K started smoking, apparently, though given the way he coughed and convulsed after each drag, his starting was not, also apparently, that long ago.
“Put her crab rangoon on my bill,” he told the waiter, stubbing out his cigarette just the way he practiced at home. The girl should have sat somewhere else while she waited for her takeout. But it was too late for all that.
“Thanks,” she said, awkwardly.
“Do you smoke,” he asked, flashing his pack of cigarettes like a P.I. flashing his badge.
“I don’t.” She was going to be mean. But he did, after all, buy her crab rangoon. “You don’t really see too many people who smoke,” she offered, feeling bad about the crab rangoon.
He was going to tell her that when he smokes, the fumes become people he used to care about, and that, in smoking, he was trying to re-establish bonds long severed. The first time he took a drag, the air around him took on the form of that girl he liked in 5th grade who died in a car accident.
He had sadness in his eyes.
“Wanna take me home?” she asked, feeling bad, still, about the crab rangoon.
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