Don Hucks
Three
Smokes
When it was
over, he lit a
cigarette. Offered her the second drag. Customary thing to do, she
guessed.
Share a cigarette, lying in bed. Stare at the drapes, ponderous, muddy
brown.
Listen to the raindrops hitting the glass. But she had given them up.
Years
ago. With her husband, just after they married. So she lay and stared
and
listened, while he smoked alone.
After a
while, he asked.
What was she thinking?
Thinking, so
this is what
it’s like. An affair. Was that what it was? An affair? Or was an
affair, by
definition, protracted? A dalliance, maybe? A fling? An indiscretion?
Something
of a disappointment, whatever it was. Awkward. Fleeting. Taking all too
much
effort on her part, frankly, and hardly worth the guilt. Should have
put more
thought into it. Chosen more carefully. If she was going to. Not go off
to a
room with a near-stranger. In the middle of the day. Playing hooky from
the closing
session on the last day of talks. After a few drinks, some banter, more
and more
provocative, bolder, inching closer to the line, until.
“Nothing.
Just listening
to the rain.”
Watching
smoke drift to the
ceiling. Reminded of the first time, sharing a cigarette in bed.
Summer. Seventeen.
Adam Phillips. Afterward, opened the window. Turned on the ceiling fan.
Sprayed
air freshener. So the cigarette smell would dissipate before his mother
came
home. Years later, killed in a convenience store robbery, she heard.
About 1:00
a.m. A coffee on the way to the GM plant. Graveyard shift. Right place,
wrong
time. Shot once in the face, opening the door. Never felt a thing,
surely. Did
he see it, though? Pointed right at him? Stare down the hole for a long
moment,
horrified? Such a beautiful face, too. Such a beautiful mouth.
Remembering
cigarettes
shared with her husband. Lying in bed, after. Mostly before they
married. Thinking
of how, after quitting, they had relapsed together. For three weeks the
following spring. With his mother dying of cervical cancer. Quitting
again
together on the drive home from the funeral. Pulling into a rest stop
outside Clarksville. Sharing the
last smoke of the last pack. In silence, across a picnic
table. Slowly,
savoring each breath. Warm out. Bright sun. Sleeves rolled up to his
elbows. Collar
open. How she reached across the table and stroked his forearm,
lightly, soft
brown hair. How he gave a smile and a wink and took the last drag. Took
it deep.
Held onto it a few seconds more than usual, then let it go, a heavy
cloud. Reluctance.
A sigh.
“Well, then,” he said. Snuffed it on the pavement. “Well then, I guess that’s that.”
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