GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS

Here is another in a series of micro-stories I wrote featuring smokers.  Let me know what you think.  I’ll post a fresh piece tomorrow, hot off the press. 

Stay home,  wash your hands and be sure your neighbours are in good shape.

by Jerry Donaldson

about 500 words

Standing on the balcony of his 14^th floor Vancouver condo, Jack stared at the butt of Laurie’s last cigarette, crushed out in a steel ashtray on the little bistro table. It was stained with her red lipstick.

She’d always looked great in red. At the Cinemax in a short red dress, red lipstick and nails, her white teeth flashing while they laughed together in the ticket line up. Or at the wheel of her red Porsche Speedster, her blonde hair flying as they cruised the city streets on a warm August evening. Laurie loved to drive fast.

He dumped the ashtray into a wastebasket and wiped it out. He wiped down the glass table top and carried their two dinner plates inside. Larry the dog followed him in, hoping for scraps.

“Sorry, chum,” said Jack, “nothing this time.” He put the plates into the dishwasher. Then he opened a can of beer and took it with him back out onto the balcony. Larry followed him. Jack stretched out in a canvas deck chair.

Man and dog then watched the last embers of the early September sunset extinguished by the warm, creeping darkness.

Jack didn’t smoke, and over the six weeks of their whirlwind romance he’d insisted Laurie light up outside. After a breakneck session in the bedroom Laurie would wrap herself in his purple terry bathrobe and go have a smoke on the balcony. Jack would sit across across from her at the little glass table wearing only boxers. There were probably neighbours peeping. So what.

Tonight they’d eaten Chinese take-out together on the balcony, and she’d told him they were done.

She’d taken a hard pull on her cigarette and said, “I’m moving on, Jack, it’s been fun, but I don’t see us as a couple.”

“I guess I didn’t make it through my probationary period.”

“Something like that.”

She’d then taken the last drag off her cigarette and stabbed it into the ashtray. She smoked them right to the filter. Every last puff. That was the way she lived: pedal to the metal, balls-out, hell-bent for leather.

“Yeah, babe, you’re probably right,” he’d said. “We had some great times though, didn’t we?”

“You know it.”

Laurie’d opened her little clutch purse, taken out her lipstick and touched up her full red lips. Then she’d capped the silver tube, dropped it back into her purse and snapped it shut. She’d leaned across the little glass bistro table and kissed him full on the lips, soft and slow. Then she’d stood up.

“Gotta run, stud, see you,” she’d said. And then she was gone.

It was now full dark out. Larry was snoring gently. Jack looked at his IPhone and noticed it was only 9:30. It felt a lot later.

“C’mon, Larry,” he said, getting out of his chair, “I’m wiped, let’s have an early night.”