The Smoker
2.
The smoker falls onto his bed, kicks his feet up on the foot board, and lights a cigarette. He breathes in, exhales, and smiles. The smoke drifts up past his mustache, his greasy face and long brown hair, past the dangling light bulb and into the smoke detector. The alarm goes off and the smoker jumps up and drops his cigarette on the covers, setting them on fire. He tears them off his bed and stomps out the infant flames, then hops onto a chair and tries to make the beeping stop.
The door bursts open and the landlord and two goons swinging baseball bats barge in. The landlord sniffs the air.
“You’ve been smoking indoors!”
The goons run over and whack the smoker in the back of his legs and he yells and drops the screaming detector. The landlord covers his ears while his goons bash it to pieces. In the confusion, the smoker crawls over to the open window and sneaks out onto the fire escape. He smooths his mustache and scurries up to the roof.
3.
The sky is blue and the air is clear. The smoker leans against the railing and lights a cigarette. The city is humming with cars and everyone’s at work. The smoker breathes in and the smoke tastes good.
“Give me one of your smokes, man.” There’s a young boy in the doorway holding a baseball and a bat.
“No way, your dad would kill me.”
“My dad already wants to kill you. When are you gonna pay rent?”
“Hey, toss me that baseball.”
“And then you’ll give me a smoke?”
“Just toss it to me.”
The boy looks at the baseball as if consulting it, then tosses it over. The smoker catches it, then winds up and pegs it through the open door and down the stairwell. The boy scowls.
“Don’t even think about going anywhere or I’ll tell my dad you gave me a cigarette.” He runs down the stairs after the ball.
The fire escape starts shaking. The smoker takes a nice long drag. If this is how it goes, then that’s just, like, the way it goes, he guesses. The shaking gets violent until a burglar in a black balaclava bursts onto the scene cradling a teapot under his arm. Right behind him is a young woman brandishing an aluminum bat.
“Stop him!”
The smoker exhales, blowing smoke into the burglar’s eyes. The burglar shrieks and stumbles blind and topples backwards over the railing and off the roof. The teapot flies through the air and for a moment blocks out the sun. Cigarette in his mouth, the smoker dives and catches it before it smashes onto the bitumen.
“Oh my God, you’re amazing! Thank you so much!” says the woman, running over and pulling him back.
“Anything for a pretty lady,” he says, rolling onto his back and holding the teapot up. She takes it and he puts his hands behind his head and keeps on smoking.
“Do you––would you like to come over for some tea?” she asks.
The smoker smiles. “If you insist.” He gets up, takes one last puff, and flicks it off the roof.
Watching from the stairwell, the boy scowls as the woman and the smoker make their way back down the fire escape.
4.
She pushes the ivy aside and they climb in through her window. Her apartment is dense with pictures, plants, and hand-crafted furniture. She fills the teapot with water and places it over the burner, already lit, then takes a bag of seeds over to the bird cage and feeds her canary from the palm of her hand. The smoker scratches his oily scalp and wonders whether he’s going bald. He takes a seat at her table while she rummages through a cupboard, listing off her many varieties of tea. When she’s finished he still has no idea what he wants or what any of the flavors mean. He picks the last one so she can feel like it was worth it to tell him about them all.
The TV’s on, muted with subtitles. Commentators are chatting over live footage of an orchestra.
It’s gotta be tough, Lyndon, conducting that slow. Lot of patience, lot of stamina on display here.
Yes, quite challenging. It boggles the mind to know he’s been conducting this symphony every week for the past year.
Oh yeah, totally, this guy’s a total pro. I loved those aggressive strokes he was doing earlier, you know––
Oh yes, indeed, in the first movement––
Yeah, can we pull that up?
Slo-mo footage appears of the sweaty conductor and his passionate orchestra in the midst of the climax of the first movement.
5.
The woman returns with two steaming cups that look like they would break if she held them any less daintily. She gives the smoker a kiss on the cheek, serves him his tea and sits down across from him. They smile and look into each other’s eyes as they take a sip.
The door gets kicked open. This guy in a full baseball uniform barges in carrying a gym bag and a bouquet inside half of a hollowed out baseball bat.
“No!” shouts the woman.
“Please, babe, I’ve changed!”
“I don’t care!”
“But babe!”
“No! Get out!”
He looks to the heavens. “Oh, God, why does everything have to be such a battle between us?” he cries, shaking his bouquet in despair. He falls to his knees and is about to turn the drama up to eleven when he notices the smoker. “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“A hero,” she says.
“What, like a firefighter?”
The smoker shrugs. “If you say so.”
“I’m not saying so. You after my girl?”
“I’m not your girl!”
“Babe, calm down!”
“Get out!”
“Babe, these are your favorite flowers!”
“No they’re not!”
“They’re not?”
“Out!”
“Babe, I seriously thought these were your favorites––”
“Stop calling me babe!”
“What are your favorites then? I’ll go get them––”
“If that’ll get you to leave––”
“I meant after we work this out!”
“There’s nothing to work out! We’re finished!”
“Babe!”
And on and on they go.
The smoker yawns and checks his wrist for a watch that isn’t there. With no end in sight, he climbs back out onto the fire escape for a quick smoke. He lights up and takes a moment to marvel at the harmony arising from the chaos of the city.
6.
The landlord and his goons barge in.
“What’s going on here?”
His goons run over to the TV, bash its screen in, and fist bump each other with the tips of their bats.
“Hey, that’s my girlfriend’s TV!”
“I’m not your girlfriend!” She charges at the goons and kicks the snot out of them, leaving them piled in a heap at the landlord’s feet. Emasculated but proud, desperate to hide his shame and eager to please, the guy calling her babe grabs a roll of paper towels and starts wiping the mucus off the wall.
“Whoa,” says the smoker, crouching down at the window.
“Hey, fuck you!” shouts the landlord. “You giving cigarettes to my kid?”
“Nah, man, you know I wouldn’t do that. He did ask for one though. Maybe you better talk to him.”
The landlord sighs through his teeth and shakes his head at the ground. “I thought I could quit before he turned twelve and it’d be alright, but it looks like he’s already learned all the wrong lessons.”
“Ah, yeah man, I could see how you might think that, but like it turns out that those are some mad formative years and like, yeah, that shit happens. It’s crazy.”
The landlord nods, taking it all in. “I guess you would know.”
The smoker has an epiphany.
The landlord wipes away a tear and pulls his wallet out. “Here,” he says, slipping out a twenty. “Buy yourself a new smoke detector.”
“I can’t accept this, man, really––”
“It’s building regulation.” He stuffs the cash into the smoker’s hand and turns to his goons. “Come on, you lumps!”
The goons pull themselves up and stagger out the door, knocking down a couple paintings along the way. The landlord walks backwards holding his palms together and shaking them as he pleads with the woman to please, please, please keep it down because he really doesn’t want to raise her rent. She shuts the door in front of him.
The guy chucks a giant trash bag out the window and dusts his hands off. “It’s all clean, babe.”
The woman shrieks. The floral wallpaper is completely bleached in the areas the mucus covered.
“Yeah, not much I could do about that,” says the guy. “You know, some people’s mucus actually has a pH of approximately three point seven if I remember correctly. It’s like, genetics.”
“That’s––kind of interesting,” says the woman, wiping away her tears. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about science.”
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” she asks, closing the curtains.
Outside, the smoker sighs and decides to use the twenty to buy another pack of smokes. He starts walking down the fire escape, but no matter how far he goes, he gets no closer to the ground, or his apartment.
1.
A group of softball players are crowded over the left fielder, a mustachioed man with long brown hair and a five o’clock shadow. He has a crumpled cigarette in his mouth, his nose is bleeding, and his eyes are rolled back into his head.
“Oh my God, are you alright?”
“Give him room to breathe, babe.”
“Hey, you better not die before you pay rent!”
7.
The left fielder blinks a few times and his eyes roll back into position.
“He’s okay!” shouts the shortstop. The crowd breathes a sigh of relief and then applauds, banishing the tense silence.
His blurred double vision begins to resolve and he pieces together the feet and the grass and the ball in his glove. He raises it high and the crowd cheers and lifts him up over their heads. He grins like an idiot. He never really cared about baseball––softball, whatever. He was just doing his landlord a favor filling in last minute. If only that girl on third base wasn’t dating the shortstop. Maybe being the game’s big hero could have won her over. He lights his crumpled cigarette and watches the clouds forming, drifting, vanishing.