THE CIGARETTE BREAK
BY LEN SOUSA
Unpublished Short Story
December 2002
The room was sparse. A dying recliner in the midst of the television room and a stained green carpet ground the old man’s apartment home. Light shone unevenly through window blinds as a smokey haze filled the air from intermitten puffs blown from a burning cigarette.
He was nearing seventy and sitting in the tattered chair smoking a Camel Special and doing nothing else. He gave the smoking stick all his attention, inhaling deep and deliberately. He enjoyed each cigarette as though it were his last. Perhaps this one was. He couldn’t say, so it was best to be safe than sorry. The ashtray lay on a table to his right near a glass half-filled with Irish whiskey and a lamp casting a dull orange hue.
The man drew long drags from his cigarette and reflected on nothing in particular. He kept himself busy reading, and then writing on what he’d read. He had reflected on everything from the epics of Homer, to the plays of Shakespeare, to the poetry of Rimbaud, to the philosophy of Bertrand Russell. His state of mind was always an inquiring one and one that he believed kept him alive.
While he was working or reading, he never considered anything else. He never concerned himself with questions of health or family or the weather or the news. His world was a world he carved for himself neatly and painstakingly. Neighbors wondered of his loneliness. How can a man take care of himself at that age? Doesn’t he have any family? These questions did not concern the old man and so go unanswered.
All that mattered was life as it was. His past only served to create his present, and the present was all anyone was guaranteed. It has taken him a lifetime to learn that one truth.
And so, these moments smoking and drinking a glass of whiskey were the only moments he allowed for himself to think about things other than his work. He would reflect on the weather, on the news, on his family, on his past, and on his life. He would allow himself these few moments every week to dedicate himself to something other than work. Often these moments came when he would run into a block in his work and could no longer realize how to continue. He would break for a cigarette and reflect on everything until a solution might present itself.
Today’s cigarette break was like any other and the old man enjoyed the silence filling his room. He lay his cigarette butt in the ashtray among the fallen ash and took in a deep breath of air through his nostrils. He didn’t finish his drink. There would be time for it later.
He stood up and stretched a bit. He walked to his window and peered out onto the city a few floors below him. It was winter and he realized that the day had become night and the light entering his room was the street lamp outside his window. Snow had begun to fall. It swirled slowly and spiraled down in the light of the street lamp. Groups of people walked below with hoods pulled tightly over their heads and hot air escaping their mouths.
The old man rubbed his hands together and was glad to be indoors with no plans to be outside. Small moments like these were ones he loved. The cold of the season could be felt on the glass of the window, but he was warm indoors and enjoying the light of a street lamp and watching the outdoor movement.
He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly 6:30pm. He wasn’t hungry and so decided he would eat dinner later that night. He also wasn’t ready to continue his work, so he did not return to the room where he kept his typewriter and texts. Instead, he remained near the window and looking over his room while attempting to decide what to do.
His gaze passed by the telephone, but he had no one he could think of wanting to speak with. He looked at his door, but decided that there was no one to go and see. The radio and television were both uninteresting entertainment and he avoided those as well.
He laughed at himself for a moment and considered the idea that he was a seventy-year-old man who, like a bored child, couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do. This brought his mind racing back to his childhood and sitting on Paul Sullivan’s porch tossing the same question back and forth, “What do you want to do?”
“I dunno. Whatdoyouwannado?” The phrase was used so often it became a single word.
The old man laughed to himself again.
He dug his hands into his pockets and let some air out through his mouth. He paced the area of the room and looked up at the paintings hanging on the walls—originals friends had painted over the years. Most were landscapes, and one was an odd assortment of books and pens placed on a table with whiskey and an ashtray. That was his favorite and it was painted by a woman who knew him too well.
The frame’s paint was chipped and flakes lay on the dusty floor. The old man noticed these chips and kicked at them with his foot. His old, tired foot. He still wore shoes although he rarely left the apartment. They were a simple brown and he cleaned and polished them on Sundays after the morning news. He probably needed to buy new shoes but would not.
He adjusted his dark brown pants at the waist and pulled them up slightly. He hated sagging pants. If one wasn’t careful, he could be sitting on his belt. A leather one from a trip to Corsica in 1983. “The food is nice, and the women are gorgeous!” was how the postcard he sent to a friend read.
His trips away were his fondest memories. Traveling on the sea, engaging with people of all languages. He rarely spoke their tongue unless he happened to be in Spain, France, or England. Most believed Portuguese was close to Spanish, but not nearly close enough for the old man. The French were always more polite in person than in stories. And he admired how the English stayed so content with their constant gray weather.
He gently peered into a metal dish that lay on the mantle near his favorite painting and noticed his gray hair, combed back every morning as it had been for the last several decades. It had thinned out along the corners of his forehead and the black of his youth was all but gone. He amused himself with the thought that his “gray” hair was not gray at all. A few portions may have been, but it was more white than any other color. Why did he insist on calling it gray?
The dish he saw his reflection in was an award from 1979 for achievement in the field of literature given to him by some colleagues. It was an informal affair because he rarely published much work, but they thought of him fondly and showed him so with their invented award. He smiled at the dish before turning away from the mantle.
He glanced further around his room at the tall bookshelf against an opposite wall. Perhaps there was a book he could read and be engrossed in for the next few hours? Perhaps a loose piece of paper on the shelf would entice his attention and distract him for a while? Perhaps there was nothing.
The books were lined in neat order according to the old man’s own unique system of organization. He pooled works together that he felt worked well with one another either in theme or in context. He would also assign them their place on the shelf by the amount of times he used them. The more frequently used the book, the nearer it was to the middle shelf. He wondered about moving some books around but changed his mind because it would have been a dull distraction.
Too much time, he felt, was wasted on finding something to do. While one is searching, his or her life is quickly passing by. Time for reflections was a time left for the deathbed. He was certainly not on his deathbed and would not stand for any more reflection. It was time to do something, to invent a new memory or to continue with his work. But he still did not feel ready to continue. How many times had he retired to that room and engulfed himself in page after page of manuscript only to stack each neatly and in order and then to file them all away? It was a life for the future. He believed his work would be found after he died and published posthumously by a friend or relative who had a small sense of their worth. But this may have been an empty dream. The old man realized this and walked toward his front door.
He stretched his arm out to his coat hanger and grabbed his long, wool coat. It was black and still new because he had hardly worn it in the last few years. He looked out the window as he drew his coat on and saw again, in the light of the street lamp, the snow falling. It was not a hard snowfall and the flakes coasted to the ground easily.
What was outside and why was he going? He didn’t know. He was a bored, almost seventy year-old man who wanted to get some fresh air. Who cared about what was outside or what was to do out there? The old man did not care. He was tired of reminiscing.
His gloves lay on another shelf and he pulled each one on and, interlocking his fingers, tightened them to a snug fit. He also grabbed his key for the front door from the shelf and dropped it into his left coat pocket. He placed his right hand on the doorknob and looked back into his apartment in case he had forgotten anything he wanted to take along. There was nothing he needed.
He turned the knob and pulled the door open. The hallway was long and dark and much colder than his room. A lamp in the hall flickered on and off. He remembered why he preferred to stay in on winter nights.
“To hell with it,” the old man mumbled to himself.
He reentered his room, closed the door behind him, and removed his gloves, throwing them casually towards the shelf they had laid on. He approached the small table by his recliner and lifted the half-filled whiskey glass to his lips. He drank it down completely. Finished, he stood staring around his room, the empty glass now twisting absent-mindedly in his hand.
After a moment, he returned the glass to the table and slid a Camel Special from its paper pack. Lifting the stick to his lips, he licked its filter and twirled it slightly in his mouth. He took up the off-white, plastic lighter from where it lay beside the pack, and drew it to the tip of the cigarette, lighting it with careful attention. He inhaled heavily and removed the cigarette from his lips with two fingers, waiting a moment before exhaling slowly.
The old man stood motionless, at last smoking his final cigarette, examining the chips of paint that had fallen from the frame of his favorite painting and deciding whether or not he would lie down.
