Smoker’s Cross

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No, I still didn’t know what he was talking about. But I smiled back, because that’s what you do. All the while, my mind was dogpaddling through icebergs of disconnected thoughts. I shook my head and wondered why I continued to subject myself to these unpredictable coffee-break circuses, just to be able to smoke. Perhaps I should quit, I thought. Perhaps, but not today. I have too much on my plate. Maybe I could get a bigger plate, or a second plate. That would make sense. Of course, quitting at some point is also an option.

“Really?” I asked, not knowing what I was asking or why, but hoping that the question itself would elicit some hint of what we were discussing.

“Yeah,” he replied absently, as his consciousness seemed to drift back into some remote corner of his brain.

And with that, together we slipped all at once into a sudden well of paralyzing silence. I tried to think of something pertinent to say, but pertinent to what? My cigarette was dwindling down. Should I continue to smoke it beyond “the safe zone” (a filter’s length above the filter)? Should I put it out and light another one, or should I put it out and leave, I wondered.

Time passed, heavy and slow. I puffed further down, dangerously down on my cigarette, marinating in silence and indecision. I watched the traffic. The incendiary memorandum refused to rise to the surface of my consciousness.

“They only let girls in,” he said suddenly, now all at once fully returned to the moment.

“Wow!” I responded with renewed interest.
“Only girls,” he said, punctuating his words with a sharp pointed index finger. “And every damn one was pretty!” he continued, smiling ironically and catching my eyes full square.

“Wow,” I said once more (fully appreciating, for the first time ever, what a truly great word ‘Wow’ is and wondering who invented it and what could have been the exact circumstance that brought about the creation of such an incredibly useful word).

“So they wouldn’t let me teach.”

Of course they wouldn’t let him teach. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t let him teach either; he seemed like a lunatic.

“Well, life goes on,” I suggested encouragingly.

“That’s what my sister said just before she died.”

“She was right.”

“She was always right.”

“She was very wise,” I said, perceiving that I had finally arrived at that rare moment in an interpersonal interaction when you are absolutely on the same wavelength with another human being. We went with the moment. “Wow,” I added, using the low-toned, respectful version, reserved for all things that are either incalculably wonderful or mysteriously unknowable (It sounds the same either way).

“Damned right she was,” he said with a flourish of finality.

“Yes,” I agreed, adding one last level of redundancy to our now seemingly ended conversation. With that, I nodded and field-stripped the remainder of my cigarette; one of a half dozen or so life lessons derived from my long-ago military experience. I placed the butt in my jacket pocket in preparation for my return to my totally uncorrupted, fresh-air-filled work environment. People tell me the butts stink up my clothes, but I can’t smell them; so I don’t think about it, except when people mention it. I want to smell nice. But I forget the butts, and they sometimes accumulate in my pocket, three or four at a time. Now I had six. I scooped them all up and told myself to try to remember to put them in the trash can at the entrance to the building. I would have written myself a note as a reminder, if I’d had pencil/pen and paper, but I didn’t. Then again, if I did write a note, I’d have to remember to retrieve it from my pocket and look at it. Of course, I could have just held the note in my hand. But of course, since I didn’t have an actual note, all of that was moot, and also academic. It was both.

“Have a nice day,” I said, as if I truly meant it; and I did. I recalled how someone had once told me that I shouldn’t say “Hello” unless I meant it, and I wondered all over again, as I had then: what’s to mean about “hello”?

“You, too,” he replied, while fixing his gaze on a newly-arrived (probable) stranger standing twenty feet away and tapping a fresh new cigarette from his pack.

I walked into the building and through the lobby, musing over the man and thinking that surely he was full of it. Surely, not every one of them could possibly have been pretty. Not every single one. Why, the odds against that would be astronomical.

I put the handful of cigarette butts back into my jacket pocket as I stepped inside the waiting elevator for the 22,429th time. Why do I keep track? I suppose it’s just something to do.

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