You stand there smoking a cigarette.
To smoke is to live in expectation.
To expect comments like residue at the bottom of a blog,
“Why do you smoke?”
“You need to quit”
“Don’t you respect your own health”.
To expect the cancer that might come and get you, that it might lurk in one of your lungs.
To expect the faulty valve in your heart, the one that suffered more than the buffeting of love.
Most of all you always expect someone to worm over with quick glances and a quick tongue, asking you for a cigarette. Expecting it.
“You have a cigarette bro?”
He was big and dark, in clothes that implied a night of drinking and fighting, of mouthing off to women and bragging of misdeeds. His pony tale was matted and long, hair caught in the scars along his face.
I hate these people.
In a life largely without fear, they scare me.
“Don’t have one. This is my last.”
He inched closer.
“Come on bro. I’m sure I saw you with a packet.”
The packet was in my pocket, a solitary cigarette inside, along with my last ten dollars. The paraphernalia of a student – air and lint constitute your daily baggage.
“It’s empty.”
I was standing next to a bin. I could see his eyes and the thought behind them, making them glint with something unfamiliar to those on the right side of the track. The pack was still in my pocket. Humans throw away their garbage. I wanted to tell him that students and obsessives hold onto theirs.
“Honest bro”
Inflating himself. Not that he had to. I had shrunk. It’s all relative.
“Are you lying to me?”
My gut turned and constricted. There was a halo around his head. My eyes had dilated. I could taste salt at the corner of my mouth. A mother and grandmother inside, waiting, one to weak to walk, the other to old to find her way. I felt the nausea of hatred.
“Man. Fuck off! I don’t have a cigarette and if I had, I wouldn’t give it to you.”
He took a step.
I wanted him to. I urged him to. Reptiles do this. Make you step into thin air before they bite.
We looked at each other for a while. He had years and endurance behind him, too many occasions of not caring if he came home or not. I had love waiting for me inside the door.
I put out the cigarette. Unlike non-smokers, we have auto-pilot. We could smoke while we prayed, with Armageddon crashing around our heads.
“That was my last one. I’ll see you later.”
I walked away. Sick and trembling.
You expect calamity when you smoke, but you always predict it to be silent, slow and painful.
I walked into the shopping centre, back to family, with him screaming behind me.
“Show me your pack bro. Fucking liar…”
I think I’ll have to give up soon. Something’s got to kill you; I just don’t want it to be cigarettes or the people who ask for them.
