The Curve of the Smoke

Abstract

The Curve of the Smoke Beth Newberry (bio) On a Thursday night in late June, the air is sticky on my skin as I smoke a cigarette at my kitchen window and watch the smoke curl into the air. It curves like my fingers do when I hold a pen. I stand at the open window and face the butter-colored aluminum siding of the building next to mine. I smoke a cigarette because I want one even though it doesn’t [End Page 74] provide the buzz or sensation of relief that I expect. The Marlboro Light rests just where a pen does—between the callus on my middle finger and the tip of my index finger. I look at my fingertips and then past my hand to the snail-shell-shaped circles of pigeon excrement on the paint-chipped windowsill. My cell phone rings and I stretch to reach it on the edge of the countertop as I try unsuccessfully to keep the cigarette smoke outside of the window. “Bethie,” my friend Alan cajoles. “Let’s go out.” The final word out has several symbols, as Alan expands the three letters with significant whining. I turn him down. “I have to write,” I say. “Just one drink. You’ll be home by midnight.” I think it over briefly as I consider my cigarette: Date with my friend, or date with my cigarette. “Can’t do it. How about tomorrow. After work?” I feel guilty as I end the call. And then I think, It’s okay. I’ll get the smoking out of my system tonight and go smoke-free tomorrow. Alan thinks I have quit. I thought I had quit, too. But I switched my social smoking habit for a private one. A habit-inducing trade off. I feel guilty for lying by omission, for stinking up my apartment, and for blatantly flaunting a disregard for the Surgeon General warnings about cancer, emphysema and the eternal damnation that smoking causes. I stand and think about the view from the front windows of my apartment, the activity of the sidewalk below: I’m not observing any of it at the moment, all I can see is the siding on the second story of the building next to mine that houses a Japanese restaurant. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of customers talking on the restaurant’s patio, the bass line of the acid jazz music from the speakers, and the shifting of gears and acceleration of a car at the traffic light. I smell seaweed and sesame oil and exhaust and the ripeness of the summer heat. [End Page 75] I inhale a final drag and put out the cherry of the cigarette, like a miniature harvest moon disappearing in the horizon of chipped paint on the sill. I breathe out slowly and walk from the kitchen at the rear of my apartment to my desk, facing the street. I make my hands move across the keyboard before I can fully realize the cigarette is gone. On Friday morning, the half-full pack sits on the kitchen counter as I head to the coffee pot. I go to throw the cigarettes away, but put them in my purse instead. I feel a slight pain behind my rib, like the corroding of my lungs has deepened a layer. I don’t want to be a smoker, I think. I’m standing at my kitchen counter, adjacent to the smoking window. I’ve emptied the contents of my purse from the evening before: bar receipt, cigarettes, lighter, wallet, gum, and lip balm. A month ago, I started graduate school. A month before that I stopped smoking, and I lost the everyday taste for the cigarette. I stopped salivating when I heard the sound of the lighter. I forgot the satisfaction in the motion of the first drag and the last exhalation. I gladly moved away from the dirty kitchen window speckled with feathers, pigeon poop residue and pollen particles. So now, a month after the month I quit and relinquished my habit, I am smoking again. But why? It’s a habit that calms my racecar-speed...