cocoon

The conversation takes a turn for the worse when she pulls out a cigarette package. With thin, long white fingers that remind me more of twigs than digits, she extricates a cancer stick and leaves it on the table as she ruffles through her oversized purse for a lighter or a matchbook. I sense that I'm frowning, but the corners of my mouth turn up when the wind picks up and white cylinder rolls. She doesn't notice (I'm now having trouble feigning that I don't see this), and it tumbles, over and over upon itself, teetering at the edge. I am summoning all my years of unused telepathy to push it over the lip of the table, but it rests there stubbornly, as if held by invisible strings. She finds an ugly green Bic lighter and the moment dissolves.

She's saying something about camel spiders in the Gobi desert, but I'm just paying attention to the burning, the billowing smoke rising from the extension of breath. My mind wanders; I'm wondering what it would be like if I ever smoked anything. I think she's mumbling something about how camel spiders are said to hunt in packs and take down camels by jumping on them and ferociously tearing their flesh off, but this is just a myth. I think the only smoking I've done is second-hand to disgruntled New York cab drivers and my old piano teacher whose upright doubled as an ashtray.

I nod, pretending to be interested, when her phone rings. She looks at me apologetically and rolls her eyes meaning it's work then answers the phone. I can hear the yammering of her neurotic friend Julie having some sort of meltdown that will invariably tear her away from me and my lunch date. Of course, she pushes off, then looks me in the eye apologetically and says, "I have to go." I understand, I think, and say yes go ahead don't worry about me, go on i'll get the bill. She catches a cab and is off before I can lay a tenner down for the two coffees between us.

I stand there a second by the table and look at my phone. I'm not due into work for another twenty minutes, which is only two blocks away and twelve stories up. The wind picks up again and I inhale the putrid scent of combusted materials, and I turn my head and look at that she's still sitting there smoking that cigarette looking nonchalant. She's not doing anything else, not reading a magazine or a book or sipping on a skinny latte no foam half caf at 170 degrees. She's just hogging valuable space being of no use to mankind, cutting a good twenty to thirty minutes off her lifespan.

I start walking away, because every part of me tells me that I don't care, but then by some wayward reversal of polarity, I find myself sitting in the chair across from her. She looks surprised, as if I have dropped from the sky with a parachute, but then again most people look surprised when a stranger plops themselves down in front of them at a coffee shop. She says can I help you and I nod. I compose myself, then ask her:

Where did you learn to smoke?

This is the point where somebody will either think you're A. crazy or B. they will humor you. Luckily, I had the fortune of dealing with the latter variety, and so she laughs, sits back and launches into this tale of how my mother and father showered me with gifts and a beautiful lifestyle but you know we're never satisfied with what we have we always want what we don't have and of course I became the rebel of the family and drank OE with the boys and slept with girls and one day Veronica smuggled a packet of Lucky strikes and we skipped class and climbed the roof of Parker elementary and spent all day learning how to smoke these without coughing or throwing up and today I still smoke Lucky Brand and I just learned today that I have lung cancer from my doctor and I'm so stressed but what else is there to do now but just enjoy life and have a smoke? Fascinating material that makes absolutely no sense.

She smiles, winks, blows smoke in my face doing her Chloë Vilette best.

"You know," she says, "Behind the smoke, and behind these mirrors, you do realize it's just you lying to yourself?"

I don't understand. "What is your name?" I ask.

She laughs, and it's not a beautiful laugh but a mocking one, a sour one, as if a worm has crawled up into the rotten apple core of my heart and is chuckling at my misfortunes. She puts the cigarette down and picks up her bag and gets up and walks away, leaving me sitting there across from an empty chair. Separated by a cigarette.

I look at the time. I should be getting to work.

Instead, I pick up the cigarette, which has a pink lipstick smear on the side, and put it to my mouth.