Smoke & Reverie

The cigarette smoke pulled into my lungs like some desperate clawing animal, begging to release the tension in my muscles, if only slightly. Ash stippled the peeling lacquer of the bartop as I flicked the cigarette over the ashtray. Thank god we still have tobacco, was all I could think as I fiddled with the silver heart-shaped locket in my hand, staring numbly at the photograph inside.

Around me a handful of desolate faces sat stooped over their drinks. A few whispered back and forth. Many sat alone in silence, clinging to their cigarettes as if they were their only companions -- I was one of them. This is why I would come here, to this dirty rundown excuse for a pub -- it was quiet here, the kind of quiet that held you like a mother’s hug -- the kind of quiet where the ticking clock of the Earth’s waning breath took pause and let you forget.

It’s terrifying how much can change in just a few decades and how quickly people forget what life was like before.

We are as adaptive as we are destructive.

It all happened so quietly, so subtly, that it was barely noticeable. It came in whispers from far away places of rising sea levels, floods and relocations -- in inconvenient new rules and regulations “in the name of public health” that you were too busy surviving to question. Fresh food slowly disappeared, replaced with neatly packaged dehydrated rations for the middle-class masses as military presence trickled into the streets -- men and machines to quell desperate riots and encourage capitulation.

There was no great cataclysm -- the world simply burned out slow like an unwatched candle, gift wrapped in sugar-coated media coverage and convincing propaganda that gave the powers that be an excuse to pull the noose tighter around their citizen’s necks. Freedom receded like an evening tide as the planet itself struggled to breathe -- because we let it, because we were too tired to fight it.

The barman set my tumbler down before me, whisky stones clinking against the glass -- there wasn’t enough water to afford the luxury of ice anymore.

“Twenty-seven, fifty.” He was tall, broad, tattoos snaking up his arms -- stories of fresh hardships and forgotten hopes clinging to his skin and reflected in his tired eyes.

I pulled a few crumpled notes and coins from my jacket pocket and placed them on the bar. He released my drink and I nodded back in thanks, taking a sip and never making eye contact.

The cold amber liquid caressed my throat like a lover’s tongue as I leaned back on the barstool, taking another drag of my cigarette. I closed my eyes and exhaled, my smoke mingling with the unchanging ambience of a dark local bar on a Tuesday night. At least some things always stay the same.

Everything was white noise around me as the whisky burned in my chest -- the voices, the music, the rain outside. Only a clicking cut through the monotonous soundscape -- erratic and frustrated.

“Fuck.” The woman sat a few seats from me, a packet of Virginia Slims beside her with one hanging loosely from her lips as she thumbed at a lighter that would not cooperate. She looked up and saw me watching her.

“Got a light?” She spoke with a strange elegance to her subtle southern drawl. I slid my lighter across the bar to her wordlessly. She picked it up and clicked the button, the little flame dancing to life. Her cigarette glowed an ominous red in the dim light as she breathed it in. I watched the tightness of her expression melt away, relief oozing down her shoulders, her back and all the way to her toes. Her face bore the tell tale marks of a burdened life, stress and exhaustion etched into her paper skin. Though she was not old at all -- perhaps early-thirties -- her body showed a reality beyond her years, the way everyone’s seemed to -- youth had become a rare and fleeting commodity nowadays. Yet there was a peculiar beauty to her, as if a part of her spirit somehow still clung to its fire. She perched atop the bar stool, one leg crossed over the other, a black dress hugging her motherly figure and a beige trench coat that had seen better days resting over her shoulders. The neckline of her dress plunged into a deep V, dragging my eyes down to the rolling peaks of her breasts as if it were an arrow and they demanded my gaze. I looked away respectfully before she noticed.

“Thanks,” she passed the lighter back to me. I nodded and returned to my thoughts.

Her eyes continued to linger on me, her posture slightly leaning in as she peered over at my hands.

“That’s a pretty locket,” she admired, “though I wouldn’t have pictured a man such as yourself to wear pretty jewellery.”

I smirked and stopped spinning the little trinket between my fingers, “It’s my daughter’s.”

As I looked down, my face beamed out of the photograph at me -- though it was not a face I recognised anymore. There was still a light in that man’s eyes. That man was still a father and a husband, embracing his wife & young daughter with a smile.

“Well she’s lucky to have a father.” The woman mused, almost to herself, swirling the wine in her glass, “You all look happy in that photo.”

“That was a long time ago.” I took another drink as my stomach sank. I swallowed the wave of regret and propped it back into place with feeble threads that didn’t hold the weight well.

“Oh,” She paused, “What happened, if I may ask?”

I glanced over at her without turning my head. Her features, though weary, had a tenderness to them. The dark fabric of her dress enveloped her body like a shadow yet I could still make out the faint shape of a soft tummy underneath. She reminded me of the glow my wife had in the beginning of her motherhood, before the realities of this world snuffed out the high of hormones and honeymoons.

“The same thing that always happens around here to two people with not enough money in a city barely fit for adults let alone children -- we stopped getting along.” I took the last drag of my cigarette, trying to recount the memories with practised apathy, “I came home from work one day and they were both gone. I’m guessing she moved to Iowa to live with her mother like she always talked about. Didn’t even leave a note -- just this locket I found under the bed.”

“I’m sorry.” Her face furrowed with sympathy, voice going quiet.

I sighed, hastily putting the necklace back into my pocket before my heart could unravel, “What about you? Any family?”

“I have a daughter as well -- Annabelle, she’s seven.” The woman moved to sit beside me, leaving her cigarette butt in the ashtray and helping herself to my lighter to spark another, “Her dad skipped out as soon as I told him I was pregnant -- we weren’t really together anyway and he was a deadbeat so it’s for the best.”

“It must be hard being a single mother.”

“Everything’s hard nowadays, not just for single mothers,” She motions for the bartender to top her up. He wades over, unleashing a crimson cascade from the bottle to her glass.

“Ain’t that the truth.” I chuckle dryly.

“I still kind of remember how the world was when I was a little girl, before it got so bad,” she gazed somewhere beyond the four walls surrounding us, “I remember the bees -- watching them dancing around the dandelions. Those must have been some of the last wild bees in the country.” Her hazel eyes sparkled to life beneath the smoggy haze of the bar, lost in a world that was long dead but still alive in her mind.

I could feel the warmth of her presence beside me, her cigarette smoke coalescing in a milky fog around my head. She was very close now, our thighs almost touching and I allowed myself to find comfort in it.

“What do you miss the most?” She looked at me from beneath dark painted lashes, awaiting my reply.

I pondered for a few moments, rifling through memories I hadn’t looked back on in a long time -- distant memories from before I was a man at all.

Finally, I decided on an answer.

“Apricots.” I declared, the memory of their sweet earthy flavour flooded my tongue, making my mouth water and my spine tingle, “God, I fucking miss apricots.”

Those were the first real signs of change that everyone noticed. When the fruit aisles at the supermarkets slowly grew barer and barer until they stayed empty for so long that “out of stock” became “discontinued”.

She sighed wistfully, “It has been a long time since I’ve heard of those.”

“We had an apricot tree when I was young -- small thing, only produced a handful of fruit every year. My brother and I couldn’t resist and always stole the fruit before dad had a chance to harvest it,” Her body inched towards me with amused curiosity, “We knew we’d get an ass-whooping if he found out so we made it look like possums got to the tree. Made it convincing too -- even left a couple fruit on the tree with just a bite taken out.” I couldn’t help but chuckle as I remembered my disgruntled father pacing back and forth from the shed, trying to figure out how to bolster the defences around that little tree. My humour spread to her as she began to giggle too.

“Dad tried everything to keep those possums away! Netted the tree, practically built a greenhouse around it, kept the dog in the yard at night to scare them off -- and every summer he’d be storming around, grumbling about ‘those fucking possums eating my fucking apricots every goddamn year!’” I could still hear his gruff voice as my brother and I snickered in the other room unseen, the sweet evidence of our crime still fresh on our tongues.

Her modest giggles grew to laughter at my trivial tale -- a sound so unexpectedly mesmerising & radiant that for a fleeting moment my heart flooded with the carefree innocence of those years and I started to laugh too, feeling like that little boy again.

As we both succumbed to the forgotten joy of nostalgia, soaring through a past where there was still room for humour in our souls, it felt like the light of a sunrise after a long winter’s night, finally peeking through the still-drawn blinds waking my corpse from its slumber.

I helplessly noticed how close we were now, our bodies touching a little as they shook with laughter -- my knee against hers, her hand steadying itself on my thigh.

But like the rise and fall of a musical phrase, our ardour slowly faded and we floated back down from the clouds into the darkness of this decrepit bar, though the glow of a smile still hung on to our lips.

The mirth had left her cheeks flushed with a dusky peach hue and even in this unflattering light she was quite beautiful. She caught my eyes as I admired her, but did not shy away -- and this time I did not either.

“I’m Moira, by the way.” She held out her hand.

“Jack.” My fingers brushed against her palm and I gave her a quick tender squeeze. She smiled a smile that touched her eyes as we put our hands back in our laps, with just the right amount of coyness that might foreshadow a very pleasant night.

“Shall we have another drink, Jack?”

“With pleasure.”

And as our glasses were once again full, the shadows of my world gradually eased -- if only for a few hours, if only to remind me that even in the bleakest times there were still moments worth surviving for.