Tias stood behind me and his brown hands were around mine, our fingers interlaced like a woven basket. We held our cigarettes in this way, then flicked the wheel on our lighter, waiting for the spark to catch. Schht, schht, schht—we struck the lighter’s stone for what seemed like minutes, trying to will the flame to burst through. Schht, schht, schht.
“Ah, fuck this,” Tias said. “I’ll just go start the goddamn element, do it the old-fashioned way, eh?”
We decided to try and quit smoking cold turkey after a few weeks of me hacking up phlegm all night. “It’s white,” he said, scooping up the spittle from my chin. “That’s good, your body is tryna clean you out.” We thought it was a good idea to quit smoking for a while, since, well, we didn’t have a lot of money between us, and besides, we could bum enough off the kids at parties if we needed. No use buying cigarettes when you can get them for free from your cousins, eh? But while that idea sounded good in theory, it quickly backfired on us. After only one day, we decided we couldn’t do it. We came to the understanding that quitting cold turkey wasn’t going to work for us; it had to be slow, easy, one day at a time. So on our second day we agreed to allow ourselves one cigarette, and only in the mornings. After we had our single smoke, we saved two for the following day, then cut up the rest and threw them into the garbage. But when I went to take my shower and realized I forgot my towel, I came out of the bathroom and found Tias fashioning a broken cigarette back together using the tape from a lint roller.
“Okay, so two a day then?” I said.
We stuck to two that day and chewed a lot of gum instead. We felt proud of ourselves. Tias, unable to stay the night, asked if I’d walk him home so I could make sure he didn’t bum or buy any cigarettes. I agreed and saw him as far as the Marlborough where he hopped on a bus. He waved goodbye and I smiled at him. It was getting dark and the wind was cold and my nipples were sticking up through my shirt. By now I’d usually light a cigarette to warm my bones and count how many I’d need to get back home, usually one every block or two. I began walking back to my apartment, but the urge crept up my body, from my kneecaps to my fingers, which were aching to curl around a filter, like the delicate digits of Audrey Hepburn.
I turned around and told myself, Just one, then made my way to O’Calcutta. I bought a pack of Pall Malls for ten bucks, took one out, and lit it up. That feeling of relaxation came over me, the kind that burns your throat but makes you feel like you’re back home even if you’re hundreds of miles away. A good cigarette is like a familiar story. A Nate saw me spark one up and made his way over to me.
“Hey cuz, can I bum a light?”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
“Oh hey, can I bum a smoke too?”
Damn trickster, I thought, someone’s taught him well. I laughed, handed him a few, and then continued on my way home. I told myself to throw out the pack because Tias and I had made a promise to one another. I will when I’m at home. Yeah right, do it now. Okay, okay. So I tossed them aside, disgusted at myself for wasting ten dollars on a single cigarette and handing them out like Popeye’s candies to randoms. What was I, made of money? My mom would have given me a good lickin if she found out I had not only wasted cigarettes but money too. I made it about twenty steps before I turned around to fish them back out from the bin and put them back in my pocket. Can still use them even if I don’t smoke them, I thought. Always good for ceremony.
I stood there on my balcony, cigarette in my fingers, and the lighter flicking hard against its stone. Schht, schht, schht—my eyes began to lose the ability to focus, the bright flares of the lighter imprinted into my retinas. When I closed my eyes, I saw those squiggles of light on the back of my lids. Lights jagged, sharp like lightning, and bursting into a million little dots that lit up what looked like a city. I opened my eyes again, they were watering now, the edge of the flint still being dragged through metal. It was a soft groove by now and my thumb was sore from flicking the lighter.
I looked down but only saw light, light like an egg blanketed in darkness, my vision was a circle, and there, in the middle of it all, was the red glow of Tias’s cigarette burning like a comet. This, I told myself, must be how worlds are made.
“Tee, you coming up, ’er what?” I said. “Element’s redder than the devil’s dick.”
“Well?” he said, exhaling. “You gonna stand up there and stare at me for an hour like I’m some wannabe Wilson?”
He was trying his damnedest to stump me on a Tom Hanks joke ever since last week. We had been watching Captain Phillips and I convinced him it was the prequel to Cast Away. He believed me and tried to lecture Jordan on the intricacies of Hank’s filmic history, turns out she gave him a slap upside the head. “Idiot,” she said, “you just told me that Cast Away is about some guy named Chuck Noland and then you go and try and tell me that Captain Phillips is him before he crashes? How in the hell that make sense?” He later bitched me out for tricking him like that.
“Tick-tock, doc, you gonna stand there like a stick in the mud all damn night?” he said when I didn’t respond.
“Coming,” I said, my eyesight returning to normal. Funny, that boy might not know his movies, but he knew a thing or two about hustling time. Tick-tock, eh? Made sense if we live and die by the clock.