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SMOKERS CORNER

  by Adam Bender

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Smokers Corner

  Copyright © 2013 by Adam Bender

  www.adambenderwrites.com

  Thanks for reading this eBook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). You may not sell, rent or otherwise profit from any digital or physical copy of this document. You may not prepare derivative works based upon the content. You may make copies of this eBook so long as you do not remove anything, edit any text, or otherwise modify the document.

  If you like what you read, please tell your friends. This is a self-published work, and a couple emails to a couple buddies can make all the difference. When you’re done, treat yourself to a cookie. You deserve it.

  SMOKERS CORNER

  a short story

  by

  Adam Bender

  Dedicated to Mallika

  ~

  You make me romantic.

  SMOKERS CORNER

  by Adam Bender

  The chill in the air didn’t much bother Tim as he stepped out of the office for his morning smoke. He lit up a cigarette and sighed pure relief.

  Tim was of average height and liked wearing slim-cut dress shirts. He wore the sleeves down to cover up a line of tattoos he got done on his 18th birthday, more than a decade ago. Today he had put on a black button down with a red skinny tie, which he figured was kind of a punk take on business casual.

  Tim’s Monday through Friday went like this: Get to the office at three minutes after nine. Go to Smokers Corner at ten on the dot. Break at noon for a long lunch. Return to Smokers Corner at the stroke of two. Leave the office three minutes before five.

  Arguably, going home should have been Tim’s favorite moment of all. But he had to admit a particular fondness for his twice daily interludes at Smokers Corner. Maybe it was the nicotine talking, but there was something sublime about smoking away the work day.

  To an outsider, the spot known as Smokers Corner might not seem like anything special. It was, quite literally, a corner near the entrance of Tim’s office building. The standout feature? A trash can for cigarette butts. However, to Tim it was an oasis.

  Actually, Smokers Corner was a pretty social place to spend fifteen minutes. It was probably the only place in the building where workers from different companies in the building ever mingled. Nobody ever wanted to strike up a conversation in the elevator, but smokers carried the perfect instruments to melt the ice.

  In fact, it was thanks to cigarettes that Tim knew as many interesting characters as he did. There was Stewart, the balding accountant from the fifth floor who played in a hair metal band on the weekend (he wore a wig at each gig). There was Doris, a middle-aged riot who wrote celebrity gossip. And who could forget Crazy John, named for his tendency to—

  “Got a light?”

  The sultry voice came from a woman he’d never seen before. She looked film noir with a long, slender cigarette emerging from cherry lips and a black dress pressed tightly against her body.

  Tim reached into his jacket for his lighter, but when he tried handing it to her, the mysterious dame just tilted her head back to lift the cigarette. He flicked the switch and brought the fire to her lips. She took a suck and dropped her arm, keeping the cigarette just far enough from her dress to avoid a burn. She gazed off into the distance and breathed a puff of white smoke.

  “I’ve never seen you out here before,” Tim found himself saying. He immediately regretted his choice of opener.

  A sigh. “It’s my first day.”

  Her voice purred like a 1950’s movie star.

  “Welcome to Hell,” said Tim. “How’s it going so far?”

  She considered him for a few seconds with bright hazel eyes before answering, “It’s work. My boss seems nice but I’m probably going to hate her.”

  “Funny,” he said, “my boss never seemed nice.”

  A laugh squirted from her lips. “I’m Samantha. Or Sam, if you must.”

  “Tim,” he replied. “Or Timothy, if you must.”

  They laughed together until—out of nowhere—awkwardness hit Tim like a steam engine. He stamped out his cigarette and excused himself to leave.

  ~

  Tim didn’t see Samantha in the afternoon and he convinced himself that he wouldn’t see her the next morning, either. When she did turn up, he nearly swallowed his cigarette.

  “Hey,” he managed while trying desperately not to choke.

  Her eyes lit up when she saw him. “Hey.”

  An odd-looking pack of smokes in Samantha’s hand drew Tim’s attention. The box was covered with thick, off-white masking tape.

  She caught the glance and flustered slightly. “I don’t like seeing the cancer warnings. It puts me off.”

  “Seriously?”

  Samantha’s jaw dropped but it was with a smile.

  Tim threw up his hands.

  “I know, I know,” she sighed, “I should just quit. I’ve tried before.”

  He waved away the concern like it was a fly. “It’s hard. It’s really hard.”

  Samantha brushed a loose strand of hair over her ear. “So how’s your job?” she asked softly.

  “Oh, my boss gave me shit for getting to work late today. It was only a few minutes, but he’s a real hard ass.”

  Her lips curled into a half smile. “What do you do, anyway?”

  “Paperwork,” he said. “Lots of boring paperwork.”

  “And what about for fun?”

  “Paper airplanes—oh, you mean outside of work.”

  Tim thought it was a pretty lame joke, but it made Samantha laugh and suddenly he had her full attention.

  “Yes, outside of work,” she prodded. “Like, I do Latin dance.”

  It took some time for Tim to dismiss the hypnotizing image of Samantha salsa dancing. Then a while longer to think of one thing remotely interesting thing about himself. Just when he feared he would lose her interest, he came up with something.

  “I like to cook, I guess.”

  Samantha looked impressed—genuinely. “I don’t cook, but I do love eating. Your girlfriend is lucky.”

  “Oh no, I’m single,” he said quickly.

  The hint of a smile on Samantha’s face gave him the courage to ask, “Does your boyfriend go dancing with you?”

  She laughed, “If only he existed.”

  Tim was pretty sure this might be an opening to ask Samantha out on a date, but he couldn’t figure out how to put the words together. Instead, he looked at his watch and groaned something about not wanting to go back to work.

  Samantha exhaled a puff of smoke. “Have you ever thought about quitting?”

  Tim looked down at his cigarette. “Well, sure, but then I wouldn’t have much of an excuse to go outside.”

  “No, I mean your job. Sounds like you hate it.”

  Of course he had, but there was just no way in a job market like this. Anyway, the pay was decent and he didn’t much feel like expending the effort looking for something better. He didn’t tell any of that to Samantha, though.

  “If I quit,” he said with a wink, “I wouldn’t get to talk to you, anymore.”

  She smiled. “But you’ve just met me.”

  “How would I get to know you?”

  “Well,” said Samantha, idly brushing her long, raven hair, “you could always visit.”

  “Timbo!” interrupted Doris the gossip columnist, bursting on the scene with usual fervor. “It’s been a few days. What’s new?”

  Tim pointed to Samantha. “Have you met?”

  They went through the motions—introductions, comments about the weather and lame excuses to go back insi
de. Typical behavior for Smokers Corner, but Tim felt somehow empty as he stepped onto the elevator.

  ~

  After that, Tim started paying more attention to how he dressed for work, adding classy touches like hair gel and a slightly more expensive deodorant to the mix. But after two weeks of on-again, off-again encounters, Samantha stopped showing up at Smokers Corner altogether. Tim reasoned she was just busy, but somehow this wasn’t a satisfying explanation. While he might like to think he came out to Smokers Corner purely by choice, he knew the cravings would drive him mad if he didn’t excuse himself twice a day, not counting lunch. The simple truth was that Samantha had to smoke sometime.

  Meanwhile, work became more agonizing by the day. The project he was on was taking longer than expected due to some serious miscommunication with the client. It put everyone on edge and Tim’s boss had started taking his frustrations out on the staff. It was becoming hard to bear and for some reason the smoking breaks weren’t helping the way they used to.

  After two weeks without once seeing Samantha at Smokers Corner, Tim made the mistake of asking Doris.

  “No,” she said suspiciously. “Why?”

  “I just haven’t seen her for a while.”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  Tim’s eyes widened. “What? Where did you get that from?”

  “You know what I do for a living, right?”

  Tim scrunched his eyes as if it might rewind time. “Look, just…just let me know if you see her, and don’t tell anyone about this, all right?”

  “Don’t tell anyone?” Doris blinked a few times. “You know what I do for a living, right?”

  When another week passed without any sign of Samantha, Tim tried the extraordinary: he changed his schedule. He came out to Smokers Corner at 10:30 and 3:00 one day, and then at 11:00 and 3:30 the next. The latter was especially difficult because it meant dying for a smoke all morning, not feeling much like a smoke at lunch, and then dying for a smoke all afternoon.

  In the end, this strategy failed as well. Tim never saw Samantha, and he started to suspect he might never see her again. He started analyzing every cadence of their conversations to see if he could find any clue of what might have happened to her, but he was sure there was nothing he said that would have caused her to try and avoid him. In fact, the only regret he had was not saying enough. When he told her he liked to cook and she told him that she loved food…well, that was practically an invitation, wasn’t it? He had completely missed the moment, and never once tried to follow up.

  In the end, the only reasonable explanation Tim could come up with for Samantha’s disappearance was that she had quit her job. She had just started there; after a couple weeks taste she probably realized it wasn’t for her. He had heard of people doing that before.

  Tim knew he couldn’t possibly have expected her to come out and say goodbye. They never saw each other outside Smokers Corner.

  Tim took a suck of his cigarette and found the taste stale like ashes. He flicked it on the concrete and stamped out the flame.

  ~

  Tim was on the 18th floor waiting for the elevator when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Oh, is it closing time already?”

  The tweedy voice belonged to Tim’s boss. He had on his usual blue suit and smelled like regular-scent Speedstick.

  Tim didn’t have to glance at his watch to know it was three minutes before five. “I finished up a little early today,” he lied.

  The elevator doors opened. Tim wished he could get on but knew he couldn’t.

  “Oh did you?” the boss asked snidely. “So the project is all ready to go? The client’s happy and we can all go on vacation?”

  The doors closed and Tim gritted his teeth. “No, I just mean I got done what I wanted to get done.”

  The boss went on for a while about timeliness. Tim nodded but didn’t really listen. He’d heard it all before and today had been exhausting enough.

  Finally, at five after five, Tim entered the elevator and clicked “L” for Lobby.

  One reason he always got on the elevator a few minutes early was that it took forever to get downstairs at the end of the day. The 18th floor was great for the view but terrible for getting up and down the building with any speed. On very lucky days, no one else got on the elevator and he was down and out of the office in seconds. But most days…

  Ding! The light above the door glowed “16.”

  “Dammit,” he said under his breath.

  However, his disgruntled expression soon turned to surprise when Samantha entered. She had on a low-cut black blouse and smelled faintly of honeysuckle.

  His voice cracked as he yelped “Hey!”

  Samantha’s scarlet lips grew into a warm smile. “Oh, hi!”

  Samantha pressed “G1” for the garage. The doors closed again and the elevator resumed its descent.

  “It’s been a while,” he tried.

  “I quit,” she stated matter of fact.

  “Oh,” said Tim, deflated at the realization that he had totally called it and his life really did suck as much as he thought. “So…so did you just come in to pick up your things or…?”

  For a second Samantha looked baffled. Then she laughed. “Oh no, I mean I quit smoking. That’s why I haven’t been out there.”

  Tim was stunned. All he could think to do was give a thumbs up and enthuse, “Wow, that’s really great!”

  Samantha smiled. “But I do miss our conversations—”

  “—me too. Maybe—”

  Ding!

  With great horror, Tim turned and saw the lobby.

  “Isn’t this your floor?” she asked.

  He had to stick out an arm out to stop the doors from closing. He apologized to Samantha and shuffled out. When he turned back to say goodbye, the doors began closing again. At the last second, he stuck in a foot and the doors snapped back.

  “I just wanted to say…”

  Samantha looked at him expectantly.

  “Um, have a good night.”

  “Sweet dreams,” she replied.

  The elevator shut and Tim stood alone in the lobby.

  ~

  The next day, Tim didn’t make it outside for his morning smoke until quarter after ten. When he finally got to Smokers Corner he spent the first five minutes staring at the gray sky. He wondered when the clouds would burst into water and if there would be enough of it to wash him away.

  He replayed the elevator encounter in his mind, desperate to figure out what he could have said or done differently. There just hadn’t been any time to act. If only Samantha had gotten out at the lobby—maybe they could have walked together to the train. Then he definitely would have had enough time.

  Over and over: The light flashed “16.” Samantha entered. The light flashed “L.” He stood alone.

  “16,” Samantha.

  “L,” alone.

  That’s when it came to him—a crystal clear realization of what he needed to do.

  Tim tossed his unlit cigarette into the bin and rolled up the sleeves of his gray dress shirt, revealing fiery tattoos on each arm. Then he made a swift turn for the entrance of his office building and darted inside. He flew across the lobby, sliding on the marble floor as he turned sharply for the elevator banks. He clicked the up arrow and waited.

  And waited.

  Ding! The elevator doors opened and a man and a woman stepped off, laughing. Tim popped inside and tapped the close-door button like a maniac. With a finger floating over “16,” he hesitated.

  Tim shut his eyes. What the heck did he think he was doing?

  He felt the elevator start to rise on its own and realized someone must have just called it from another floor. Tim hit 16, but now the button wouldn’t light.

  “No, no, no!”

  When the elevator finally stopped, Tim was on floor 18. The doors slid open and he saw his boss.

  “Well?” the boss asked with an annoyed glance at a gold Rolex. “Back to
work, then?”

  “I quit!”

  Tim was nearly as surprised as his boss.

  “Excuse me?”

  Suddenly, Tim felt good. Real good.

  “I hate my job and you’re terrible to work for,” Tim declared with a finger in the boss’s face. “Consider this my two weeks’ notice. And I’m taking the rest of today off!”

  Tim tapped “16” and the doors shut.

  When the elevator opened again, Tim felt like he was standing in a brand new world. Carpeting instead of tile, paintings on the wall instead of black-and-white photographs…

  “Can I help you?” called the receptionist, a nicely-dressed boy who looked fresh out of college.

  Tim straightened his hair and approached the desk. “Um, yes, I’m…I’m looking for Samantha.”

  “Last name?”

  “Um,” stammered Tim. “The sexy Samantha?”

  The receptionist nodded. “Is she expecting you?”

  “That would be weird.”

  The receptionist blinked at him a few times.

  “Please,” Tim insisted. “It’s important.”

  The boy shrugged and reached for the phone. “Hi Sam—”

  Tim laughed.

  “—there’s someone here for you,” the receptionist continued. He looked up at Tim. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Timothy.”

  The kid relayed the name and clicked the phone into its holder. “She’ll be right out. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Samantha arrived just as he was about to sit.

  “Tim? What are you doing here?”

  “I quit!” he exclaimed.

  She laughed. “That’s great! But why are you here?”

  “I want you to come out with me tonight to celebrate. I quit my job, you quit cigarettes... Let’s go salsa dancing!”

  Samantha looked a bit like she’d just had the wind knocked out of her. Tim stepped in and pecked her on the lips. Samantha gasped, but then pulled him back for something more passionate.

  He noticed the receptionist grinning like a fool from his desk.

  Into Samantha’s ear, Tim whispered, “Meet me at Smokers Corner.”

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