up to an ample landing and the inner front door.

I recall the second story flat with mixed emotions. We must have been a difficult bunch of kids at times because there were occasions when my mother saw fit to punish us for misdeeds committed at the flat.

Often on these occasions of misdeed I would be confined to my absent cousin's bedroom. Once while serving my sentence I discovered Al's secret stash of comics and I still feel guilty these many years later for having swiped one of them, an issue of Batman if memory serves me.

I know that Mary, my aunt, was very nice to us but I can't quite recall what she did that made me think that.

The walls of the kitchen were light green and the hexagonal tiled sink counter seemed always to be stacked with dirty dishes. The bathroom was lavender in color and had little oval lavender soap cakes on the lavatory. The bedrooms were large and the roll down shades were always drawn and cast an amber gloom.

On one of those visits my sister and I got into a fight of some sort. I was probably the instigator, but the reason for the spat escapes me now. As usual, I got banished to my cousin's bedroom which was at the front end of the flat and was actually a converted screen porch overlooking the street. I never told my mother but I actually enjoyed these punishments as it gave me plenty of time to explore my older cousin's lair in privacy.

Al was an idol of mine. He was old enough to do things that I wasn't yet able or allowed to do. He was a boy scout and had all the neat paraphernelia that went along with that. My cousin's bed was a murphy bed that was attached to a large door that opened into a walk-in closet. The bed could be pulled down for sleeping or pushed up vertically and hidden in the closet by closing the door. The bed was kept down most of the time.

I discovered, by crawling under the bed, that the closet was actually very large and extended beyond this bedroom to where there was another door that opened into the living room of the flat. The closet was full of hanging clothes of all sorts, dresses, pants, jackets, blouses and coats. I sat in a corner with my face between the coats and let my imagination run. It seemed like hours before I was awakened from my revery.

"Johnny, where are you? Come out now, it's time to go home" My mother's excited voice brought me back to reality. I let her call out one more time before emerging from the closet.

"Johnny, where are you? This time it was Amanda's voice.

There he was among the women's coats in that odd thrift shop or vintage shop, I can't remember the name of the place now. I often wondered what went on in Johnny's head. It looked as if he was smelling that old coat or kissing it, I couldn't tell because he looked up when I called. The coat was made of suede and probably had once been an attractive shade of green, but now just looked tired. How he had ended up inside the shop instead of across the street in the park where we'd planned to meet was beyond me.

But I shouldn't be too hard on him. My company had, just that week, offered me a position in Denver, a supervisory position, which would put me in line for an administrative career. I had told Johnny none of this, but he seemed to sense my preoccupation in trying to make a decision. I loved him, really, but an opportunity like this doesn't just drop in my lap everyday.

I walked toward the back of the shop where he still had a hand on the coat. I passed dusty cases of brooches and hat pins, a Radio Flyer wagon with an old Bolex movie projector in it's bed, a shelf of dolls, a box of old sewing patterns, to stand at last by the rack of old coats.

"Shall we?" I said as pleasantly as I felt I could just then, and I reached for his hand.

"I was just remembering..." he began and he raised my hand to touch the sleeve.

At the touch, I was taken abruptly by a memory of my own. I knew we were turning to leave, that Johnny was talking, but the tug of the past was too great.

I was about nine and my mother had recently splurged and bought herself the one new thing she had allowed herself all year, a pair of tall suede boots. She let me feel them when she took them out of the box. Then she had repacked them and put them in her closet - a place that was off limits to me. She would let me come in her room when she was in there, but she never let me near her closet.

After my father had passed away, my mother had taken a second job as a waitress at the Omelette Inn. She worked the 7am - noon breakfast shift, then changed and went to her afternoon job as a parttime library clerk at our local branch. When I walked home from school, I would stop at the library and check in with her. Some days I would sit at a table and finish my homework, but other days she would let me walk the three blocks to our apartment and let myself in.

On this particular afternoon, I saw her at the library and since I had only one small assignment, she let me walk home. Inside I put the key on the hook as she had instructed and locked the door. I poured my self a glass of milk and settled down in a patch of sunlight on the living room carpet with a Dorothy Sayers mystery. In the book, she described a woman and this woman was wearing boots. Boots... And I was up and walking toward my mothers room. My hand was around the glass doorknob before I remembered her warning, "Never go in here without my permission!" It must be fantastic whatever she hid in there, I thought then.

Carefully, I pulled the box toward me. Then slowly I lifted the lid. The smell of suede, was almost delicious. I ran my hand over the sides of the boots, making a light pattern one direction and a dark pattern when I moved my hand the other direction. I reached inside and felt the silky smooth lining. My callous from the monkey bars made a tiny scritching sound against it. I never heard the front door unlocking. She was home early. Too late, I heard her calling me.

"Amanda, where are you?" and I froze. In she walked, and stared at me, her good, her perfect daughter sitting just inside the open closet door, box lid cast to one side with one arm inside her new boot. I started to cry and sputter that I just wanted to see the boots again. But she was laughing. Gently she pulled me to my feet, repacked the boots and shut the door, giggling as she did it.

"Amanda, sweetheart, when you are older, you will have your own closet and you will not want me pulling things out of it now will you?"

"No", I managed but my face was wet with tears and I needed to blow my nose. She led me out again, handing me a handkerchief on our way. Then she put on the tea kettle and we both sat at the table while she asked me about my day. I never went into her room again without permission, and when I turned sixteen, she presented me with a pair of suede boots of my own.

"...I guess I've never gotten over feeling bad about that Batman comic book." Johnny finished his tale and smiled down at me. I smiled back. We had walked clear across the park and I hadn't even been aware of it. We entered the coffee shop across the small street and took a seat in a booth.

When I saw the two of them shamble arm-in-arm through the coffee shop doors, I knew they’d been dwelling on suede. When you’ve skinned as many suedes, shinnied up as many suede trees, sweated as many years in Balkan suede mines, seen the glint, just short of madness, in the greedy yellowed eye of as many fez-topped Eastern Mediterranean suede brokers as I have, you get so you can spot these suede-besotted lovers, secretly dreaming their parallel dreams of the bygone Golden Age of Suede. They often order Spam. Something about the mellow mood a spell of suede-based rumination puts them in that makes them hanker for the rich, velvety texture and mind-expanding nitrate additives of Spam.

The couple took their seats, and as they peered into their menus, I found myself thinking again of Spam. The Nubian Spam trade of the ‘thirties was no place for a man with slow reflexes. I always wore my Luger outside my jacket, where they could see it. And I always carried a little top-quality suede, for use in those tight spots where suede, and only suede, will buy the precious seconds that separate the imperiled Spam-runner from his waiting camel. It was a precarious existence, but it was Spam-centered and suede-intensive and full of camels, and looking back I think now that I’ve never known a more satisfying way of life.

The couple in their booth were ordering now. He passed up the Spam Special for a Monte Cristo, but he did have the Spam shake to drink; and it seemed to me a shadow of regret clouded his visage as he watched her order the Spamwich and fries. The waitress left and later she came back with drinks and they sipped the drinks, or sometimes they did not sip the drinks, but talked quietly over the drinks, or arm or leg wrestled, occasionally overturning, or nearly overturning, the drinks, while they waited for the Spam to come.

My mind carried me back to the marathon elbow jousts that helped us pass the hellishly temperate New Zealand winter days during my years as an apprentice fly-buttoner in the suede-brothels of Christchurch. The best pants were always made of suede in those days, as they are now, only then you could get them. The zipper hadn’t been invented yet, and I still can feel in my thumbs the exquisite schussing sensation of bone passing through suede as I buttoned fly after fly of the trousers tossed my way by the genteel clientele entering the establishment. When I had completed the fly-buttoning, I passed the pants on to the presser, whence they passed to the Nap Raiser, a highly-paid enigma swathed in clouds of steam, and then to the Master Folder, who matched the legs, doubled them over twice, and stacked them neatly where the Pants Boy could retrieve them for delivery to the appropriate rooms. Suede was in its heyday then, the economy was booming, and prosperous men with little time to take from business would pay handsomely for the opportunity to be alone for a quiet hour in the afternoon with a nicely-pressed piece of suede.

At the table across, the way, the food arrived. The suede-loving couple glanced at one another and she offered him half her Spamwich. Taking it, he tendered half his Monte Cristo in return, which she accepted and slipped beneath her plate, pressing down heavily on it to restore stability. Their faces serious now, they fell to lunching in earnest, and the little table grew silent except for occasional slurps and sighs and, at one point, when the woman bit into her finger, a single quick yelp.

In the whelping sheds of Innisfree, where, in the years following the Malt Wars, I worked part time knotting navels, we conceived a bold scheme to develop a dog breed whose coat of fur would be as short, soft and smooth as suede. It was to be called the Irish Suedehound, and would, we were confident, be the making of fine Irish fortunes for the lot of us. The work progressed rapidly and within five years we had a strain that bred true and produced a golden suede coat of unsurpassed hand. Alas, it was five inches high at the shoulder full grown and of a particularly vicious temperament. We needed time, and that we did not have. The War of Sweeney’s Hat was brewing just then, and before we could cross our breed with Water Spaniels, John Bull claimed our kennels for the breeding of Schnauzers, a decoy program launched solely to puzzle enemy Intelligence. With nowhere to house our tiny Suedehounds, we decided to free them in the Scottish highlands, where they became notorious in later years, forming small, irresistibly pettable, feral packs that roamed the roads in search of handouts and left whole villages of severely bitten hands in their wake.

The couple was done with lunch now and playing with their shake straws. I got up and went over to their table and stretched a jacket sleeve out for inspection. "It’s the one," I whispered.

Johnny looked up at the grizzled stranger, then at the coat, then gulped down his last bite of Monte Cristo. Amanda looked at Johnny quizzically, then up at the grizzled stranger, then at the coat, then back at Johnny, comprehension lighting her eyes. After wiping his mouth (but the front of his shirt was still speckled with powdered sugar) he reached back and pulled out his wallet, asking "How much?"

The stranger's eyes narrowed and in a gravelly, suede-coarsened voice he said "Never mind the money - just tell me. What ever became of Shawn and Razel?!"

Johnny gave Amanda a "Has it come to this?" look, sighed and resignedly told him "They finally made it to Little Lake but it got dark on them. They skinny-dipped for a while, and would have frozen to death afterward if it wasn't for Razel's woodcraft. She made a fire by rubbing two salamanders together and they spent the night huddled by it, telling each other comforting ghost stories. They woke up the next morning in each other's arms and made their way back to the roadhouse, which was not only mysteriously deserted, but mysteriously decrepit and abandoned-looking, as though it hadn't been occupied for years. On top of one of the broken and empty gas pumps they found a faded and dented red top hat. After shaking a sad-looking, grey-haired rabbit out of it, Razel plopped it on Shawn's head (it was a perfect fit) and they drove off into narrative oblivion, though not before Shawn tripped over a lamp that was at his feet as they headed to the car."

The stranger, seeming not altogether pleased, nodded and grunted perfunctorily, and then with some difficulty stripped off the coat, revealing another just like it, but more wrinkled, underneath. He handed it to Johnny who - did I mention this was a suede coat? - pressed it to his face and inhaled deeply. Smiling, he handed it carefully across the table to Amanda, who did the same. They got up to leave and Johnny stood uncomfortably aside as Amanda payed the tab (because it was her turn, he thought disgruntledly). As they went out the door they saw the grizzled stranger, stretching his jacket sleeve out for inspection to a couple in another booth.

"Strange that the Canadian government’s still using that guy." Amanda commented as they crossed the street towards Johnny’s car. "Genuine wacko... I guess it keeps the others from suspecting he’s undercover though."

Johnny stroked the sleeve of the coat, now on his person, "nice cover" he pondered,"...nice coat."

They hopped into the little blue Civic and revving the engine, careened out into the busy lunch hour traffic. Looking over at Amanda, Johnny pondered the turn of events...

They had been sent in to retrieve a top-secret ultra-micron diskette that had been inserted in the fibers of the jacket he now was wearing. Headquarters had told them they would be making contact with a "long-lost relative"... it WOULD turn out to be Max. The crazy Canadian agent had always gotten under Johnny’s skin, but that incident in California had been the topper.

Shawn and Razel had made the rookie, co-ed team, mistake of falling for each other... and in the middle of their first assignment! They were so caught up in each other they hadn’t even realized they were being "monitored". Back then the Canadians were involved in some pretty underhanded maneuvers - but then, which secret government agency isn’t? And with Max in charge, it was amazing they hadn’t realized something strange was going on... a forties roadhouse with a guy in that get-up... and a rabbit as a sidekick no less! But they had been too focused on each other to see it... by the time they got back, the shop had closed and Max had moved the operation elsewhere.

"Fools!" Thought Johnny, "Never, EVER, fall for your partner. I’m just glad Amanda and I haven’t fallen into that trap... wouldn’t trade her for another agent if they tortured me."

He glanced over at her again, remembering that nagging feeling he’d had earlier that something wasn’t quite right between them...