Why She Smokes Cigarettes I squinted through the frosted window of the small coffee shop I called home

most Saturday mornings and marveled at an exhale of smoke that I could barely see blast from Nicoles mouth. She wasnt my girlfriend, we had not crossed that threshold, but after four months of seeing each other, I understood that I had only scratched at the surface of my feelings for her. I hoped she felt the same for me. The clock read 10:30 AM and she bore the wind and snowflakes to smoke her first cigarette of the day. The edges of a half-crumpled soft pack of Marlboro Reds grinned at me from the table beside her untouched black coffee. Nicole used the fog on the window to outline two stick figures side by side, hand in hand. I smiled as she weaved around the five other, halffull tables and made her way back to ours. Nicole covered the back of her seat with her black jacket. Delicate pieces of snow melted into her light brown hair, which broke at the tops of her shoulders as she cupped her hands around her mouth and coughed. You know, you wouldnt be coughing right now if you didnt smoke. I smiled and poked her cold, red nose with my warm finger. You hate my smoking, dont you Sam? Nicole asked. She knew my feelings and the answer to her question. I arched my eyebrows, annoyed at her indifference, irritated by her habit, and almost angry at her willful neglect of the grandmother I lost to lung cancer three weeks backa grandmother that spent 60 years drawing down the tobacco sticks she began rolling as a 13-year old. Yes, the habit bothered me, but Nicole looked too happy and too free while smoking for me to mind that much.

I still knew little about Nicole beyond what she showed on the outside despite our months of casual dating. She alternated between sexy and understated, showstopper and reserved, without blinking. Delicate and fragile, but strong and confident, she tapped a dance to these beats all at once, or so it seemed. She could be the belle of the ball or the girl wiping hot sauce from her cheeks while eating wings, drinking beer, and swearing at the TV with the guys on football Sundays. She kept enough distance to be mysterious, and the mystery seduced me. I craved more because my heart felt things for her that my brain had not discovered. From what I could tell, though, smoking lifted her into a serene space that other people and other things never seemed to match. She would dangle the cigarette in her hand, purse her lips, and inhale with the casual effort of a woman seemingly meant to do this very thing. I had seen enough to know that whatever cares Nicole had disappeared alongside the clouds and rings she exhaled after each puff. Nothing about our relationship made her look quite as content as she did in that instant when her lighters flame caught the end of her cigarette and the first burn ignited something special deep inside her. I yearned to be that spark. I just dont get it, I said. I mean, you barely drink. You exercise every day. You preach this holistic living stuff. So why? I spoke with more accusation than I intended and more than was necessary at this early weekend hour. I told you already. Nicole massaged the handle of her porcelain mug between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. Her eyes sought resignation in me, but my eyes refused to budge. You know the deal. It started in high school and then I kept at it through college and after. I just never wanted to stop. I had grown accustomed to the vague answers Nicole used as her two-step around any question that might require a personal answer. Nicole had a past, as any girl worth meeting does,

but hers turned her into an expert at eluding the revelation of anything of emotional substance. I knew her past troubled her, but I didnt believe this was the issue for her with me. In my mind, she realized that opening the door to her real story meant one of two things for our laissez-faire relationship. Opening up meant sharing certain vulnerabilities, and doing this meant we would make the leap from friendly acquaintances to exposed lovers or collapse under the weight of what we learned. Safety, for now, existed in not knowing such things. Except, on this morning I decided to take a chance. No, I said. I dont know much, but I think theres more to it than youre telling. Theres another reason because theres more to you than what you want to share. What is it? Nicole paused and focused her eyes in the direction of the window. I could see her travel to some other place, but I didnt know where. Or with whom. She pulled her left hand from my right and began fidgeting with her pack of smokes. The plastic crunched inside her squeezing fingers. So, Nicole exhaled and squared her body to me. Leaning closer across the table, she asked, You want to know the real reason I smoke? No, I said. Oh. Nicole kept her forearms on the coffee table but recoiled with her shoulders and head. She quizzed me with her eyes. I leaned my body closer to her. I want to know you, I said and stripped away the smile, whether real or forced, that rarely left my face. Our months-long sort-of relationship had reached a turning point, for better or for worse. She paused for a few seconds and then a few more. Then, she spoke: I started smoking when I was 16, visiting my sister in a rehab facility for addicts and thieves on the Southside, and

because I fell in love, or infatuation, or some other shit with a heroin user who might have saved my life. Is this the stuff you want to know? Yes, it is, I said while trying to appear unfazed. I knew that Nicole was the middle of her parents three children and that her younger brother, Michael, died a month after his birth following an unwinnable fight versus a heart defect. Nicoles family never recovered to my knowledge. She skirted my inquiries about her parents, but I had gathered they suffered from varying amounts of depression and addiction. They werent instrumental raising her, far from it, and they werent the redemptive sort of parents found in movies, either. They existed in a life apart from Nicoles, separated by guilt and internal demons. Michelle, Nicoles older sister by 18 months, escaped her fractured adolescence first with lies and denials, and then with drugs and petty crimes. Nicole never told me any of this. The only reason I knew is that her closest friend drank an extra several fingers of bourbon one night and shared the details with me. Although Nicoles family disintegrated once her brother died, by her admission she chose a different route. Nicole funneled herself into an erudite world full of degrees and PhDs, which she used in the service of others. Listening and deflecting questions onto others came naturally, so it didnt surprise me that her career involved guiding someone else through the problems posing as landmines in their lives. Nicole loved her work, but she also loved that she could escape each day someone else's problem and continue the dash she started as a teenager running away from her haunted past. Or at least this is the delusion I fixed for myself while lying in bed at night wondering how after one year spent in the same circle of friends and another four months of dating, she so readily turned our conversations in a direction other than hers. Nicoles friends envied her because she listened; a part of me pitied her because she wouldnt speak.

Michelle needed help, I think you know, Nicole said. And my parents, for one of their screwed up reasons, couldnt be there for her and told me they needed me to be her support. They said I had to be there, that I couldnt let them down. So I visited the facility, every day, no exceptions, while my parents disappeared. I dont know why they sent me into that place but they did. Who knows, maybe they just didnt know any better and figured they would do the right thing by looking out for Michelle by doing the wrong thing and endangering me. I guess their trust in you is a compliment to your strength. I didnt believe the words as I heard them in the air. Nicoles wasted parents disgusted me. I wasnt irritated that they forced her into a shelter of drugs and danger, but that their inactions forced Nicole to erect the protective shell that I couldnt crack. Yeah, I suppose, I just coped the best I knew how. Yeah. So Michelle got her treatment and counseling for her issues This was her second stint so she knew the routine and mostly wanted to forget that I was her sister during my visits but I promised my parents I would help so I showed up every day. After a few visits, I go used to playing cards with small-time drug dealers finishing off their sentences and addicts clearing their systems before another sprint down narcotics row. Huh? Just the name the hard users called the stretch of sun-ups to sun-downs they filled with dope and pills in the first few days after being released. Oh, I see Yeah, I guess. I had time to myself, mostly, but I still felt I had to be there.

Why would you keep going? I asked. I mean, its not like your parents or anyone else cared. And your sister didnt want you there? Had to do it, I guess. Promises dont mean much to my folks, but the y do to me. And if this was my sacrifice, so be it. I dont understand, but OK. Different world, Sam. Is all I can say. Yes. So, I mean, for the first week things went fine. I played some cards, but the truth was that nobody cared whether I came or went, whether I was a patient, inmate, or high school girl told by her parents to visit every day. By the middle of the second week this guy who was about my age started following me wherever I went in the facility. If I left the rec space for the restroom, he would show up standing in the green and white checkered hallway and follow me back. He had bags of black and blue drooping from eyes that hunted more than they looked. When I ate meals, he would sit behind me and stare. I mean, I could feel his eyes penetrate me. Ive never figured the right word to describe him other than wrong. What were the guards doing while all this went on? I asked the obvious question, now oblivious to the slight chatter of patrons and idle banter of the two baristas waiting for the next customer to order. Only Nicole and her story mattered. They didnt care. The only thing they paid attention to was the hour hand on their payclock. All of them? My eyes filled with suspicion. Part of me appreciated Nicoles story, but part of me suspected this might be just an elaborate detour with harsh language and characters meant to steer us away from anything that mattered to her.

Yes, just trust me or I can stop talking. That would be easier. No. Please continue. Despite my uncertainty, I couldnt imagine her not continuing the story. Well, after a few more days he started to get more aggressive with me. Hed confront me on my walks around the shelter and he cornered me one day when I slipped up and strayed too far from the guards and other people around the place. I complained to every guard I could find but because his hands never touched me, nobody cared to help. I didnt matter and neither did the twisted grunt who fancied me. Nicole punctuated her last sentence with her first smile in several minutes while I hid behind my own coffee mug without any words to say. Her smile lacked any happiness. Instead, I recognized it as the stunned realization of someone who only believed her words because they were true. I still had no idea what Nicoles story said about her smoking Marlboros outside at 10:30 on a windy morning that slapped strands of her hair across her cheeks. Her story mesmerized me. Maybe ten or twelve days into this whole mess, this guy shows up. Dark complexion, tired eyes sunken but not sunk. Thin, too. Too thin. One of the guards was walking through the cafeteria and our eyes met for a blink before he dragged his sagging body towards a detox room that would fill soon with his cold sweats and nightmares. His eyes stuck with me, just one of those looks I couldnt get out of my head. His body looked helpless but I thought his eyes looked disappointed. Two male suitors, then? Quite the queen of the damned, I tried to joke. Whatever. Anyways, maybe three or four days later this man reappears in the hallway, shaved head and rested with some life returning to his pained green eyes. He saved me, I think,

or maybe rescued me. I dont know for sure. But the other manthe bad manhad cornered me again. He had me pushed against a closet door and his right hand over my mouth. I tried to scream and kick and bite his hand but he overpowered me. I dont know what he planned or what would have happened next, but thanks to the other man, I never found out. Oh my god, I dont know what to say. Im sorry. I didnt know. Its OK. I wouldnt haveI wouldnt have asked if Id known. I exhaled. Nicole, Im so sorry. You know you dont have to share this. Im sorry I brought it up. I feel terrible. No, its fine. You should know this so Im going to continue. Are you sure? Her momentary silence confirmed her decision to share more. OK. So what happened? The other guy stopped it, thats what happened. He threw trouble off me, pressed him against the wall, and told him to get the fuck out of here and leave this girl alone. Forever. He never even raised his voice, Nicole said and let her words trail off before rising again. I still cant shake what I saw in his eyes. Even after all these years. The wet glint of half a tear flashed in the corner of her right eye before she washed it away with a swipe of her thumb. I had never seen Nicole cry, even come close, and this hint of openness impressed me. Whatd you see? Me. I saw me. You? Yes. I saw everything. His eyes held all the anger I stored over my parents and all my frustrations with my sister. I saw all the sadness in my heart from my brother and the resentment I held towards God for not being there. The more I stared the more I recognized his guilt. And

mine. And the pain that comes with watching things disintegrate but not stopping them. Every hurt and every sorrow, every goddamn twist and turn gone wrong. Everything that I fought to forget, I saw staring back at me in his serious green eyes that never left mine. The aggressive man frightened me. But the vulnerability I felt with this stranger terrified me even more. Jesus, did this really happen? Youre speaking like it was love at first sight, I said irritated by Nicoles passion for the man and the lack of such affection for me. Maybe, maybe not. I think there are some people who our hearts just have a natural weakness for, and it might be love or friendship or something else altogether, but when the feelings hit theyre natural and theyre real. And mine shocked me. Are you serious? I asked. Yes. This is real shit, she said without bothering to grab her coat before walking outside, cigarette and lighter in hand. She left me to stare again at her through the fogged window and wonder what came next. She began without hesitation after returning to our table. Luis Alejandro or Lou as I called him, and I spoke late into that night. And the next. And the next. Only 18, he had nothing to give but the raw harshness of his truth. He spoke of his first decade in Cuba and how his fathers father was a local baseball celebrity who beat his wife but loved his mistresses. Lou played some baseball, too, but he never much cared for the slowness of the sport. He believed in words and feelings, the language of the soul he liked to say. Nothing else matters, he said, and nothing else I had ever heard thrilled my 16-year old ears quite like that. He told me that his mom and dad were far from perfect, but they tried and were good parents. They left Cuba for the United States and after a few temporary stops moved into a tiny

house on a nowhere street not far from where we sat talking. They were honest and hardworking. Ill never forget what Lou said went through his mind every night he wasnt stoned: I wonder how I fucked up and got hooked on shooting this junk into my body. I dont even want to get high anymore because my body is over it. Its my brain that wont let go. That cant let go. And every night Im not high I wonder why and how I let everyone down. You remember all that still? Yes, its written in a notebook I still have. I dont want to forget what I dont want to forget. Fair enough, I said. By our fourth night of talking, he let me press my fingers to the tracks on his arms. He stopped me once, and held my finger to one of his scars. He said I reminded him that not everything he touched was empty and filled with poison. When he spoke, he sounded beautiful and I tried to picture him in some other lifea poet or author, hell, maybe a father. It doesnt matter what I imagined because it didnt change the fact that he sat next to me wearing tattered jeans and a ripped grey sweater with dark hair curling over sad eyes, chain-smoking Cuban Romeo y Julieta cigarettes. This whole thing is just absurd. That you spent all that time at the facility, that a stranger attacked you, that you actually touched this other mans scars. I believe you, but its a ridiculous story. Am I right to assume this druggie is part of the reason you smoke? No, that druggie is the full reason I smoke. Oh, I said, shaking my head. I ran my hands through my hair. Jealousy washed through me faster than any drugs could flow through the bloodstream of Nicoles friend during one of his junkie marathons. I understood now that every time I watched Nicole pull on a cigarette, sink her

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back against a chair, and escape into a place in her mind without any worries, she did so with this man. Nothing I didor could dowould change this fact. How did he even get Cuban cigarettes into the rehab tank anyways? I finally asked. I know, right? Nicole replied. Truth is, I dont know. I was 16 and infatuated by every idea of him. I never asked. Too busy falling for him, I guess. My frustration over where I stood in Nicoles line of interest had become difficult to conceal. I smiled to soften the blow from my own words. Nicole arched her eyebrows in a way that acknowledged she took note of my comment, and my resentment, but wouldnt entertain it with any response. He chain-smoked these strong, Cuban cigarettes. No breaks, just one after the other. He told me they calmed him and after the first night, I got used to the scented weight of the heavy tobacco cloud that formed over us. I was intoxicated, I guess, and this was just one more drink he poured me. So Lou sat there, smoked, and told me stories about the nights he spent homeless, sleeping inside a fort made of blankets and shopping carts under a bridge. Or the times he woke up shivering and starving without any person in sight and feeling less alone than at any time in his life because he had passed out the previous night before using all his junk. The only company he needed was some powder to shoot in his veins or snort through his nose. You aint alone when youve got something, he liked to say. I asked some questions, Nicole continued, but mostly I just listened. He envied his brother, a medical student, pitied his emotionally battered mother, and respected the intelligence of his college English professor father. I asked him why he turned to drugs and he said that he didnt know. Just filling the voids, he would say. His hands trembled and he clawed at his arms every few seconds. Tremors rattled his body for fierce seconds and his feet never stopped

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tapping the poor floor below his feet. He hadnt done enough drugs to be broken but he seemed on his way to getting there. Still, when he pulled inward on his cigarettes and this small smile passed over his face, he looked beautiful. He was dark and bruised, like me, but in this moment, he found light. Eventually, I needed to share in them. He protestedyou cant, Nicole, youre too young, too innocent to learn anything from a druggie like me. I remember him telling me, I have enough shit on my hands. I dont need any more. At least he knew that much. Anger at a man I would never meet flooded me. I knew then that Nicoles story had bridged the separation my heart needed to fall for her. I was mesmerized, hooked, just like her strung-out friend. The worst was that I didnt know if she would love me back. I won out, of course, and about a week into our all-night talks, he held a lit match to my first Romeo y Julieta. Then, I coughed, hacked everything that just entered my lungs right back out. Lou laughed and after a few more tries, I got the hang of things. Then, I became a smoker. Hooked just like that? Yeah. Strange, maybe, I dont know. A wasted addict and his teenage mistress, emotionally tangled and dependent. I think we both saw in the other something we could be one day. He needed my innocence and I needed his honesty. Nicole kept her head down and hands crossed in front of her chest as if it pained her to share the last of these words. I fixed my eyes on her and offered a hand for hers to hold but she dismissed my advance with a shake of her head. No. Lou and I met again for the next several nights. Our souls were connected, but its hard for me to describe what I felt. Maybe God or whoever watches over the junkies and broken spirits put us together. I dont know if I loved him or just needed the idea of something bigger

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than me. And I dont know if he loved me or if he just needed the idea of someone he could confess his sins to during these few days that he had a clear head. I last saw him around 3 Wednesday morning. He walked me to my room holding my hand. We stopped at the door to my room and kissed. He walked his hands up my back to my neck and then ran his fingers through my hair. I stretched to reach his lips and stayed in that moment as long as I could. I think he did the same. We both realized that our kiss wasnt a kick-start to the future, but a celebration of the past days. It was goodbye because I never saw him again. What happened to him? I asked. I heard through Michelle that he overdosed less than a year after he left the facility. She knew some other ex-strung outs that helped run paperwork through the systems at the coroners office where they send the unwanted nobodies when they pass away. According to Michelle, police found him in some park one morning with no heartbeat. He had a few bills and empty plastic drug baggies tucked into his jeans and in his breast pocket were a pack of cigarettes. Nicole stopped speaking and I could tell from the way she slunk into her chair and stared without attention towards the window that she had finished everything she had to say. Moments later, we left the coffee shop, coats zipped to protect us from the cold. I held the door for her and we started the five-minute walk to her apartment. Our shoes cut temporary imprints into the snowy sheath on the sidewalk. Time would change, more snow would fall, and these tracks of us walking side by side would soon disappear. She grabbed my hand and curled her fingers around mine. Her body felt burdened by the weight of her confession as she leaned in closer to me. Standing inside the doorway to Nicoles apartment complex, she singed my lips with a fierce, long kiss. She put her face into my chest when our lips parted. I wrapped my arms around

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her and squeezed. One second, two, then she reached her head towards my ear and whispered thank you. Neither she nor I mentioned anything about our conversation when we met for a rushed after work dinner the following week. The timing was wrong, then, but I did visit a small cigar shop sandwiched into a narrow space between an Indian restaurant and a corner convenient store not far from my apartment. It took some sweet talk, $50 bucks, and a week of waiting, but the shops owner came through with a pack of Romeo y Julieta cigarettes. When he handed me the box from across the counter, I turned it over several times in my hands. My thoughts drifted to our Saturday morning talk and the man who still owned much of her heart. What are you doing with that pack anyways? The shop owner snapped me back to reality after several seconds lost in my mind. Need to show someone I accept her past and want to share in her future, I said and walked out the door. Later that afternoon, before Nicole arrived home from work, I wrapped the pack in a small brown bag and placed it inside her mailbox. Inside the box of Romeo y Julietas, I left a small piece of dark brown paper. On one side of the piece of paper I pasted a small, circular picture taken not many weeks earlier of the two of us smiling, arm in arm. On the other side, I wrote: Nicole, Is there room in your heart for me? If so, then Im yours. Love, Sam

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