a very smoky room dot com, Part 2

a very smoky room dot com
by Dromedary Joe

Part Two: Home Very Sweet Home

Mindy led Juliet inside by the hand. She introduced her servant, Jorge, who
she had hired to do the cleaning, cooking, and various other chores. 

"Hey, Jorge, could you go get Juliet's luggage out of her car and bring it to
her room? Thanks." 

Juliet looked at Mindy for a moment. She hadn't changed a bit other than the
fact that she was a smoker. Mindy had long brown hair which she usually had
tied into a ponytail. Her eyes were a deep blue- almost a purple color which
she knew drove guys crazy. There was almost a hypnotic quality about her
eyes- when guys would look her in the eye, it was almost like they would do
anything for her. Juliet herself was pretty good looking, but everyone always
saw them as sort of a Mutt and Jeff couple. Mindy was the tall brunette while
Juliet was the short petite blond. Both girls were fairly popular in school
in large part due to their looks, personality, and intelligence. It
definitely wasn't because of their money, because both of their families were
decidedly middle class, more towards the lower end than the higher end of
middle class. Both girls did have a certain naivety in high school, though.
They were smart, but didn't seem very street smart.

Juliet looked around for a minute. This was really nice. This was nicer than
Ned Harris' house on the big hill back home. She had been to his house as a
junior once for a party. It had been the nicest house she'd ever been to-
until this.

It was very smoky and Juliet was starting to get upset about that. 

"I know what you're thinking right now, Jules, `I'm not going to live in this
house with all this smoky air.' As promised, though, I did work it out."

Mindy led Juliet to a sliding glass door. 

"This is only my section of the house with my bedroom, a private bar, a
living room, a den, a game room, and a couple of bathrooms. The rest of the
house is past this door."

Mindy opened the door and Juliet heard a sucking noise near the ceiling. 

"Sensors in the sliding glass door activate this system up on the ceiling
which keeps the air from my smoking side of the house from coming into the
rest of the house. It's like an inverse pressure system or something like
that. I don't know how it works, but the guys who installed it guaranteed it
would keep the rest of the house smoke free. Each side even has its own air
conditioning system. I tested it out by leaving the sliding glass door open
for a whole week a couple months back and even with the door open for a week
the non-smoking side was 100% smoke free."

They went to the non-smoking side of the house and after Mindy closed the
sliding glass door, Juliet took a big sniff of the air. Mindy was right.
There was no trace of the smell of smoke. And if anyone could detect even a
whiff of smoke in the air, Juliet could.

"This is the living room. When we're hanging out together, we'll use this
room. But don't worry, if I feel the need to smoke, I'll go on the other side
of the house" There was a big screen plasma TV, just like the one on Mindy's
side of the house. 

"And here's the kitchen, the dining room, and a bathroom. Upstairs is your
bedroom, your bathroom, and a couple of other rooms. I haven't figured out
what those other rooms are for, but maybe you can find a use for them. And
here's the front entrance. I don't know how you missed it. It's right in
front of your parking space."

They went upstairs and Juliet smiled. This could work out, she thought to
herself. Her friend had decorated the house the same way they had talked
about way back in middle school. Even her bedroom was exactly how she liked
it. No, Juliet thought to herself. It was better than she had ever dreamed
of. Her bedroom had a big screen plasma TV, just like the two she had already
seen downstairs. 

"Does every room in this house have a big screen TV?" Juliet asked herself as
she reached for the bathroom doorknob. She looked inside and laughed.
Apparently, her bathroom had a big screen TV as well. The bathroom was huge
and she could see it was set up so she could watch TV while sitting in her
giant square bathtub which had a remote on the edge of the tub. 

Jorge brought in Juliet's luggage and set it in her room. Mindy had told
Juliet that she didn't need to bring much, and Juliet realized that Mindy had
been right. Aside from the clothes she had brought, Juliet hadn't brought a
whole lot else other than books and personal items. Looking around, though,
she realized she didn't need a whole lot. A computer, an expensive hi-fi
stereo system, and furniture were already in place.  Juliet and Mindy went
back downstairs and sat in the living room on the non-smoking side of the
house and talked for a few minutes. School would be starting in a few weeks
and they were both eager for it to start. Mindy would be in her sophomore
year and was undecided on what major to pursue. Juliet was going to major in
political science. Once she finished here, she hoped to get a law degree.
Juliet's dream job was to be a tort lawyer suing tobacco companies on behalf
of people who had gotten sick from smoking. 

"Hey, I'm going to smoke a cigarette and I'll be right back," Mindy said and
left for the smoking side of the house. Juliet got up and looked around for a
minute. With each passing moment, she was pleasantly surprised by some other
feature she had missed the first time around. The kitchen was high-tech, the
pictures on the wall were originals, not prints, and the bathroom downstairs
doubled as a sauna. She hadn't even seen the back yard yet with the BBQ
grill, Jacuzzi, and the pool. One thing the girls had never discussed was how
they were going to pay for all of this. If it was going to be a fifty/fifty
arrangement, then Juliet was fucked. How would she pay for all of this?

Mindy had finished her cigarette and sat back down on the couch. Juliet
joined her and thought about how to bring up the money issue.

"I know you too well, Jules," Mindy said, "You're wondering how I could
possibly afford all of us, and how you are going to pay your share. Don't
worry about it. I make enough from my modeling job to live the good life, and
we've talked about this since we were kids. I don't want you to worry about
money. Just buy your own food, and spend the rest of your money on having a
good time. I don't rent. I bought this place six months ago and everything in
here I paid cash for. I don't really have much in the way of expenses, except
for utilities. If you want, you can chip in on paying that, but you don't
have to. I make enough to live the dream, and I want to share it all with
you. You're my best friend in the world and I want you to be happy.

Juliet's eyes started to tear up and she gave Mindy a big hug even though she
could smell the smoke all over Mindy's clothes. Mindy was the best friend a
girl could ever have, Juliet thought to herself.

Juliet said she was tired and she went up to her bedroom to settle in for the
night. She watched her plasma television set, amazed at the huge number of
channels which they received, for about an hour and started drifting into
sleep. As she started to fall asleep, she wondered about all her unanswered
questions. How did Mindy pay for all this? What kind of model was she? She
was determined to find these things out before school started...

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