Anyway, I was watching two girls smoking at the bus stop this day and when one of them threw her butt on the sidewalk, I started dreaming about picking it up to bring with me home. I had once did such a thing at a party actually, but that woman is another story... Then, suddenly, that woman in that shop that I hadn't seen for about 10 or 11 years crossed my mind. She used to have an ash-tray on the desk for her butts, and there was usually plenty of them in it. But, now I remembered something I hadn't even paid any attention to during those school years - she had a white plate at another desk behind her, where she put the remainders of cigarettes that she had only smoked half of. But I never, never saw her take one of those half cigarettes herself, she always started on a new, fresh one. My imagination tried to dream up when she used the other ones. It couldn't be that ... no it couldn't... or... could it? I stared at that butt on the sidewalk and when I saw some lipstick on it from that girl's lips and suddenly remembered the red-haired woman's lips, they were thickly painted with a light-red lipstick. That red hair, her blue eyes and those lips were a fantastic combination. I was quite sure that I also remembered those butts and those half-smoked cigarettes in the ash-trays, almost red in the end from her thick layers of lipstick. That part could be a result of my imagination, but I thought, and hoped, that it came directly from my memory.
I couldn't forget about this in the evening and I decided to see if
the shop was still there and if she still was running it. If she was
40 at that time, she would be over 50 now; I wondered what she would look
like. Maybe a bit more grey hair, at least not that bright red colour?
Three days after, in the afternoon, I took the subway over to my "old"
areas in town. I remembered exactly where the shop should be and, yes,
the shop was still there but I noticed that the signs were different
and I felt disappointed. I was almost about to turn around when I
realized I should at least step in to be sure she wasn't still there.
I opened the door and immediately felt the smell of cigarette smoke.
When I saw the person behind the desk,
there was no doubt that it was the same woman. She looked like 50 to 55, the hair
was still bright red, and when she said "hello", I remembered her voice,
although it was much more dark and raspy now. Directly after speaking,
she turned her head and I noticed that she had developed her cough
during this years. She put her hand as a fist over her mouth, inhaled
very quickly but loudly and coughed with a long, loud wheezing followed by two
irritated hacks. Inhaled again with a rattling sound and coughed
with four hard hacks, each of them followed by a combined raspy, rattling
and wheezing sound. I got an idea.
- "Has the latest issue of Smoke Signals come in yet?", I asked and
had to keep myself from laughing.
- "The what?", she said after having dragged on her cigarette and
inhaled while I was talking. She looked me in eyes in smiled in a special
way, and I thought I remembered that expression in her face from those
school years when we had noticed how she talked to her male regular
customers. I only wish she had looked at me when I was 14 too like the
way she did it now. She nose exhaled after talking and coughed a little
with her mouth shut. More smoke was pumped from her nostrils.
I was going to explain when the door opened and a man, around 40, came in.
- "Excuse me", he said to me, "I'm in a hurry and it's a quicky one",
he said and I said "sure". - "Five please", he just said and the red-haired
woman turned around. Now I noticed that white plate behind her - just as
it used to be! I was positive that I saw her take five half-smoked
cigarettes, with red, sticky lipstick on and put in a small paper bag.
- "That'll be 10, then", she said in her raspy voice. The man paid
and left. I just stared at the plate.
- "Yes", she laughed with a deep, rattling laughter which started
off a coughing fit. This time, she coughed three times instead of two
and the last one sounded like she was coughing up a lung. - "I don't
know what they want these for, but it's a good affair", she said shortly.
"Smoke Signals, you said, no I have hardly heard about it, what is it
about?", she asked. I was going to reply, when the door opened, and
a dark-haired girl, let's say age 14, came in.
- "Hello Jenny", the woman smiled and the girl replied.
- "A pack of Marlboros as usual?", the woman went on.
- "Yes, please and five of the other sort"
- "There you are, thank you", the woman said after handing over
a pack of Marlboro reds to the girl plus five of those half-smoked
with the lipstick. "Have you heard of Smoke Signals, by the way",
she asked the girl. The girl laughed a little. "Yeah, I have", she
smiled and left. The woman shrugged her shoulders. "Well,
I'm afraid I haven't, I'm sorry", she said and smiled. She noticed
my astonishment from these customers buying the rest of her cigarettes.
- "It's mostly men who buy these if you're wondering, but Jenny
, a few other girls and one woman want them too".
- "What do they do? Smoke them?", I asked.
- "Guess so." She saw that I didn't quite believe her.
"Well, it's there business, isn't it?", she said and gave me
a glance and smiled in her sexy way.
- "You do want something more, don't you?", she suddenly whispered.
Before I had replied, she continued "Half past eight outside. I'm cheap
these days, since my smoker's cough gets worse in the evenings."
Since I'm an economical man, I didn't tell her it would then be
worth even more to me...
I felt like in heaven when I left the shop. I understood the woman
had been in the back of my head, hidden, all these years and now
suddenly she was there, in reality, and even better than I remembered her.
I had only walked two blocks when Jenny caught up with me.
- "Excuse me", she said, "I... I just wanted to know if you bought
some of them too?"
- "Bought what?", I said, pretending that I didn't understand.
- "Oh, nothing", she said and was about to leave.
- "Just kidding", I said. "No, I didn't. And she hadn't even
heard about Smoke Signals, by the way".
- "Of course she hasn't, you can't buy it in the shops", she
said like she thought I was an complete idiot.
- "Did you buy any then", I asked.
- "Yes, but she smokes brown cigarettes only very rarely and she didn't
have any of them now. I want sooo much to have one NOW so I was wondering
if you by any chance had got one. I could pay anything for it..."
- "Do you mean, her cigarette butts are a sort of collector's items?"
- "At least for me. I have almost all sorts of cigarette butts
and half-smoked ones that she has had between her painted lips, and
that she has sucked smoke from down into her lungs. She's so...
so wonderful. She taught me to smoke when I was 12, and she has let
me and my friends buy cigarettes ever since. I smoke her half-smoked
ones only if I have other cigarettes from her of the same brand.
But I keep those that have more lipstick than usual, for instance."
- "So you have a real collection at home, then?"
- "Yep. Around 80 of them. I have them in a box to hide it from
my parents, but when I've grown up I'll put them in my bookshelf", Jenny
said smiling.
I met my red-haired beauty outside her shop at half past eight.
She hardly said a word when she let me in and we went into the small
room behind her shop. She took her coat off and revealed her
somewhat over 50 years old body under it, only dressed in her underwear.
Like from nowhere, a coughing fit suddenly overpowered her and she
put an open hand over her mouth. I studied her light-skinned body
as it was shakened by the cough. She sounded like she was full of
smoky mucus that her body try to through out from itself.
Finally, it ended. She lit a cigarette.
- "Sorry, I GOT to have a cigarette", she said, wheezing and
breathing heavily. She cleared her throat. "I'm so sorry
for my cough, it might go on like this a few times, or it might not,
I can't guarantee", she said. She started to hack again, and just as
the sequence of quiet hacks was followed by a deep inhale, I put an
arm around her naked shoulders and gently put the other hand over
her mouth to catch her warm, smoky cough in my palm.
- "Can't you guarantee that you will go on coughing even if you
smoke two or three more", I whispered in her ear and she stared at me.
- "Never heard THAT one before", her smoky voice rasped.
The remainder of what happened in the room was a plain orgy of
her deeper and deeper, chesty coughing fits at least twice leading
to her coughing mucus up in her mouth before swallowing,
combined with her heavy smoking. I never had time to tell her about
"Smoke Signals" so she never understood what it was, but she
decided to start using it as a keyword for this kind of affairs.
She told me that she only had two or three customers now because
of her bad cough, but that these three were even more affectionated
and I had made her understand why.
I just wondered what would happen the next time someone entered
her shop to seriously ask for the latest "Smoke Signals" issue
and she would just reply "half past eight"...