Ten Stories About Smoking (21 page)

‘The most difficult thing is realizing you’re on your own. Don’t you think?’

‘I like being on my own,’ I said. ‘It’s an important part of who I am.’

‘I’m walking down the road sometimes and it just hits me. If I don’t come home tonight, who’s going to care? Who’s going to notice, you know? Or call? And
that’s scary. That’s really scary.’ Mark was wearing shorts and a T-shirt because the heating was up so high. He had been trying to get me to talk since the football had kicked
off.

‘Plenty of people are alone,’ I said. ‘Being alone is the default position for most people. The whole notion of us being social animals, social beings, is just
rubbish.’

He shook his head. ‘You do talk some shit, Joe.’

I lit a cigarette and drank the last of my wine. ‘You listen to it,’ I said. ‘So what does that make you?’

He ignored me and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘You been out this week?’

‘Nope.’

‘I don’t know how you stand it, cooped up in here day after day.’

‘It soothes me.’

‘You’re like a child,’ he said.

Yeah, the child you never had, right?’

Mark got up and left the room. I heard his door close and his stereo click on. I finished my cigarette. My mouth felt like the baize on a pool table. I picked up my wallet from the top of the
mantel and turned off the television. By the front door, I rifled through the jackets, found a set of keys and headed outside.

The night-time air had a rushing quality, and the trees that lined the street were blown by its gusts. There were puddles in the pits of the road and the low orange light from
the street lamps shone on a birdshit-caked Astra with an instruction to move pasted to its windscreen. I walked left then right and made it to the main road. A car flashed past, a colossal beat
coming from the bass cone of its speakers. A group of smokers was hanging around outside a Kurdish social club, their cigarettes poking their moustaches like slim fingers.

I followed the road down, past the fried chicken place, the kebab house and another chicken shop until I came to an off-licence. The attendant was talking quickly into his mobile, a bottle of
Supermalt open in front of him. I walked down the aisles and wondered what would be a suitable gift to appease Mark. In amongst the cheap red wine I saw a bottle of Chianti wrapped in a fancy
sackcloth covering, and decided on that.

‘It’s nice that one,’ the man said as I passed it to him. ‘Looks nice too.’

I gave him a twenty and nodded.

‘Thank you,’ he said handing me the change. ‘Goodbye now.’

Taking the coins, I felt like I had accomplished something. The shopkeeper had been friendly throughout; in fact more than friendly, he had been warm. A couple walked towards me arm in arm and I
noticed the man almost imperceptibly incline his head towards me as I passed them. A bus drove by, then a squad car. For some reason both were reassuring.

When I got back inside, the heat hit me like a gloved punch. I went upstairs and knocked on Mark’s door. He was sitting in an armchair with his phone in his hand. He did
this a lot, staring at the phone, wondering whether she would ever call him and too scared to ring her himself. Mark looked up; I could tell he’d been crying and I hoped it wasn’t
because of what I’d said.

‘Peace offering,’ I said. ‘I even went outside to buy it. It’s Chianti.’

Mark gave me a sad little sigh and got up. He took the bottle and placed it on the window-sill.

‘You can put a candle in it when you’ve drunk it,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘Friends?’ I said.

He nodded and ushered me out of the room. I heard him change the music, the soft voice of a hushed man. I went into my room and smoked a couple of cigarettes and decided what to do with the
following day.

I woke early and had a shower, put on some washing then surveyed what was in my cupboards. I made a list of items I needed and then checked online for the nearest supermarket.
It seemed there was one in a shopping complex some half mile away. I walked there, the huge Asda sign a green beacon in the distance. As I approached, it looked like it was floating, unattached. I
stopped at the edge of the car park and wished I had a camera with me; it was the kind of photo I’d like to look at. I put my fingers into a square and framed the shot. It was beautiful.

There was a small parade of boarded-up shops and in front of them a man had set up a cup-and-ball game on a fold-out picnic table. He was conning a crowd of muscled Poles out of money to send
home, and they seemed happy to be handing over the cash. Further along there were more hawkers selling pirated DVDs, Spanish razor blades, counterfeit underwear and blister packs of Duracell
batteries. By the time I got to the door of the Asda I had ignored seventeen separate opportunities to purchase dodgy goods of all kinds.

In the cavernous Asda I fumbled over the crème caramels in the dairy section: they were Andrea’s favourites and we always kept some in the fridge, just in case. I held them in my
hand for a little while, the cold air from the refrigerator numbing my arm, until eventually I put them down. I didn’t even like crème caramels.

My trolley was half full when I pranged it on someone else’s. The man looked at me with sympathetic eyes and apologized.

‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘it was my fault, I wasn’t looking where the hell I was going.’

He had a beard and sidelocks and gentle features. He was the first Hasid I’d ever seen and it made me happy to be out of the house and meeting new people. I nodded and made my way to the
checkouts.

None of the queues were too long, but I was a little unsure as to which one to join. In the end I decided upon aisle five, which was staffed by a blond-haired man. He had psoriasis on his left
hand and he scratched at it in between scanning items. When it was my turn, he looked up from his cash register. ‘Would you like help packing?’ he asked in a voice that suggested he
would immediately walk out of the shop if I said yes.

His nametag said Eamon and I couldn’t fathom how he had become stuck bagging shopping and scanning goods when he clearly had something more to offer the world. At that moment, I would have
done anything to help him. Anything at all. I imagined him eating his evening meals in one of those builders’ cafes, a paper open as he chewed shepherd’s pie with three vegetables, and
the sadness almost overtook me. This man – what, my age? younger? – hearing the bleeps, the constant bleeps of the products, hearing them like an echocardiogram counting out his
remaining heartbeats.

Eamon smiled as he handed me my till receipt. He wished me a good day, and I wished him the same. I meant it, too.

I walked the other way around the mall and passed more street vendors. I wasn’t tempted by anything until I saw two women standing between Currys and Sports Direct. They
were holding out packets of rolling tobacco, Marlboro Lights, Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut.

‘How much for Marlboros?’ I said. The blonde woman named her price in a deep Eastern European accent; it was well under half what I paid at the supermarket. Her eyes were grey and
her cheekbones made her look like one of those vacant, ice-queen models who never appears to enjoy life. But when she smiled, this woman looked like she had invented the very idea of happiness.

‘How many you like?’

‘A carton,’ I said and her big grey eyes got bigger. She unshouldered her rucksack and took out the cigarettes. The health warning on them was in Cyrillic. I thanked her and asked if
she was often here. She looked at me slightly funny.

‘You police?’

‘Do I look like police?’

‘No. You look like . . . you know, skateboarder.’

‘So are you here all the time?’ I said. She nodded.

‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’ll make sure I only buy cigarettes from you. My name is Joe, by the way.’

‘Coco,’ she said. ‘Everyone calls me Coco.’

‘Like the clown?’ I said.

‘No, like Chanel,’ she said.

It was the beginning of a routine. Every Thursday I would walk past the hawkers and the DVD vendors to do my weekly shop. I’d get in line and Eamon would offer a faint
smile of recognition and I would wish him a good day and mean it. I’d then wander round to Coco and exchange a brief few words with her and her silent accomplice. She’d pass me my
carton of Marlboros and say, ‘See you soon.’ The best part of the week was always the smile she gave me as I left. That would keep my cheeks burning all the way home.

After the initial tension, living with Mark became much easier. The two of us fell into a familiar and comforting kind of life. I would cook on weeknights and Mark on the weekends. We shared
washing duties and he paid for all the channels on the television. We sometimes played chess, sometimes went to the pub or met up with other friends in town. It was the right, correct thing to do
and I felt something had altered, that a ship had been steadied. I still thought of Andrea, but the hurt wasn’t quite as livid as before.