We’re left alone for a moment, she smoking her imported cigarettes and me grilling the burgers the four of us plan to eat. I am not hearing what she is saying. I am used to ignoring her, pretending to listen. It’s sickening to hear a 34 year-old woman gripe about how her parents played favorites, or drone on about how much she hated the rich kids in her high school.
She is talking about what right now? Pagan religion? Something about goddesses? I don’t know. I watch her lips as they touch the cigarette. The ash lights up as she sucks, and then she pulls the cigarette away, exhales unceremoniously.
I remember kissing girls in college that smoked. I dated some. Heather, so clingy but willing to please. Jenny, very crazy, but gave amazing head. The tobacco taste of their kisses always seemed so different, so exotic. They seemed dirty to me.
It turned me on.
How does one go about kissing a married woman? How does one initiate contact, in the back yard, with her husband in the nursery changing a diaper, with one’s wife in the master bedroom nursing one’s own infant to sleep?
“I want to taste your cigarette.”
I have interrupted her. She pauses, studies me, looks down at the pack of cigarettes resting on the arm of her chair. “Do you want one for yourself?” she asks. “I’ve got a whole pack here.”
“No, I don’t want to waste one. I’ve just never tried one of these imported numbers.”
With her left hand, she delicately plucks the cigarette from between the fingers of her right, and reaches over the potted lemon tree to hand it to me, a wisp of smoke trailing behind.
I close my lips over the end, suck in slowly.
It tastes like a regular cigarette. I can’t tell a damn bit of difference.
The taste lingers in my mouth, and ruins the first few bites of the hamburger I eat ten minutes later.