At the bar, it took a while to get service; He was worried that because the twenty-three-year-old woman had been out of his sight for so long, he might return and find her missing.
However, she didn’t, and he made sure to express his relief when she reappeared in the corner of the L-shaped room.
She was carefully typing a message on her phone. ‘One second,’ he said without looking up.
Holding both of his drinks in front of his chest, he waited for her to finish texting. He resisted making jokes about the apparent length of her message, which he knew would come across as passive-aggressive and annoying.
‘Thanks,’ she said finally, locking her phone and accepting her drink.
‘everything good?’
‘So far,’ she said.
He searched the pockets of his jacket, put his hand in one of them and took out a pack of cigarettes. Before he could ask, she said: ‘Yes, let’s go.’
*
Outside, he found himself surprised by the lightness of her hair; Back inside, it looked the same color as the room.
The smoking area was wood-paneled, narrow, and if not busier, certainly more population-dense than the bar.
They sat shoulder to shoulder among dozens of people on a bench, above which was a warm circle of light cast by an overhead halogen heater.
‘So, what have you come here with?’ The woman said.
The man cleared his throat. ‘Some friends. But I’m not sure where they went.
He lit a cigarette, went to give her a cigarette, realized that she was smoking. ‘She vape,’ he said bluntly, and he was surprised to hear her laugh.
‘I know, embarrassing. ‘I started as an alternative to smoking, but now I do both.’
‘want?’ He offered her a cigarette and said; She accepted, almost lit it the wrong way, lit it the right way, smiled at him.
‘Wait, so’ he said, exhaling a light puff of tobacco, ‘where did you say you live again?’
He said he didn’t say that, and that his apartment was the same distance from the bar as his apartment, but in the opposite direction.
