Pg. 1
Upon the arrival to the bar entitled "Blockheads," the young lass should have known better. She should have said, "No, no. We shouldn't go out. We don't need alcohol to be friends." But she didn't. She was early, treacherously early in comparison to her friends. So early, she promptly skipped across the street to Oxford News & Smoke, in which she bought her first pack of Marlboro Lights in five years.
"Are you old enough to smoke, young miss?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"Well... good or bad, depends on how you look at it." They chuckle together - ho ho ho, ha ha ha, lung cancer, ha!
So she left the smokeshop, turned the corner in her 3" Kate Spade maryjanes, and crouched behind a bush, lighting her first-bought-cigarette-in-5-years with a Ben Sherman lighter, recently acquired at one of those British shows she'd attended last week. The damn thing wouldn't light, she kept flicking the lighter, shaking the lighter, trying her hardest to .... and finally, it lit. With a dirty thumb, she smoked until her head felt detached and very, very round. Halfway through, the cigarette became unlit, a sign from God, a sign from some Patron Saint of the No-Smoking-Sign, so she smudged the tiny bit left fuming on the bottom of the Kate Spades. She threw the cigarette into a nearby trashcan, but then suddenly panicked that it might not be fully extinguished. Hopefully there wouldn't be a flaming fire, popping out of that trashcan later on in the night, covered by the evening news and then later discussed ad nauseum by that antismoking group "The Truth."
Crossing the street to go back to Blockheads, texting furiously on her phone -- "Where r u" "R u coming?" "Hey I'm here" etc. etc. -- she discovered that two of her friends were upstairs, already guzzling frozen $3 margaritas.
Let the evening begin.
2005-05-24 | 10:34 p.m.
