Cigarettes Get The Man

CIGARETTES GET THE MAN

"I am so sick of serving coffee, I could just hurl. When do we get to go have
any fun?" Lisa moaned, staring out of the Knaresborough Spastic's Volunteer
Booth at the crowds surging past on their way to Mother Shiptons Cave. And
the fair.

"Smoke time," declared her friend, Jenny, with a jerk of her head towards the
outside world. "Let's blow."

"We can't go! Our shift's not over!" Lisa said.

"Chill, baby. It's not like they can fire a volunteer," Jenny said. She
walked over to Larry Simpson, their "boss," and treated him to her prettiest
smile. "Hey, big boy, we girls need a break. Can you handle things for a
minute?"

"Yeah, g'wan," he growled. A smile, however, was spreading across his
leathery face. "Just get on back soon. We've never sold this much coffee till
you hot ladies showed up to help."

"You're a peach, Larry," Jenny said. "I'd kiss you but you smell too much
like coffee."

"It's my cologne. Eau de scalded squirrel. Beat it, chick, before I
reconsider," Larry said.

"C'mon, Lissie-poo," Jenny said, grabbing her friend's arm and half-dragging
her out of the booth. Lisa looked at her friend, who had once again managed
to surprise her with her audacity. Lord, if only she could have such
confidence!

They found a spot out of sight by the side of the booth and Jenny shook a
cigarette from her pack, lighting it with a quick flourish and squeezing off
a powerful drag before handing it to her friend.

Lisa took the cigarette as Jenny lit another for herself. She didn't mind
following after her friend. Her feelings for this fourteen-year-old brash and
pretty creature were as close to love as she dared admit to herself.

It was Jenny, herself the new girl in school, who had rescued her from the
depths of unpopularity last year -- who had taken down that popular girl,
Tiff, who had been using thirteen-year-old Lisa for the butt of her jokes all
year. It was Jenny who had dragged her in to the eye-doc for contacts and
then ceremoniously crushed Lisa's ugly old glasses underfoot. It was Jenny
who'd helped her kick bulimia. And it was Jenny who had taught her to smoke.

Whoever invented smoking should have been banished to hell. Or maybe heaven.
She couldn't decide. Now that she was a smoker it was such a pain to sit in
class all day wanting nothing more than to go have a cig.

But when she finally could...it was always worth it.

Lisa closed her lips around the filter, tasting the faint strawberry gloss
that Jenny had left there. She clamped down hard and inhaled like a child
sucking the last drops of a milkshake. Warm smoke rushed into her mouth and
she breathed it down into her lungs and held it there until she felt the
sweet, strong relief of nicotine flood her body.

She exhaled with a sigh of pleasure loving the way her smoke thickly swarmed
conically away in the soft breeze

"Hey," said Jenny, through spurts of smoke. "Check it out. At four o'clock.
To your right, silly. Ain't that Marcus Wilson?"

"Oh m'gosh it is," Lisa gasped. "He can't see us here!"

"Why the hell not?" Jenny said.

"Because I have wanted to go out with him since I was out of diapers, that's
why," Lisa said.

"So go out with him then," Jenny replied.

"Oh God! ... He mustn’t see me smoking!" Lisa said.

Jenny stood in front of her friend. She touched her cheek.

"Girlfriend, have I ever been wrong?"

"I don’t think so!" Lisa admitted.

Jenny took a deep drag from her cigarette. Staring into Lisa's eyes, she
exhaled a long, fragrant smoke stream into Lisa's face. Lisa eagerly inhaled
the smoke, craving those sweet fumes that had so intimately caressed her
friend's own lungs.

"Now, I want you to do just that when Marcus comes by here. To him. Not me,"
Jenny said.

"I can't, oh I can't, I can't!" Lisa wailed.

Jenny smiled. She gave Lisa a peck on the cheek.  Just a friendly thing, her
eyes said.

"Just do it for me, girlfriend."

At nearly sixteen, Marcus was now big, and gorgeous. He was fast approaching
being a hunk of man. Lisa felt her knees quivering.

"He's going right past the cheerleaders' booth," she said, excitedly.

"Of course he is! What have they got on us?  The cheerleaders' don't smoke.
Well not in public, at least!" Jenny said.

"But everyone says that guys hate girls that smoke," Lisa said, anxiously
pulling on her cigarette.

"B.S. Real men dig a nicotine goddess," Jenny said. "You just do what I told
you to do!"

Marcus was now just a few feet away. Jenny took a deep, deep, lung-busting
drag on her cigarette and puffed out three perfect smoke rings, aimed in
Marcus' general direction.

"Damn, I wish I could do that," Lisa hissed with her own smoke dancing out of
her words

"Just do what I tell you," Jenny hissed back.

Marcus stopped in front of them. He flashed a beautiful, pearly smile.

"Hiya, ladies, don't we go to school together?"

"Could be," said Jenny, never losing her composure.

"I didn't know you two smoked," Marcus said as his eyes flitted between Lisa
and Jenny.

"It beats doin' nothin'," Jenny said, shrugging. Then she stepped hard on
Lisa's toe and Lisa remembered what she was supposed to do.

She lifted her cigarette to her lips and drew on it as hard as she could. She
could feel Marcus’s eyes were fixated on her mouth and her glowing cigarette

Knowing Marcus was captivated Lisa tried to look nonchalant as she inhaled.
It was a colossal amount of smoke and her lungs burned from the strain.

Then, desperately praying that she wouldn't cough, she looked Marcus in the
eye and exhaled, aiming her stream of smoke in his face.

Marcus stood there shocked as she emptied her lungs majestically into his
face. Her heart was thumping a thousand beats a second, it seemed. Was he
gonna deck her, now?

He just stood there. He coughed weakly -- a play cough, she realized. Then she
had a revelation. He was totally at a loss for words! He had no idea what to
do. The king of the school, the basketball god, the gorgeous guy who made
girls pee their pants with one wink of his brown eyes, he was completely
caught off guard by two average girls with cigarettes!

Now Jenny joined in the game, softly spreading a blanket of her own sweet
smoke across his bewildered face.

"Hey, Marcus, why don't you win us girls one of those teddy bears on the
fairground?" she asked, talking through the last wisps of her smoke.

Marcus was struggling to bring himself back to earth and he just nodded
meekly as he tried to rearrange the front of his trousers and hide that
damning bulge.

"One arm for me and one arm for you," said Jenny to Lisa, and the three of
them set out. As they passed the cheerleader's booth, they caught sight of
Tiff inside, who gave them a stunned look.

Lisa raised her free hand, holding her smoked-down cigarette, and gave the
butt a swift, sharp flick. With incredible luck, it arched through the air
and landed directly in Tiff's cup of Dr. Pepper.

"I should try out for basketball," she said gratefully accepting another
cigarette from her very best friend.