The Cigarette Vignettes – Morning

Josh Blockwell, the brains behind the brilliant Memories of Green, tries something a little different with The Cigarette Vignettes series.

 

The traffic wakes me up as it always had.  The price I have to pay for getting this downtown apartment I guess. I hadn’t slept for long. I’d been awake until four last night, talking to May on the telephone. We were debating something or other, I don’t know, could have been politics, music, literature, it was late. I light a cigarette.

I would be sad to see this apartment go. Everything was in boxes now. The place felt emptier than it had in a while. Could I fit everything into my new place? Would the people be as nice? I’d seem like an outsider I guess. Something would happen, i’d get into a fight with the burly mechanic next door, one of those real blue collar types that make me cower behind a newspaper when i’m waiting for a bus. It’d be over something stupid, i’d leave my cases in the hallway while he was trying to get by. I cough loudly in my sleep too, maybe he’d hate that. The wife would get involved, then the neighbours, then the super, then I’d just have to sit back and wait for them to turn my power and water off, and possibly post their junk catalogues in my mailbox. The jackals.

Terrific. I should never have quit my job. I’ve brought this on myself.

I pour myself some coffee. I’m too compulsive. That job was fine. Ok, so it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing right now. But then again, does anybody ever want to spend their time writing scripts for commercials? Come on. We all work jobs we hate to fund the lives we lead. Why should I be any different? I’m not special. I’m not destined for any higher purpose. I’m not going to become a senator, an astronaut, a CEO. I can’t fall back on my novel; I don’t even know what i’m writing about yet. I’m only on the third paragraph and my character comes across as an unlikeable neurotic. Story of my life.

I’ve still got her boxes here. All her stupid books, that rough old sweater of hers, it was all there. I’m tempted to flick ash on it all, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m too nice for my own good sometimes, I was explaining to Eric the other day, I let an elderly man have the taxi I’d flagged only to be drenched by a sudden downpour. No, I couldn’t do anything to her stuff, I had too much respect for her. Bitch.

What time is it? 9AM. I still have time to get some breakfast before I meet Marcy and her fiancée, Alistair. Alistair is one of those people that you hate on sight. The kind of people that talk about books they haven’t read, music they haven’t listened to, places they haven’t been to. They seem so smug about it too, wallowing in their arrogance until it sets in that you know they’re a fraud. I swear he was stealing sugar packets over coffee last week. What a cheapskate.

 _____________

                I don’t think I’ve ever met a decent taxi driver in this city. Sure, I can strike up a healthy conversation with them after a few glasses of gin. Climbing into the car reeking of cigarettes and staring out of the window like a drunken Doberman, its fine. However, hell is a taxi driver when you’re sober.

I replay the conversation in my head as I sit in the diner. It pains me to remember it. Maybe if I was less awkward I could have dealt with it better. I think the turning point of the conversation was where he blurted out “One thing that pisses me off with this country? Immigrants. What have they ever done for us? What have they ever contributed?”, to which I jokingly replied “Oh that’s fascinating, my parents are immigrants from Algeria and they’re both defence attorneys.” Taxi drivers don’t grasp sarcasm. I think he took a violent dislike to me after that. But that could just be me.

From the other side of the diner I can hear someone talking in a booming voice about Samuel Beckett. He’s spewing his dramatic and artistic views into the plates of all the other diners, myself included. I light a cigarette to take my mind off it but I swear he starts talking louder. Everybody looks pissed off, but nobody says anything, people are surprisingly polite sometimes. I busy myself with the newspaper but his words seem to burn through the pages and into my ears. Terrific.

Oh my God, he begins to engage other customers in his dialogue. This is going too far. I feel a burst of both stupidity of adrenaline as I stand up and say “My god, isn’t there and time and a place for this?!”. He stands up: he’s much bigger than me, he’s interested in absurdist theatre and works out at a gym? This doesn’t add up. “What do you mean?” He asks. “

“Well, surely you have other places that you could talk about this. I mean, come on.” I’m rambling now, I have no idea what to say. “What made you wake up this morning and decide to start pontificating in an inner city diner about the works of Samuel Beckett? Nobody here has any interest at all in what you’re talking about, half the people don’t even understand what you’re saying.” He starts to walk towards me. I’ve never been in a fight before, I can imagine I lash out, like a cornered animal – I’m very fast when I want to be. I have spindly arms. The girl he’s sitting with pulls him back by his arm, says something inaudible to him and he sits back down. I finish my breakfast with the eyes of the entire diner upon me. I never usually take an issue like that. Maybe I need to go back into analysis?

Standing anywhere for any length of time in this neighbourhood is expensive. Christ, why does Alistair always make reservations around here? I stood outside the cafe for twenty minutes and got accosted by ten guys, each looking more and more dangerous than the last. Fearful of getting stabbed, or being held to the ground while the cast of the Godfather jumped out of a sedan and broke my knees, I complied with each one’s requests.  Here are some of my favourites.

“Have you got a dollar you could spare? I need food man.” – The guy weighed at least two hundred and twenty four pounds, he could afford to miss a meal.

“Can you spare a lighter?” – Jeez, that guy waved around my zippo around like it was the 76 Olympics all over again.

“I’ve missed the train, I really need six dollars quickly, I’ll give you some real good grass, discount.” – We were at least a half hour taxi ride from the station, and I don’t know what he thought he was selling, but it certainly wasn’t grass.

I was broke and without cigarettes by the time Marcy arrived. I wasn’t in the most colourful of moods.