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Smoke Break
Dan Korgan |
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Last night, the woman who lives upstairs, and who I love, interrupted my painting. When I heard her knocking, I set my palette on the chair, Just a minute, I exclaimed, just a minute ! She was in her robe and looked very tired as she stood at my door. Can we have a word, she said. Certainly, I mean, yes. She must have known how nervous I was, because I did not open the door very far. She kept leaning to one side, peering in to my small room. It smells like soot upstairs, she said. I don’t smell it, I said. I talked to the landlord and he said this is a non-smoking building. Oh, yes, I said, but smoking is such a terrible addiction. I’m not asking you to quit smoking. Thanks goodness, that would be such a difficult thing, I said. Did you know I am pregnant? No, I didn’t. Well I am, and it’s not easy being pregnant either. Look, I said, I keep the windows open all night. I have two and they are fully open. Your smoke must be traveling through your ceiling and my floor and I’m pregnant and it’s making me sick to my stomach and I can’t keep up with the ash. It’s everywhere. I don’t think my smoke could travel through the ceiling, and the floor is not that flimsy. This is a very high ceiling, and the spiders don’t mind it. They even have a fair chance with all the smoking I do in here. You must have something wrong with your mind, she said. The ceiling is very flimsy and low. It’s not that flimsy, I said, and it is high. Flimsy and low, she said. Low, because I say so. And it is high because I say so. It is low, she said. It is high, I said. Brian, upstairs, smokes too, and this is a non-smoking building. She craned her neck to see what it was that I was doing in my room. Then I watched her turn and slowly ascend the stairs. The landlord, I piped, told me he would not enforce such a rule. Did he say that? She asked, glancing down. I closed my door and stuffed a towel in the jam where a little smoke may have escaped. Then I picked up my palette and looked up at the ceiling – the underside of her dining room table, the nylon buttons of chair legs, and her tough little corns. I scratched my head and thought about how we never talk anymore. How we never talk. With my brush I began to tickle her feet.
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Dan Korgan lives in Portland, Oregon.
He enjoys hiking in the foothills of
the Cascade Range, bird watching and photographing rare plants. Currently,
he is working on a master's degree in feminist rhetoric at Portland State
University.