Buddy My Cigarette

Peter is not the major part of this familiar scene. He left me. On a particularly hot evening with a hectic meeting--I had been working with a small group of artists outside of town. I am ready to forget Peter and put pain aside. I walk into a small run-down restaurant--what occurred after the event--at nearly midnight. I am exhausted from being so tired, having had a long day of running around the city. This is the kind of restaurant that one should never visit nothing less than risking your reputation if you enter.

The fellow who first comes to mind is a fine sturdy man named Bos who frequents that place and who happens to be a friend of mine. Hie is a sensual well-built man of about forty or so who doesn't boast but prides himself on foulish talk. He likes to talk straight and talk straight he does using subtle motifs about the working class man at the mill and so on; certain injustices about people who enter into restaurants late to acquire his kind of hello and the gap in generations he had with me.


"Hello.", he says. He gives me a kind nod, he is tired too.

I dump my collapsed satchel on top of the counter.

"Hello. How are you tonight, Bos?"I say again thinking that there isn't anything wrong with challenging this man, yet feeling unsafe and brave at the same time. Of course, indeed, I am being friendly and he is friendly back in his own way.

"I'm okay.", he says and as I said before this an is for the most part a tough character. His memory is good about seeing me in there, and I kind of melt into the small coffee drinkers at the counter.

"Don't ever think I'm going to walk in here happy, Bos. I must get off that bus and find out who is coming to pick me up by phone call . . . and it's so strongly tiring." So of course, he becomes impossible about leaving me pay for a cup of coffee. We are mysterious friends.

The fact is I do not have anything in mind but getting on an Express transit toward home, when I realize I am five minutes late on a particular route: so therefore, I have myself treking up the Avenue to get another bus from downtown Pittsburgh and be off in an hour's time.

It is raining and I have no umbrella and my change is a dime sort. I give up with a sigh that a transfer will certainly give me a chance to ask the bus driver if I can do with a dime short. So the guy says yes, and I get through.

Now. The nymphs are out that night. I become lost in traffic with so many odd people I start to be amused with a fantasy about men when I see
two men on the bus using investment and stock talk. At every bus stop corner there are new faces. Attempting to make myself appear friendly I smile from time to time. We are nearer our destination.

Suddenly it is an half hour's toward home and a crowd of youngsters trot on the bus. The bus is filled with loud wild remarks and the stomping of feet at one point. The lot of them have roller skates hanging from their shoulders, of ten or so boys and girls who were going home themselves from the rink. I flash a gracious smile back at one girl who might be fourteen years old or so and too beautiful to describe. There was a man who stares directly out the window. Another man is watching the beautiful girl's face.

Well. I pray for a silent few minutes for her safety, since somehow I am touched that evening. She has painted her fingernails a high glossy wine and rum lipstick is on her. She looks like a painting. Maybe a little sorrow shows through the liplines and hazy eyes, I guess. She is certainly the best of the bunch.

So now, I will give you an account of Bos and I, since Bos is the fellow I so well like and who on this occasion gave up a few more dollars, enough to get a bowl of chili. I am eating my chili and drinking into two cups of coffee he has bought me when he speaks up and says,
"How's things."

I look him straight in the eye and say,"Terrific.
So, Bos. Why do you smoke? I already know why I do."

"I'm an animal, a pig, so what if I smoke."


"But, Bos, smoking can be hazardous to your health. That's what it says on the package."

"Yeah. ", he says, a little hurt."

I light up a cigarette.

"Bos, my name, yeah?"

"Uhhuh."

"Well, look. My cigarette is my buddy. It's always there. My buddy never quit on me. What do I have? Im a retired man with no family and no kids. I don't give no care about gettin' sick on cigarettes."

"Well, Bos. I'm smoking, but I'm worrying. So that's where we totally differ. The chili was real good. I must get home."

Someone honks for me outside. I will relay to you that particular feeling of Bos and I being good friends with the statement that "Give up on me, I won't ever come to no good." was the catalyst for my swift departure. Bos has been a sultry aftermath to a long day. And the fourteen year old girl? She sticks in my memory.

I say to Bos, finally. "Yes, Bos. See this, it is only a cigarette." I snuff it out.

"Yeah." He is tiring of my badgering by now.

"Tonight it is my buddy. Thoroughly my buddy."I say.

I see the pizza parlor distantly, the sounds of a Chevy, neon lights as I go outside in the cold wind. The glow of a light inside a car parked outside the restaurant can be hardly seen.

I know home will come soon.