Felicity

| inquiry

[setting: sidewalk pavements outside the apts.]

 January 15, 1993

          "It was weird."

     She pulled out a green lighter from her sweater's pocket. Her hand hovering over the flame that flickered as she brought it closer to the stub's end. As the stub burned of the metallic odor that Lennon hated, she opened her mouth;

"Okay, your turn."

     Lennon's clammy hands rubbed themselves against his worn out jeans. He looked at her and then his eyes fell to her pink and cracked lips. He asked away;

        "Why do you smoke?"

     They were sitting as far as five inches apart on the sidewalk pavements, the moon hanging along with the stars in the evening. As bad as everybody's such as Lennon's, peripheral vision was, he still saw her, not moving a single muscle, only her lips inhaling and exhaling the smoke.

"Because I do - Okay, my turn."

           "It's still my turn."

                   She scoffed;

      "No it isn't."

           "Yes. It still is."

She shrugged;

          "Why do you wanna know anyways?"

Why do you wanna know? He thought to himself. After all thousands and even millions of girls like her, all in different states, cities, and counties, smoke cigarettes. So why did he want to know what one out of millions of other teenage females were smoking a cigarette?

"Because- I wanna know what a witty girl like you is doing with a poisonous thing like that."

      He gestured to the stub that was wedged between her lips. They were silent for a while. And they stayed like that for minutes.

Crickets were beginning to chirp from afar. A wave of laughing children overcame them. The sounds of their feet clanking as they ran up and down the asphalt sidewalks a block away. And yet here they both sat, as if there was a invisible wall that shielded their worlds from ever colliding.

      "Because of Andrea."

She drew the cigarette from her lips.

        "Dad used to smoke, but he stopped when Andrea gave birth to Daniel."

    She paused for a bit, drawing in the polluted air from the night.

"I smoke because I can. Because I can do whatever the fuck I want."

        And at that moment Lennon wanted nothing more but for the sun to explode and to be incinerated from existence and into smoldering smithereens.