Fumadora

Fumadora
  by:  fumadorabrasil@hotmail.com

    It was a cold day near the beginning of a new year.  Even in Houston you 
don't expect to meet a South American beauty on such a day, but I did.  I was 
on my way to school, a crappie little college I was attending for computer 
credibility.  My financial situation had me using the bus to get there.  On 
this day that situation was a good one.
    Each day I always hoped to see something to rattle my bones with 
pleasure.  I met a few nice girls, not breathtaking, only someone to smile at 
in passing.  A bus let it's passengers off in-front of me.  Out of the cast 
of economical and social misfits floated a dark beauty.  
    This new girl walked pass me to my left.  I was inside a glass shelter to 
help block out the cold.  She had walked inside the bus station building 
where you can get information.  The next time I saw her she was forty feet to 
my right.  She was actually standing where I needed to catch my bus.  She lit 
up a cigarette and stared at a sign.  After a few seconds of contemplating I 
walked over towards her.
    I leaned against a concrete column five feet away from her.
    "Are you going to the college?" she asked.
    "Yeah." I gasped in half-shock.
    "I am going too. Can you tell me where to get off of the bus?" she asked.
    "Sure." I told her happily, only also asking about where she had to go in 
the school so I could be of optimal assistance.
    Being in a major city in the Southwest, sight would tell most people that 
Mariana was a Mexican, but her accent had a distinct charm.  
    "Where are you from?" I asked with friendship in my voice.
    "I am from the Argentina."  She replied as if eager to assume my 
friendliness. It was like Arhentina  to anyone who has not studied Spanish.  
    I had studied Spanish.  If I kept having trouble showing up to my 
Computer Repair class I was going to fail.  I had my Spanish class at noon so 
I always made that.  I supposed it might be useful in my then current and 
considered probable career field as a waiter in a Mexican restaurant.  
    This young woman was bundled in a blue-kint jacket with a matching knit 
cap.  She smoked her cigarette like mad, never moving the thing more than 
four inches away from her face and interchanging one breath for one drag of 
smoke.
    "I am sorry, does the smoking bother you?"  She finally moved the 
cigarette away from her face by extending her left arm in the opposite 
direction.  "I could move away." She offered almost to my horror.
    I laughed, "No, no, do whatever you want." I smiled warmly and she 
returned a broad, closed smile just before taking another drag.
    "Yo puedo hablar espaņol. (I can speak Spanish)" I told her, "but not 
very well."  
    She smiled again and tossed away her cigarette.  "Oh bien!"   
    She fiddled in her black bag before she produced her box of Camels again, 
lighting one in a smooth motion.
    She let smoke flow out her mouth, "I am nervous" she said, "Today I am 
going to my English class but I have missed the first week."  She looked up 
at me. "Do you think my professor will be angry?"
    I could only smile once more. "No, don't worry about it, I miss my class 
all the time, no one notices."
    "All the time?" she asked "So you are never in that class?"
    "Oh, no.  It is an expression;  'all the time' means 'often' or 'many 
times'" I corrected her.  
    "Okay, I learned something." she gave another trademark smile and the bus 
arrived.
    I moved towards the bus and she did not follow.  For a short moment she 
had been caught in time;  staring at the winter sky and smoking.  She finally 
looked towards me and the bus, I gave a gesturally motion to "come on" and 
she laughed and scampered behind me as I boarded the bus.  
    I took a seat and expected her to take a seat nearby.  Instead she chose 
to share my seat with me...something no one on the bus had ever done with me. 
 As she sat she gripped my leg, my thigh.  She held it a few seconds until 
the bus began moving.  My heart was beating up to my head.
    We chatted incessantly for the fifteen minutes it took to get to our 
destination.  No one talks on public transportation.  Best friends seem to 
ride in near silence, but not me and this beautiful girl.
    "I am just studying English," she said, emphasizing the just as if it was 
a new word she was forcing into her vocabulary.  She finished with more poor 
English,  "What do you study for the school?"
    "Well, I have a clase de Espaņol,  and a computer class that I always 
miss."
    "You always miss...you never go...Oh it is the class of you said 
before...you miss all the time."  She was charming.
    "Yes, very good."  I tried to assert my own charm.
    The bus dropped us off along the street near the college.  We had a good 
400 feet to make it to the building.  I was the first to step off, and I 
continued walking slowly.  She caught up with me and I watched her fiddle 
with her bag.  Mariana again presented herself with a cigarette that she 
gladly fired-up.
    "I smoke a lot," she said, "it is my...weakness."
    "Your vice." I said.
    "What? Oh yes, my vicio "
    We kept walking and talking about her life in Buenos Aires and other 
things.
    "Where is your class?" she asked me.
    "Oh, I am already late, I won't go."  I told her;  it was a hint of my 
interest in her.
    "No!" she exclaimed playfully. "It is the one that you miss all the time, 
you must go."
    "No, it's my Spanish class," I lied, "I have practiced enough with you."
    Then she rattled on a streak in her exotic Spanish.
    She stared at me expectantly, smiling.
    "Que'?" I asked.
    "No, you should have heard what I said.  You did not understand so go to 
your class.  Me too because I do not understand all the things you tell to 
me." She grinned slyly.
    "But...you must meet me at noon at take me for a lunch someplace." she 
asserted, with vunerable fear in her voice.  That vunerablity continued with: 
"OK"
    "Sure." I said "We'll eat Chinese food."
    "OK." she said, this time with victory in her voice. Then she asked, 
"Same place, right here?"
    To move the ordeal a little more in my control, I told her to meet me in 
the lounge, my favorite hangout.  She agreed and we departed.
    I made it to the last half of my computer class.  Luckily, we were 
working with the computer software (simulating problems) so I could finish my 
work and then "play" on the computer.  After a while I found myself typing 
"Mariana" over and over.  Then I messed with the program and manipulated the 
text into a heart image.  Soon I trashed the image and I left class early.
    Leaving early left me an hour before our meeting and so I napped.  My 
naps are only fifteen minutes at the most, so then I just lazed in the chair 
I found, thinking about this girl.  I was by no means a loser with the 
ladies.  I could get laid as easy as any other guy, or maybe easier.  A 
steady girlfriend was another matter.  Actually, I could not keep myself 
happy with a girl for to long.  I would notice all her flaws and then get 
annoyed with her.  I really never entered a "relationship" with an Immense 
amount of passion.  However, now I felt something really exiting.  And somehow
, it was so very easy.
    Of course, at noon was when I would really be missing my Spanish class, 
but how could I care.  When Mariana arrived she sat beside me before I even 
saw her.
    "Hola." I said.
    "Hola." She greeted me with a toothy smile.
    "You know, the chair is not made for two people." I told her, every inch 
of the right side of her body was pressed against its left counterpart on my 
body.
    "Well," she said, "maybe we should find another furniture."
    She was toying with me.
    I grabbed her hand, "Lets go eat."  She followed.
    We walked along the same path to get back out to the street for the bus.  
We conversed as we walked.
    "This place," she pointed back at the school "It is bad.  You cannot 
smoke in it."
    "No, you sure can't, but that is common," I told her.
    "Oh no!  In Argentina, well, I was in the High School before I came here, 
but at my cousin, his University, there inside you can smoke in some places.  
I love it to go there.  I did, but I was not in a class, I only met my cousin 
there, and I would smoke with the guys and talk, and smoke with the girls and 
talk, it was fun."
    She was adorable.
    She of course made her way from a previously lit cigarette to a new one 
in the course of the conversation.  "So, where do we go to eat?" she asked.
    "A place up the road.  We can ride the bus, then after we can get a bus 
back to the station." I told her.
    The bus wait was on the upwards of fifteen minutes.  We sat on the side 
walk by the stop.  Mariana was as cute as can be.  She seemed young and full 
of life.  Youthful ignorance had her forcing cancer down her throat;  she 
chain-smoked like a French poet.  She lit up a fresh Camel and ejected a 
smoky "shit!" as she crumpled an empty pack.
    Her eyes shone at me.  "I am sorry with the ways I act.  I smoke and cuss 
so much, and now I have no more cigarettes.  I am pissed off."  she smiled at 
me again.  
    She wouldn't have had a chance to continue her chain because she butted 
out her smoke as the bus arrived.  We rode talking of a million silly things: 
 Evita, Latin music, wine...  The 2 of us were taking to each other well.  So 
we were at the stop for the restaurant.
    We go off the bus and were walking towards the Chinese restaurant.  
Mariana was vainly searching her purse for a cigarette.
    "Come on," I pleaded "let's just eat."
    We walked up to the glass door of the restaurant.  I opened the door for 
Mariana and she passed by me as she had her teeth on her knuckle.  
    We sat at our table and received our food shortly after ordering.  I 
asked:  "Do you know Chinese food?"  expecting a negative response.
    "Oh yes!"  she said "My cousin orders it often....all the time"
    We exchanged smiles and soon finished our meal.  I paid for it all even 
though she tried to give me some money.
    The place exited into a large parking lot for many businesses.  Mariana 
spied a gas station, "I have to buy cigarettes."  So, we went over to the 
store.  I waited outside to watch for the bus.  She quickly entered and then 
exited the store, now holding 3 brown packs of cigarettes.  With a slight 
struggle she put 2 packs in her pursue and then went on to open the third 
pack with a fury.  She was still standing in front of the store when she lit 
the cigarette.  She began to inhale the smoke.  She exhaled and continued 
with quick inhale exhale actions.  I tired to say something to her but she 
held her hand up in the air and continued smoking.  Her eyes were closed the 
entire time, but when she finished her twelfth exhale she opened them and 
looked straight at me.
    "I am very sorry about this." She said, holding her cigarette towards me. 
 "I really needed to do that otherwise I was driving crazy me."
    "OK"  I said.
    She took three more successive drags and threw the cigarette away.
    "I really needed that,"  she told me.  She pulled out a new one.  "This, 
I only need it a little bit."  
    "You really like to smoke, don't you?"  I asked.
    "Oh yes!  Soy la FUMADORA OFICIAL DE CAMEL!"
    I laughed at her and she laughed back.
    We sat on a bench waiting for the bus.  Her arm found its way around me 
and mine got around her.  She leaned on me and said:  "I have such a nice day 
today, please come to visit me tonight."