Navigation

Miss Anything?

To Infinity and Beyond - September 01, 2006
Today's Post - August 26, 2006
Is This Thing On? - August 24, 2006
Finally, Forfeit! - November 06, 2005
So Here's How it Happened... - November 02, 2005

Contact

Highlights

Cream of the Crop

Credits

May 09, 2003

The Smoking Gun

IT WAS HIS FIFTH CIGARETTE in an hour. With a shaky hand, he reached for the neon lighter and lit the filtered end with a quick flick of his thumb. The warm, dark flavor of tar rested on his chapped lips as he took a long drag of the stick and let the heat and taste flow through his veins; curling his upper lip and bringing his splotched cheeks into a creased smile.

"Anderssen," he muttered letting the smoke billow out from between his nostrils, "you think there's any chance they'll come tonight?"

"Come tonight?" Anderssen echoed in disbelief. "How the hell do you figure they'll be comin' tonight?"

"Just a thought, that's all." He took careful, calculated puffs on the cigarette now, as if preparing to draw his last breath.

"Oh," Mumbled Anderssen, crouching down to the pavement to snatch at a gold piece shining brightly in the dim, cavernous light. An old subway token. He palmed it lightly and then let it tinkle into his pocket with a group of millenium quarters. "I'd be surprised if they told everbody to clear out tonight, with the way they've been increasing our rations and all. If they wanted us evacuated, they wouldn't do that, now would they?"

The man shrugged, the fatty folds of his neck drooping down his collar. "I guess not... no."

"Don't worry yourself so much, Stradley, you'll give yourself a coronary."

Stradley laughed eerily, a strong hearty laugh that echoed from against the underground walls. It bounced up and down the stretch of the Bleeker Street platform and drowned someplace where the electric tracks met the darkness. "That'll be the day." The fifth cigarette was now spat out along the cement platform, like an old wad of gum. Stradley stomped it out.

"You go through those things awfully fast," Anderssen noted, jingling the change in his pocket. "What about your rations?"

The other man gave a dissmissive wave. "I like to use 'em up while I can. You can't smoke in the office, and Miriam won't let me smoke at home... I take 'em when I can get 'em, you know?"

Anderssen nodded slightly, still thumbing the loose chance that sat inside the cotton pocket. The subway token rolled along this fingertips, a flat dullness setting it apart from all the rest. He rubbed it gently, feeling the waxy sort of sweat coming off onto his thumb and forefinger. He liked it: It was well-used. It was famliar. It must have been used thousands of times before he'd founded it abandoned on the cracked platform. A child had probably dropped it. Or a busy mother on her way back from an afternoon of shopping. Or a business man without enough time or patience to pick it back up again. "It could have been all those things," he thought to himself. "It could have been anyone..."

"What could have been anyone?" Stradley demanded, causing Anderseen to jerk up in surprise. "You talkin' to yourself?"

"No--" Anderssen scrambled for words. "Just thinking."

"That sounded a lot like talking to me," Stradley muttered, standing on the edge of the platform. "Say, when's this damn train supposed to be coming in, anyway? Seems to me we've been waiting a good time."

"Sure have. It was supposed to come in seven minutes ago--I haven't even seen the inbound train go by."

"Maybe it got stuck up there at West Ninth, like the last time."

"The West Ninth station's been closed for repairs."

"Maybe we missed it," Stradley opted, still leaning over the yellow caution section of the platform, staring unnecessarily down the corridor of blackness.

"I can't see how," Anderssen grumbled. "We're here every night at about the same time, and we haven't missed it in months."

A sixth cigarette was whipped out in record time, and Stradley pinched it tight with his flaking lips. "Well, what the hell's going on, then? What kind of city is this when you can't even get on a subway at any time of the night?"

"Maybe it is West Ninth."

"It'd better be." And with that he paced slowly over to the painted wall of concrete benches that sat below the sign that read BLEEKER STREET AND WEST TWELFTH AVENUE in stark black print.

After another thirty seconds, Anderssen turned and joined his friend along the sooty benches, sitting upon a black crucifix drawn in permanent marker. He pulled out a cigarette of his own--a brand new pack of Diamond Cuts--and chewed on it thoughtfully, not lighting it. "You ever been to New Jersey, Stradley?"

"Yeah sure, a couple of times. Hackensack. Hoboken. Princeton."

"I got a sister in New Jersey--a half sister, really. I haven't seen her in almost six years."

"That's too bad." Stradley tapped away at the crooked ashes from the end of the glowing cigarette. They sprinkled daintily away into the black dirt below.

"She's got four kids; three girls and a boy."

"Oh yeah?"

"Uh-huh." He twiddled the cigarette between his teeth, just brushing the end with his tongue. "It's just that all this talk about war, and evacuations--"

"I thought you said they weren't going to evacuate?!" Stradley nearly chocked on the stale air.

Anderssen grew crimson in the lemon lights. "Well, I just thought--"

"What?!"

"Listen, they aren't going to evacuate tonight," he grumbled, now lighting his own cigarette. "For Chrissakes, Stradley, you really are going to have yourself a coronary one of these days, just like Wilson said. You overreact too much."

"I don't listen to doctors," Stradley snarled, relaxing somewhat. "Besides, if the stress doesn't kill me, the radiation sure as hell will." And with that, he folded his arms, cross his legs, and puffed away at his sixth cigarette of the evening.

posted at 11:56 a.m.

backward forward