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Article 460 of alt.smokers.glamour:
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From: an4@anon.lelnet.com
Newsgroups: alt.smokers.glamour
Subject: The Cameo, Part 5
Date: 17 Jan 1997 19:00:10 GMT
Organization: Msen
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Sarah was standing outside in the cold night air, but she didn't feel it.
She was staring up the stars and smoking. Her inhales were long and
luxurious, her exhales mingling with the lightly falling snow. It was a
perfect night to smoke, the air moist and heavy. The smoke hung around her
head like a gossamer wreath. Nothing could be more simple or more perfect.
Except for one thing.
She could feel the metal backing of the cameo against her skin. Usually she
didn't even notice it, but tonight it was on her mind.
Because she was thinking of giving it up.
She'd had it a long time. Eight years. Her mother had given it to her on her
sixteenth birthday. She was the fourth daughter to receive the gift, and
looking back, she wondered how it was her mother had ever been willing to
give it up. Because she had to know what it did, what it meant to the person
who wore it. They never once spoke about it but Sarah knew they both
understood it well enough.
Sarah performed a perfect french inhale and then said "I don't believe in
magic."
But she did. That was what the cameo was. Pure magic.
Within twenty-four hours, that magic had taken effect on her. The most
important walk of her life was taken the morning after she'd gotten it. She
hadn't known what she was doing at the time, but looking back, she knew it
wouldn't have made any difference.
She still remembered that first cigarette. And so many of them since.
Individual ones. She would wake up in the middle of the night and feel the
sensation of that first cigarette she'd enjoyed with her mother at Le Grande
Cafe. Or that night after graduation, when she'd sat in her car with Kelly,
who almost got that crush on Kristen Hooper out of his system as they sat and
shared single cigarettes until 4 am.
On those occasions when she couldn't smoke, she simply let her mind drift
and it would come to rest on some wonderful moment in time. That would carry
her for hours. Especially at school.
Now she was a volunteer in the smoking lounge. It was ironical really that
she'd ended up back at her old high school for her student teaching. Grad
school and high school came together.
It was even more ironic that Kristen was the reason she was thinking of
giving the cameo up- even if it was only temporarily.
Kristen was 34 now.
Sarah finished the cigarette and lit another, the first from a fresh pack.
There was nothing quite like that first cigarette.
She thought back to that first day in the smoking lounge. How elegant
Kristen looked when she smoked, how much she herself had wanted to learn to
be like that. And she had.
There was no question about that.
Sometimes she would go out on Friday night to a bar, by herself, and take a
stool. Her goal wasn't to meet anyone, or to get drunk. It wasn't even to
watch people- well, not necessarily, although sometimes she would take the
opportunity to watch an attractive man who knew how to smoke. No, she went to
be watched. And she would be watched. It was amasing the attention she could
draw with that long white prop.
At first, she'd thought the attention was weird. She remembered the story
Kristen told her that day in the lounge, and she'd seen the same thing happen
to herself in college. Senior year she'd developed a freshman shadow, a
good-looking kid who seemed as though he only half-knew what he was doing.
For a whole semester he'd appeared anywhere she might be likely to light up
in public.
January had come, classes had started, and Daniel had be shocked to see her
in his class, as his TA. The first time he'd spoken to her, to ask some
almost-necessary question about a paper he was writing, he'd been gripped by
the most delicious mix of embarrassment and excitement. He knew she knew. But
he managed to be calm about it, and not only did they become friends, but she
lit his very first cigarette for him. And many more after that.
He still wrote her occasionally. He'd finally found the right girl, he said.
And now that she'd started smoking, he was happy.
That was Kristen's problem now.
Just then, her old teacher- now her friend- pulled up. She was driving a
brand new Lexus.
That car made Sarah sad sometimes. It was a symbol of how well Kristen's
writing career was going. She wasn't going to be at Hasek Falls High much
longer. She was publishing furiously these days. Two novels and three
academic papers this year alone. Offers had started coming in from
universities, some of them quite prestigious. And she could drop the teaching
altogether if she wanted.
They'd gotten to be friends quickly. The difference in their ages and their
past relationship as teacher-student had melted away. Kristen was overseeing
her student teaching and providing insight on her thesis, but that was
ancillary, really. They had similar interests and they liked to hang out
together.
Sarah settled into the car. It was only a week old, but it had the same
comfortable smell as her own. It was a smoker's car, one with expensive
leather seats, but a smoker's car nonetheless. It was too cold to have the
windows more than slightly cracked, but Sarah didn't mind.
"I can't believe you still live with your mother," Kristen said, teasing.
"If she wasn't one of the coolest people I know, I wouldn't believe it
either."
Kristen didn't pull away from the house just yet. "Are you sure she doesn't
want to come tonight ?"
"No," Sarah said, "she has another date."
"With Chris ?"
Sarah laughed. "No. With Henry. Or Hank. I'm not sure. It's hard to keep
them straight. I don't know if it's because she's the prettiest fifty-year
old woman I've ever known or because she owns her own business."
"It's probably both."
"All I know, is that they're all younger. Some of them are our age."
It was Kristen's turn to laugh. "We aren't the same age, Sarah."
"How are things with you and Brendan going ?" Sarah asked, wanting to hear
the impossible.
"Well, don't take this the wrong way, but it's Friday night and I'm sitting
in a bar with you."
Sarah poured her fourth- no fifth, she corrected- beer from the pitcher and
took a long swallow before lighting another cigarette. As always when she was
at Richter's, she made a little show of it. A long, sensuous inhale, a
breathy exhale, the cigarette held between fingers flowing out from an
upturned wrist. Kristen equalled her effortlessly.
"Are you trying to get drunk tonight ?" Kristen asked playfully, each word
carried on a plume of white smoke.
The answer was yes, of course. Sober, she didn't think she could do what she
wanted to do.
"Is it just because you won't quit smoking ?"
"Yeah. I mean, I don't understand. He knew I smoked when we started dating.
We met right here."
"I was there," Sarah said. The truth was, she'd almost been jealous when
he'd walked over to them and started chatting them up, his interest in
Kristen obvious. In fact, he'd been holding a lit cigar, something both of
them admitted later had been a turn on. But he hadn't taken a single puff on
it, which they agreed was a waste. "He was smoking a cigar that night."
"No, he was holding a cigar. But he told me the other night he only did that
because he didn't think that we'd talk to him if he wasn't smoking. And he's
probably right. We both have the same rule-"
"Don't date anyone who doesn't smoke-" Sarah finished, her hand going
unconsciously to the thing she was about to give up.
Brendan was sitting in front of his computer, getting updates via chat. One
of his associates was at Richter's right now, sitting in the cyberlounge- the
smoke-free cyber lounge. Kristen and Sarah were there, drinking beer and
smoking-
They were always smoking.
That was going to change. Sarah was- his associate used the word 'fondling'-
her cameo.
Would tonight finally be the night ?
It was hard being rude and short with Kristen all the time. Except of course
for the fact that she was a smoker, she was really a nice person. But that
was the ultimate except, wasn't it ? Months of planning had gone into this,
months of time spent working his way into Kristen's-
"Heart sounds so melodramatic," Brendan said. After all, this was just a
job, a very-well paying job at that. Doing something he loved.
Sarah certainly knew what she had. But she didn't really understand it.
Didn't understand that there were hundreds, no thousands, of things out there
like that cameo, held mostly by people like her, who had no idea what the big
picture was. No idea that there were dozens of people like Brendan. This
would be his twenty-third trophy. Twenty-two other assignments, twenty-two
successes. These two would make it twenty-three.
His mind wandered back to that first night. That awful, odious- odorous-
cigar. He'd held it, but he hadn't been able to smoke it. He didn't have to.
He remembered that they looked at it longingly. In fact, one night last week
they'd split a cigar right at that same table at Richter's, puffing on it as
though it was something heavenly. Or so he'd been told.
Thinking of the image of Kristen with a cigar clenched between her teeth
made this easier.
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