A Couple of Reds

There were space restrictions. I was dealing with a hard copy, with finite pages. It wasn’t all going to make it, as much as I wanted it to. A lot hit the cutting-room floor, ended up in the trash. Still, I was pleased with the final draft, and I had reason to celebrate.  I went out with a friend, a guy friend.      It had been a long time for me.  I was emerging from that place called “Dead Inside.” We wore blue and black, blue on the bottom, black on top. We hit streets we both knew. We walked. He lit a cigarette, a Red, with a plastic lighter, and I thought, “Fuck it,” and bummed one off him. I hadn’t had one in 19 years. 2003 I quit because I had stopped enjoying it. I had had a kid, and I hadn’t liked what I had read about the hands of smoke. Call it cold turkey; call it a process. Just like that. And just like that… the relapse. I’d look back later at this event as an anomaly, a blip on the screen so to speak. He didn’t light mine with his lighter; he handed me his cigarette because we had that momentum going. The lit met the unlit, and I admit I liked the way the ends mashed in a collision, the two tobaccos ignited. We were thin; we never stopped walking. It was a new dance, balletic, imbued with a masculine grace. I felt an immediate buoyancy, an interest sparked. I also felt an end arise to the anonymity and the lonesomeness fathered by my grief. My lungs drew in the smoke like it was the freshest air ever. You know what I’m talking about if you’re an ex-smoker stepping out of retirement. As we passed this one house, we, at least I, noticed two young women on an ill-illumined porch. They must have witnessed our cigarette dance and our joy because they tittered. I felt their smiles had our backs. This was the attention my old heart needed. I wouldn’t be going back.

Richard George is a Tulane graduate whose work has appeared in Litro, Mystery Itch, HASH, Toho Journal, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, SIAMB!, Red Ogre Review, The Bookends Review, Sunflowers at Midnight and Drunk Monkeys. When not writing, he works as a probation officer. He lives in an apartment in Asbury Park, New Jersey and can also be found at https://www.instagram.com/richgbooks/.