Patrick Quinlan - Smoked

“Are you going to tell Smoke about what happened?”

“Why? So I can upset him? So he can decide to be chivalrous and go off looking for them and maybe get himself killed? There’s nothing anybody can do, and besides, no harm done. I fought them off. I won.”

Pamela didn’t smile. “But what about the next one? Will she win? What if it was me? Would I have won?”

Lola was silent.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“I think you should tell Smoke and then you should go to the police.”

Lola began to think she should have gone to Smoke’s for dinner. If Pamela was going to be so adamant about this, what slip of her tongue might be loosed during conversation after a few glasses of wine?

But then, going to Smoke’s would be too strange. Lola rarely went to Smoke’s apartment at all, and never went there to stay the night. She liked many things about Smoke. She liked that he worked with his hands, and that his hands were the thick, rough and strong hands of a working man. She liked the smell of his evening cigar, especially when they were on the deck together, looking out over the water and the sweet smoke would pass for a second before the breeze lifted it and took it away on the air. She liked his smile, and the fact that he chose to do his work for children. She liked that he was so smart. It seemed he could make anything.

But she didn’t like his apartment. He lived in a dingy basement efficiency with bad light. He kept books and papers piled up on the kitchen table at all times. He kept six cats which had the run of the place, with all the unpleasantness that suggested. Their litter boxes were in the bathroom, and Smoke wasn’t the most fastidious man on earth about cleaning the boxes. Smoke often brought greasy and dirty pieces of machinery into the apartment from his shed out in the garden, and left these either on the kitchen table or on the floor. Finally, the place smelled like smoke. It wasn’t the wisp of cigar smoke blowing on the wind, but the built-up smell of dozens of cigars trapped in the apartment during the three-year period he had lived there.

No sir. Lola did not want to spend the night in such a place. She had done it a few times, waking up each time with a cat nestled on her head and the smell of cigars in her clothes. They had come to an agreement. If Smoke wanted to spend the night with her, then he had to spend it at her place.

They lived on the top floor of a three story brick building at the top of Munjoy Hill. It was a large two-bedroom apartment. The back deck gave out on a view across the back yard to the Eastern Promenade, and a splendid view of the harbor and sailboats out there.

The apartment below them was empty. When the previous tenants had moved out, the landlord had decided to renovate, and so workmen were there during the day on weekdays, and in the evenings no one was down there. On the very bottom was an old man who had come to Portland to play with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Pamela had a crush on him.

Which brought Lola to the crux of the Pamela conundrum – she was attractive, smart, and well-read. She kept herself fit by jogging and working out with weights, and made good money as a librarian at the Portland Public Library. Yet in two years together, Lola hadn’t seen Pamela go out on a single date with a man.

Oh Pamela.

“I just think,” she would say, “you know, you’ve got an old man and it seems to be working out, so maybe I should go for one myself.”

“Pamela,” Lola said, “Smoke is almost 60. Okay, he’s a lot older than I am. But Mr. Scheiskopf must be 75 at least. That’s old. I mean, who can say if he even gets it up anymore, or even wants to?”

“Is that all that matters?”

Lola shook her head. “Obviously, that’s not all that matters. But it’s one of the things that matters, at least to me. Men are good for some things. Other things, they’re not so good for. That happens to be one of the things they are good for.”

Pamela smiled. “Oh, I bet he does get it up. He’s fit for his age. He’s a musician. He’s vital and creative. I bet he does everything, wants everything. He wants to experience everything right up to that last moment. He wants to be fully alive.”

Lola held her tongue. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed the library might not be the greatest place to meet men.

Not that it mattered. Lola thought a woman could go about her business and have a full life without a man in it. She had spent plenty of time without a man in her own life. But for Pamela, men seemed an obsession. She wanted to be with a man, but then seemed to repel them as though they were invaders. If any young attractive man approached her, she went stone cold. Then she developed elaborate fantasies about people like Mr. Scheiskopf, a man she had hardly ever spoken to. She didn’t know anything about him except he was a musician and played for the Symphony. Sometimes the two of them heard the strains coming from his violin as they entered the building. Scheiskopf was practically a hermit, yet Pamela had given him this rich life as a vital genius musician. Who really knew what he was doing in there?

Lola, on the other hand, had never suffered a lack of male attention. In fact, she had always received too much of it. She knew she was sexually attractive from the time she was twelve. She was long and leggy. She had wild curly hair and deep brown eyes. She was high-yellow black, with a taste of American Indian blood in her that gave her an exotic look. The family legend had it that her great-great-grandfather was a Sioux who had fought at Little Big Horn alongside Crazy Horse. Lola often felt she had the blood of that long-lost Indian brave singing in her soul. It was like she could feel him there, approving when she took the bold and courageous road in life, quietly disapproving when she was not brave.

What would be the brave thing to do here? To go to the police? To tell Smoke?

She thought warmly of Smoke – her old man. He had a way about him, a quiet confidence, that made her want to be with him. He was handsome, for sure, and the best lover she had ever had. She remembered the first day she had seen him at the school where she had started working as a teacher’s assistant. All the women there were enthralled with him. He came to the school because he made toys for the special children, especially the ones who came from poor families. They were wonderful toys with lights and sounds and big colorful buttons. The children would laugh and laugh, delighted each time they pressed a button. And Smoke made the toys for free – the story went that he was a retired engineer and inventor who had made a lot of money and who was now giving of himself. His eyes had a glint to them as he played with the children, a sparkle that made her think of a slim and wiry Santa Claus. When her eyes met his, it was there between them the very first time.

“Young lady,” he said. “If we’ve met before, and I don’t recall the exact day and time, then I must be growing old indeed.”

But he was no fighter. He had a bum leg that he had broken as a child and that had never healed properly. He could barely walk without his cane. And there was nothing in his personality that was violent or even aggressive. In fact, despite his strong hands, and the forearms of a sailor, Smoke was about the gentlest man she had ever met.

No, she wouldn’t tell Smoke about what had happened. She didn’t want to drag him into some kind of showdown he wasn’t built for. If there was any more to what had happened, she could and would handle it herself.

They were just about done putting the dinner together. Pamela poured a little more wine in both their glasses.

“So what are you going to do?” she said.

“I’m going to wait and see,” Lola said. “Okay?”