Smoked-Stained
Drapes
Jennifer E.
Miller
Puffing out an
exhale she said, “Trudy, wouldn’t be so nice not have to worry about a thing?
We wouldn’t be sitting in this dumpy flat with dingy motel-like furnishings and
smoked-stained drapes.”
Trudy plucked a
skinny white cigarette from its box and put it between her lips. She reached
over the table, grabbing the lighter Marissa had discarded. The end turned red
and a soon a narrow tendril of smoke swirled up.
Answering, she
said, “Yeah. Well, it’s all we got for the time being.”
Trudy watched
Marissa suck her cheeks in with a noisy inhalation, nursing her joint.
Cigarettes were so much easier and cheaper; she didn’t understand her
roommate’s preference to pot.
“I don’t think
I like the time being!” Marissa exclaimed.
“Ha! You keep
on wasting your money on weed and you ain’t gonna improve your situation” Trudy
said, puffing on her cigarette.
There was
silence for a few moments while the girls worked on their habits.
Marissa
giggled, “Wouldn’t it be great just to be sitting on a beach, smoking this shit
right now? The sun burning our skin…”
“Instead of
burning our lungs?” Trudy suggested.
“Whatever. My
stuff doesn’t have those negative consequences.” She wrapped her lips around
the joint again. It was clearly starting to take effect.
“Mine won’t
land me in the county-sponsored motel,” Trudy said.
“Cause you’ll
end up in morgue instead,” Marissa shot back.
The women
laughed, then sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Why does life
have to be so damned hard?” Marissa asked.
“Hell if I
know,” Trudy said. “God, I wouldn’t have to share someplace to live—”
“Hey now!”
Marissa interrupted. “I’m a good roommate.”
Trudy didn’t respond.
She stared out the window through the narrow gap in the smoke-stained drapes.
Being on the ground floor, she could see across the street to a pair of women
smiling and talking. One pointed to the other’s shiny handbag who promptly
showed it off. It was clearly a new purchase.
A new item of
any kind would be a luxury. Trudy bought nearly all her belongings second-hand.
She was usually behind with bills; one month it’d be utilities, the next rent.
It varied.
The
smoke-stained drapes surrounded the scene outside, outlining that shiny new
handbag. It was like it was taunting her; comparing her life to others with
luck and good fortune.
She held the
cigarette between her yellowed fingers, letting the embers slowly burn the
paper as the ashes floated to the table.
“Hey, girlie.
Use an ashtray why don’t ya?” Marissa said, as she slid the crystal dish full
of old butts across the table to her.
How many previous tenants had slid that very
same ashtray across the very same table? Trudy wondered.
Her eyes left
the scene outside to tap the cigarette over the ashtray but that was all she
did with it. She didn’t bother bringing it to her lips again. Instead, she sat
there at the table with the smoldering cigarette, with the smell Marissa’s pot
floating around her, and pondered.
“God, are you
thinking again?” Marissa asked.
“Yeah, guess
so.”
“I’m telling ya,
you should switch to these instead—” she twirled her joint “—makes everything
disappear faster—”
“I hate living
in that space between,” Trudy interrupted.
“The hell are
you talking about?”
“Between the
storm.”
“What storm?”
Marissa glanced out the window, checking the weather. She saw the two women on
the sidewalk who had begun walking away. “It ain’t rainin’.”
“It’s a figure
of speech, Marissa. I feel like I’m between a storm behind me and clear skies
ahead. As soon as I get near the clear skies, a wind gust blows me back to the
storm. I work just enough so I don’t get caught in it, but I can’t ever get out
of that space in between them.”
Marissa giggled.
“Girlie, I got extra. Want one?” She twirled the herb again.
“And what do
you think that’ll do for me?” Trudy demanded.
Giggling again,
Marissa answered, “It’ll get you high…high above that damned storm path so you
don’t have to worry about it.”
“As soon as I’m
done with a joint, I’ll just coming crashing down to earth and that storm will
be rolling above me still.”
“You’ll come
crashing down all right. Like lightening hitting a dry desert, start a fire,
and burn up your pathway,” Marissa said with a glassy-eyed gaze.
Burn up your pathway echoed in Trudy’s
head. Did that mean destruction or blazing a new path?
“I don’t like
those smoke-stained drapes anymore,” she said.
“Whatcha gonna
do about it?” Marissa asked.
“Not be
comfortable in that space between; that time being.”
“Huh?” Marissa
asked.
Trudy snuffed
out her cigarette.
“C’mon, let’s
give those drapes a good washing.”
