A Pack of the Regular Cigarettes
short story#44
When this happened, Paco and I were drinking coffee and smoking on the sidewalk right outside the store. It was the middle of July and you know how it can be in Pamplona in the middle of July.
I had just opened the store, it was only nine am, but I was already on my eighth stick that day. It was getting worse. Earlier when the year started I was finally able to get it down to just five a day but I wasn’t able to hold out for long. My fingers were trembling and I just couldn’t take how they smelled and I was getting mad at everyone. It’s a pity. In the process I had gained seven kilos because of all the cravings and at the time I thought it was worth it because at least I was saving my lungs from cancer. Now I’m fat and my lungs are still bad. I’ve given up, I’m back to almost three packs a day. I think it’s impossible not to smoke when you’re running a tobacco store.
Paco is a baker. He owns the panadería beside my store. He opened it up twenty-three years ago and since then we’ve become good friends. Knowing my case you’d think that perhaps Paco would have a bread addiction but he doesn’t. He’s lean as a stick and that’s how I’ve always known him.
“They’ll just never understand,” he was saying, shaking his head. “They don’t know what we’ve had to go through, you and I. They’ll just never understand what they have now.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell him,” I said. “One day I saw his grades and I took him aside, just he and I, and I told him: You can’t even stay behind that counter for more than an hour yet if you keep this up you’re going to end up just like your old man. Is that what you want? You’d go nuts from boredom, knowing you.”
“Did it end well?”
I shook my head. “They kicked him out of the faculty. It looks like he’ll have no choice but to just drop out.”
Paco put the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled.
I sipped my coffee. I sighed and said, “He was the last one I was counting on. That’s zero out of four. There must be some parenting world record for that, huh?”
Paco shrugged. He always had a sort of languid, trancelike glaze in his eyes and with his gaunt face you would have thought it wasn’t tobacco leaves he was smoking. “Sometimes it’s just fate,” he said. “You couldn’t have done anything else.”
Around the time we were talking there was a young girl, a teenager, who had been passing by the sidewalk, between Paco and me. I saw her flit by but I didn’t pay attention until some minutes later I saw her pass by again from the other direction. I tried to ignore her and Paco didn’t seem to notice anything. But then she passed by us a third time. On the fourth time she walked up to us and I looked up to her from where I was seated. She was a looker, I thought that after a few more years she’d grow into a real beauty.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Is the store open?”
“Yeah,” I said, quickly flicking my unfinished cigarette to the curb.
“What will it be?” I said as I walked to the back of the counter.
She looked up at the collection of cigarettes that on the large shelf behind the counter. Her mouth was open.
“What will it be?” I said.
“Let’s see,” she said. “Just a pack of the regular cigarettes, please.”
“What? I mean to say, what brand.”
“Oh,” she said. She continued to stare up at the shelf, her eyes skimming wildly. She was tapping her finger on her lower lip. I thought I could see small drops of sweat form on her upper lip.
“You’re above eighteen, right?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
Finally she pointed to an elaborate foiled pack of Mehari’s. “Give me one of those,” she said.
“These are cigars,” I said.
“Oh. Are they different from cigarettes?”
“Very.”
She looked up at the shelf again and then she looked at me, apologetic, hesitant.
“Do you have Marlboro’s?” she said.
“Which?” I said.
“Which?”
“Which kind of Marlboro’s.”
“The regular kind, please.”
“The reds?” I said. Right away I wished I hadn’t.
“Sure.”
I took down a pack from the shelf. “That will be five euros please.”
She seemed to look relieved at this. I saw she’d already been holding a ten-euro bill, which she handed to me.
“Is that all?” I said. “Do you need a lighter?” I regretted asking that, but it has already become a habit after all these years.
“Yeah,” she said. “Right. The cheapest one you have, please.”
After she’d gone out, Paco came into the store. He was silent for a while and I refused to look at him. But I already knew him well enough to know that he was watching me, smiling smugly to himself.
“Can I tell you something?” he said. “Don’t get mad, okay?”
I didn’t answer. I pretended to look for the rag behind the counter.
“None of this is your fault.”
“Yes.”
“That’s all. At the end of the day we have to earn a living. You and me both.”
“Yes.”
He stood there. I pretended not to mind him. I bent down and started to wipe the glass of the counter with the rag. Not long after, someone entered the store, the old man Julio. He greeted the two of us.
“Well, you know where I’ll be,” Paco said to me.
“See you,” I said.
“Two of the usual,” old Julio said.
I brought down two packs of Ducados from the shelf. I didn’t even need to look at the register to see the price as I typed it in. “That will be nine euros and forty-two cents,” I said.
Old Julio’s face crumpled and he started to tap himself on the chest then on the thigh then on the butt. “I know the wallet is here somewhere,” he said.
I waited patiently, watching him. This happened every morning, I knew he was going to find it eventually. Besides, I was in no hurry. I waited, I held the two packs in my hand.
