Cigarette Run

You only picked up and sustained your smoking habit to support a deeper rooted addiction to solitude. The freedom of social void, that respectful distance between oneself and the easy breathing bodies of the greater public. Society's segregated smoking section at least 30 feet from operable doors and windows allows the anti-social smoker the freedom to give oneself lung cancer on the outskirts of social obligation.

And then there's the cigarette run. As in "honey, just going to run to the store for some smokes" aware of and smothering the temptation to drive right on by that seedy little stop-and-rob and embark on some epic Thelma and Louise style shenanigans. You recall at least a dozen broken-family quasi-fiction tales of some dead beat dad whose story ends upon grabbing his keys to step out for a pack of Marlboros, leaving his litter of hungry urchins watching expectantly for his noisy old truck to pull back into the cracked driveway, watching and waiting and growing old.

Think of your husband at home as the little bell jingles above your head when you step into the convenience store, the way the heat coerces him into stripping himself down to his farmer's tan and a patch of wiry black hair below his navel. The way his sloping middle-aged gut procedes him into a room, with more of an impression than the vacant space between his slightly kidney bean shaped ears. Settled into the well worn crater on the left side of the love seat, stuffing his arteries with cheeseburgers and ESPN, he made a not-so-offhand comment as you walked out relaying his moderate disapproval for your un-ladylike habit of blackening your lungs and yellowing your teeth on those cancer sticks. Your failure to acknowledge the criticism is true to the script and a surprise to neither of you.

The Pakistani or Indian or Arab store clerk has a scowl on his face as he looks up at the sound of the bell, as though he's already expecting trouble. And watch now, curiously, as his scowl melts into a welcome grin that does not touch his eyes when he reads the white guilt on your face. He calls you "ma'am" and doesn't card you when you ask for the imported Indonesian filtered clove cigars that are your guilty pleasure, a pleasure you picked up when you fancied yourself young and an artist. Thinking twenty seven can feel so old for a girl who married early and collects addictions like bottle caps, shuffling through the right
combinations to stop your dreaming.