3

Stories by Doris Shapiro

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

3; Stories by Doris Shapiro Copyright 2008 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition

ISBN: 1-934289-90-6 ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-90-7

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Stopping Smoking in Manhattan

eorgie, the young handyman with the melancholy eyes, was lying on his back, his head inside the cabinet under the kitchen sink. I stood idly in the doorway,

cigarette in hand, admiring his expertise with pliers and wrench, luxuriating in my smoke, when from down there underneath he said, I stopped smoking. Georgie!! Two weeks ago today. Georgie, thats great! You said you were going to do it. I was afraid to ask. Now youve done it! How wonderful! But my celebrating was excessive, because I was faking. He had aroused the old dread, the old demon back again from a short winter break of full-fledged, devil-may-care smoking, destroying all the comfort of the moment before. I squashed my cigarette. Emerging, he said gloomily, Its all I think about. He began to pack up.
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Oh, well, in that case I lit another cigarette, that one of no return the doctor had talked about at the stop-smoking session, the irreversible one beyond which you could never come back, the glorious inhalation that had been my comforter in almost everything I did, but might be the fatal puff. After Georgie left, I held the whole pack under running water. I had done it before. You had to soak every cigarette until it was soggy, yellow and broken. This time, to make sure I wouldnt resuscitate them with the blow dryer, I opened the apartment door and chucked the whole thing down the service incinerator. Now I was like Georgie. I had quit smoking at last. I bundled up and went out. On the streets I felt exultant. People stood in front of stores, puffing in the cold. Its no fun to smoke that way. You wanted to be on the phone, or having your evening drink or morning cup of coffee, or watching television, or after making love. I was already better off. For me, times had changed. Tonight I was going to a dinner party. Only a year or so ago I would smoke before dinner, through dinner and after dinner. Then I had begun to notice I was the only one doing it. Now I didnt bring cigarettes. Before tonight I would have been sustained by the promise of a reward when I got home. I could even enjoy a restaurant cocktail and dinner without a smoke, because the reward was waiting. And what a well-earned pleasure it had been, inhaling four cigarettes one after the other, past midnight, as they said the painter Joan Miro used to do when he come in for lunch from his studio.

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It was late when I got back to my apartment house. Big Danny was already at the desk in the lobby. Besides being a cheerful greeter and door opener, he stood guard through long nights over twenty-one floors of over a hundred households against housebreakers, murderers, kidnappers, but not against heartbreakers, abandoners, or other in-house felons. How ARE ye? he said, with his big goofy smile left over from boyhood, Big Dannys How ARE ye had developed over the years as he married, had a baby (and when I wasnt looking, had four more. People grow faster in other peoples lives than in their own. His eldest daughter was nineteen.) If I walked into the lobby with a one-year-old lion on a leash, Danny would say, How ARE ya, No questions. No funny looks. Danny didnt comment that there was distress coming from my face. Because, because there was no cigarette upstairs. Not only the times, but I, too, had changed. On the way up I recalled a quaint episode when once, descending in the elevator with others, Mrs. Miller came on at floor five, puffing a cigarette. We used to do that. Diane Silvers whined about it, bringing to my attention for the first time that someone didnt like being in a crowded elevator with a smoker smoking. Diane and her husband were troublemakers. Before they moved away, they used to wedge a newspaper in all but one of the elevator doors late at night so they couldnt move, because they said they made noise. What if someone had a heart attack?
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Aw come on, Diane, I said were almost there. Almost in tears, she said, I have fought so hard for this. Since then Id come to see smoking in elevators as an antique custom. But tonight, as I rose to the twentieth floor, my heart sank to the basement. Undressing quickly, I recklessly removed my makeup. Now I couldnt go out again. A shocking thought came to me. Not only was there no cigarette tonight, but there would be none in the morning, nor in any future. A death was going on here. My chest was starving for the sharp burn of smoke deeply inhaled. Maybe I was being too violent with my system. Nine hours lay between me and my last smoke. Could I go on without one? My dear mother used to say, Dont think about a white horse. To her it was a joke. But the vision of a white cigarette, one, just one, was no joke. Now I was pulling on stockings, underclothes, sweaters (three), skirt, boots (there was snow), and by three A.M., by God, I was dressed again. Pitch dark out the windows. Everybody sleeping. But I knew where I was going.
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Danny, will you stand outside and watch me go across Third Avenue? Okay, he said with a dopey smile. Nobody out. I walked to the corner like a thief. Not a car anywhere. Midnight silence. Kind of nice. Scary, too. Stealthily I crossed and went the few steps to the cheerful light of the Korean market. Lucky to live in Manhattan, where Korean markets never close, not even on Christmas. Betsy Martin! My tall, tanned, attractive neighbor from the ninth floor was standing at the counter lighting a cigarette. I knew her trouble sleeping. What are you doing here? l ran out of cigarettes, she said nonchalantly and put the pack in her pocket. Not I. I wasnt going to smoke this pack of cigarettes I was buying. I had a plan. I unwound the familiar clear thin tape on top as we crossed the snowy avenue together and saw Danny still outside. lf youve never had a doorman like Danny, you dont know what youre missing. Goodnight, ladies, he said. In the elevator, after Betsy got off, I stuck my finger into the fold of silver paper and opened. I pushed the bottom and lifted
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one, just one, and held it loosely in my hand so as not to brake it. At floor twenty I got off, went directly to the service hall, opened the incinerator lid, and with a little wave and a sudden rush of heartbeat, I let go of the almost virgin package to journey down the chute to the basement. $2.50. A necessary investment. So much for Day One stopping smoking. Why am I alone, allowed this terrible freedom to carry on like this at three oclock in the morning as if I were a divorcee or a widow? My loved ones are absent. Jack left right after the first of the year. Hes in the Amazon, shooting his film about the rainforest that he has been so keen to do. I pray he doesnt get eaten by a crocodile. Knowing his fear of nothing and his enthusiasm, I see him leaning too far out the little boat. Jenny, our daughter, is spending a junior semester in India; we took her to the airport a few days before Jack flew away. I pray she doesnt return in a saffron robe, and worse, knowing her young inability to imagine that anything bad can happen. I pray she doesnt get caught carrying a gram of marijuana and spend her life in jail in India. This was a good time to fight the demon without messing up our life at home. One thing was certain: I was never going to
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buy a pack of cigarettes again. Id tried having one in the house. No matter how high I tossed them up in the closet, or buried them in suitcases under piles of summer clothes, there was no peace in the house until they were gone. Once I fell off the ladder. In this particular time of quitting, in only one week or so I had become transformed. Not for the better. Going about the neighborhood, disguised as an upstanding citizen, I was already a schemer, a stealthy, derelict, deceitful beggar on the streets. I discovered my talent for conniving. Smoking was all I thought about. But I was committed to smoking only cigarettes I could bum. Early one morning, on the prowl, I saw the Arab newsstand owner smoking. Very little neighborly charm was needed and only twenty-five cents to cradle a cigarette in my hand and bring it home. I saw a lot of people smoking openly on the streets. Aromatic smoke still abounded. In my stylish coat and boots, I felt any of these smokers would chuckle with me when I explained my plight, and offer me a cigarette, but except for sidling towards the whiff of smoke coming from a mouth or two, I was too shy to speak to a stranger. Betsy Martin on floor nine smoked. I got up my nerve and called her. Sure, she said. Come on down. It all seemed so casual and friendly when I rang her bell and received the gift into my hand, but what about next time?

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When Mrs. Miller came towards me in the street I grew alert. It was Bunny by now. I said in that chummy way I had adopted to conceal the urgency: Bunny, Im stopping smoking. D'you suppose I could bum one from you? I stopped! she declared, with alarm in her eyes and voice. Mark is standing at his post in the supermarket. I cant ask him again. Hes the sulky manager: tough, rough, a John Garfield. Hes proud that he lost only one man from his platoon in Vietnam. Because he favors old ladies with his small talk and smiles, one assumes he has a heart of gold under there. When I ask with mock pleading, this time he is surly. There are only two in his pack. Where do you have more? I dont. I have to buy them like everyone else. Im hurt. Are you resenting me, Mark? Take it any way you want, and he walked away. I go to the drugstore and buy his brand. Theyre menthol, and I dont like them anyway. None of the cigarettes Ive bummed in the last two weeks have tasted good like my own dear brand. Hold out your hands I say to Mark the next day. No Here, them I press the menthols, minus one, on him. He takes the pack.
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Thats the third Ive gotten this week. Ah, so, I think. Theres an underground of ladies engaged, like me, in beggar mooching cigarettes from the supermarket manager. Come to think of it, there always seems to be a woman in quiet conversation with pusher Mark. Even me. In a sunny spot on the avenue huddles the woman I see everyday. When I started giving her a dollar I asked her if she got any checks from the government. Yes, she sighed. Tm going to go to Brooklyn and find a cheap room. Shes fat (so she eats), and she smokes ($2.50 a pack). I cant give her a dollar every day. Once I crossed the street to avoid her. Today is the last straw. I am willing to see her and give her the dollar. With that mournful face, she looks up at me, but my eyes fasten on the cigarette glowing between her fingers. I am about to lean down and ask her for one. But I stop. I see it for what it is: Begging the beggar for her beggar-financed cigarette. One step away from joining her on the sidewalk. I cant bum anymore. I go home and start setting the next trap for myself. James, our daytime doorman, is a deacon of his church. We dont call him Jim or Jimmy. His wife sends thank-you notes for Christmas bonuses. In his dark blue uniform he conveys a neutral and proper impression, a discreet but insistent conveyor of the positive, a look on the bright side. It works fine at the

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door, but too much of that at home could be hard on the family. I suspect its partly veneer. Jamess version of Dannys How ARE ya is, Good morning, Mrs. Perlman. A little on the wet side out there. (Were having a deluge.) Whew! I have to wait a bit. I cant go into that And hows Tommy Hes fine, thanks. I clipped his claws this morning. Tommys fine, he repeated, as if to take note that everythings fine on his watch. He knows not only the names of all the tenants in the hundred apartments, but of their children, pets, maids, baby sitters, grandparents, friends and relatives. All the doormen do. Amazing. On Jamess shift, if I walked out with my one-yearold lion on a leash he might say, I see you have a new pet. Company for Tommy. Hes an operator, though. Before Tommy came, he said one day, Did you ever get the kitten you wanted? No. Not yet. Mrs. Carney in 6D is moving and wants to give away her two cats. Would you like me to ring her up? Shes home.
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I dont want two. I want a kitten Maybe just go take a look at them. Well, all right. Mrs. Carney was young and fat. Her cats were fat, or anyway they had so much fur you couldnt see their bodies. They sat. There was no air in the apartment. Mrs. Carney kept passing her hand across her nose, mouth, and eyes to displace their long white hairs. These are the most passive cats youll ever want to meet. Whoever, not me, would want a passive cat? Theyre beautiful, I said, but we can only handle one and I know they need to stay together. Another time I said to James: I have to go and keep Jennys friends cat company while shes away for the weekend. I think its time she made another arrangement. Cat Care, he said at once. Mr. Thompson in 17A, when he goes away for a weekend, uses Cat Care. Would you like the number? So here was James, getting ready to retire, my daytime pal for fifteen years. lf you dont have a doorman like James, youre missing something.
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Uh, James, I said the next morning, after greeting the older couple in the elevator dressed for church. I had to wait for them to exchange their good-morning greetings with James at the door. Then Bert Wax wandered in from his daily breakfast at the corner coffee shop. Widower, with more and more stubble on his face, he wanted to hang out with James and talk about the weather. To me, Are you still smoking? Looking at his belly, growing bigger and bigger by the week since he stopped, I cringed in anticipation of the answer that his question is designed to produce. Why do you want to know that, Bert? But theres no derailing it. Here it comes. I stopped, you know. Looking at his belly, I can see that When he walked to the elevator and said, Coming up?, I said no, without the thank you. Uh, James, I said at last, now that we were alone. Would you do me a favor? Would you mind tucking this pack of cigarettes in your drawer? Im quitting, you see. But I cant keep them in the house without smoking them all at once. The plan was to smoke one for every doormans shift: three a day. With such a rigorous regime, by the time this pack was
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gone, the nicotine addiction would have loosened its grip and Id be able to take the final step. James nodded assent, put the new pack in the back of his drawer. Youre quitting smoking. All right, well just keep them here for you. Can we keep it confidential We wont tell anybody. Ill take just one now. Ever indulgent, he said, Do you want one for good luck? No. Thats the idea. One Who was I kidding? At twenty minutes before twelve noon, I bolted out the apartment door, rang and rang for the elevator, inwardly huffed at every floor it stopped at to let someone in on the way down. Though I composed myself as I walked through the lobby, not wearing a coat in winter was a dead giveaway to James. He already was reaching in the drawer. Now I was apologizing for bothering him, or perhaps for invading his drawer, but also for being weak, though he didnt care if I was weak or strong. Trouble was, when I finally got the prize upstairs and arranged the ashtray and matches, fixed the light from the window, and sat in a comfortable chair, then lit it, it was over too soon. I
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wanted more. I went to the movies to spend time without smoking, but when I came out I went to the drawer again. Welcome home, said Izzie, as I returned a few days later, after his four p.m. shift had begun. His arms were open. Izzie had become more and more ghostly as the years passed. Its wonderful to have Izzie for a doorman, though I wouldnt take my lion for a walk on his watch: hed call 911. Izzie calls some of the younger men residents by their first names after long talks about football or baseball, and even today he calls me Margie as he opens the drawer. By now all three doormen know. Im surprised to find a limp package with only two cigarettes left in it. I thought I was doing better. I sigh and take one. No, leave it, I say to him of the other with a little laugh as though this battle I was losing was a game for fun. A delivery person enters. Izzie addresses him in Spanish. If you live in Manhattan, this curtain of Spanish can come down at any time and shut you out. When Carlos, our porter, and Georgie, and Santiago, our superintendent, and Izzie, get together, you think youre in South America. Tomorrow I will smoke the last cigarette of my life. I didnt know it would happen so soon. I could do it. I had a new idea, stubbing out the one Id smoked to the filter. I would just suffer. Thats not so terrible. Just suffer. I could do it. I was eager to begin. At 5:30 the next morning Danny was half dozing in the locked lobby and it was still dark outside
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wanting to get it over with, I was there to get the last one. He broke the unspoken rule. No, no, he teased me. Stop it, Daniel. Open the drawer. Theres only one cigarette left there. Its the last one Im ever going to smoke in my life. He put his big hand in and brought out - behold - not the empty flattened package with one limp weed in it. No! Hes holding up a fresh full pack of my brand. Whats this? He shrugs. He doesnt know. This time I went upstairs with two instead of that last one. A little last treat. James wouldnt be on the door for two hours. After I judged the morning rush to work had subsided at the door, I went directly to him. He handed me the almost full pack. D'you know how this frog turned into the prince? I have to ponder that, Mrs. Ross. How did a crushed empty pack with one cigarette in it turn into this one? Mrs. Miller replenished your empty one. Mrs. Miller has been smoking my cigarettes?
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Yes, thats right She told me she stopped. She slipped. Slipped! Why did I burst out laughing? The mischief of it! Playing hooky. Another covert person here. I felt I was being given permission to join this funny game. Bunny Miller, the stylish, affluent, fastidious widow in high heels, theatergoer, bridge player, world traveler, a most unlikely one to be my buddy in sin, sneaking smokes just like me. It struck me that the name Bunny for a woman in her sixties might have clued me in to something in her that was more accessible than Id thought. When I got upstairs I thought: Maybe its too hard to quit. I cant keep up this elaborate stopping by degrees. Its ruining my life. I cant work, I cant read, I cant talk on the telephone, or do anything really. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to even live with this constant, nagging hunger in my cavernous chest? This line of thought led to the forbidden subject, which today seemed defanged and simple. So what if I die a few years earlier from smoking? Isnt it worth it for the lifetime of continuous deep constant pleasure? I wasnt even angry at the tobacco companies.

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Everybodys moving in the same direction anyway. I began to philosophize. Thats all you hear: Forward. We want to move forward, go forward, push forward, get on with it. When older people discover the destination of all these forward-driven goals, they stop wanting to go there, because the destination is the ultimate one. But we are all passing that way, like it or not, and it occurred to me maybe we shouldnt take this dying so personally. Except - I walked into the bedroom - I didnt want to have to say goodbye to Jack and Jenny. I remembered leaving them once for a week to go see my old dad. All the good-byes we say give us the taste of the goodbye we dont come back from. I began to cry. I can never catch up with Georgie, the handyman. Hell always be two weeks ahead of me. I have not smoked a cigarette for two weeks. I dont feel proud or triumphant. Im staggering through this day-by-day, have had irritable words with an old dear friend, in whom I suddenly perceive righteousness. Im awfully touchy. Ive somehow sucked up fourteen days and am suffering, just as Id agreed to do. Im in what I recognize to be a state of mourning. Very subtly, though, the mere accumulation of time has distanced me in tiny increments from the raging beast of hunger inside me and the smokers habits on the outside. I even experienced a whiff of smoke on the street that wasnt appetizing. I know Jack will rejoice when he comes home and smells no smoke and sees no ashtrays on the tables, but I cant honestly say that Im swimming more laps in the pool at the Y;
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food doesnt taste noticeably better, as its supposed to, and I am uncomfortably clearing my throat a lot. One day, as I came home from the neighborhood library, I saw Georgie coming down a ladder in the lobby, from which he had been changing light bulbs in the ceiling. Hes my inspiration. But today he only nods at me, no talk. A side effect of withdrawal is Ive become ultra sensitive. I feel hurt when he doesnt say hello. The next day he comes on the elevator with me. Confirmed. Hes not being friendly. Georgie, I say, after four weeks you must not think about cigarettes anymore. He looks down at the rising floor of the elevator. Nothing said. When it stops on my twenty, as I get out, he says: I went back. Im smoking again. This was a blow. I was angry at Georgie. If after four weeks he crumbled, what were my two shaky ones worth? He was telling me the struggle was too hard. Why did you do it, Georgie? Mrs. Ross, I kept having this dream, the same dream every night. I was in front of a firing squad. They came up and offered me a cigarette. I took it. They lit it for me. It was the best cigarette I ever smoked. Then they shot me. It began to feel too
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dangerous. I didnt want to wait until I got in front of a firing squad, so I went back to smoking. Nevertheless, I lingered on for a few more days, but on Thursday I realized Id been saving up to ask Georgie for a cigarette. When I finally went to look for him, I was shattered to learn it was his day off. Tomorrow, too. On Saturday I saw him in front of the building I stiffened and forced myself to pass by and only say hello. But on the way back from the market, I hurried. He was not visible. James said try the basement. And there was Georgie in the basement piling up magazines and newspapers. Its not too hard to confess to him. He easily goes to a dingy little alcove in the wall and takes a pack from his green jacket, which is hanging on a wire hanger, and offers it to me. And there I was again, with my hand loosely cradling a Merit Lite. The odd thing was, I didnt enjoy it. It tasted dry, and, yes, I didnt like the dirty saucer I stubbed it out in. Surprisingly, the two weeks of celibacy I had endured lingered. I missed them. I missed being good. I missed the attacks of deprivation. I missed recovering from them. A dim longing, but not strong enough. I didnt think I could ever regain that rigueur again. I have Georgies permission to go anytime I want to his green jacket pocket and take a Merit Lite. I replace his pack from time to time.
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One day the basement was empty, nobody in the laundry room, big noise from equipment that runs the building, a used refrigerator standing, piles of huge plastic bags bursting with reacting objects, and no sign of Carlos or Jose, the porters, or Santiago, the superintendent. Even so, Im afraid Ill be caught. I tiptoed across the vinyl floor of this wasteland towards that little nook in the wall with the few coats banging on wire hangers. Georgies green jacket with the pocket. Its easy. I snatch one and hurry to the elevator to regain innocent territory. The door opens. Out steps who? Bunny Miller. She makes no bones about it. Is Georgies jacket there? I see she has a pack of Merits in her hand. And suddenly none of this seems mischievous anymore. It has become a bad farce. Smoking didnt used to be like this. It belonged to another time when it was indispensable to romance, adventure, style, courage, danger, creativity. The old lovers gifts of silver and gold lighters and cigarette cases with love inscriptions from Tiffanys or Cartiers, languished nowadays in the back of drawers or antique shops. Theyve been replaced with silver and gold credit and business card cases. Smoking had grown pass. And so had I. No more basements for me. As I stepped into the elevator, I pressed twenty. When I got out , opened the door and reached for my purse and went out again. Crossed Third avenue and
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went into the Korean market, and went up to the clerk cheerfully, Carlton 100s please. "I can quit some other time."

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