---

---

Cigarettes, I love them, he says. I could smoke two or three at a time. He does, he lights up three of a kind fat with tobacco and sucks on them, a three-eyed mouth just level with your eyes.

Because you're kneeling.

The three eyes talk: So you don't smoke. You don't believe in smoke, you're some health nut with lungs like lilies. Or you do and this is all you get: he sucks in and blows a vast cloud into your face.

You could cough but you swallow it.

He sweeps all three cigarettes out of his mouth into one hand. The other holds coffee. Six more cups—can't really see, you can't really count anyway, you can't get from one to two in such a situation—there's a lot of cups looking very very hot, steam over them and full to the brim, you can just see the brims, these cups sit on the table behind him.

He's flop-breasted, a she?

She holds the cigarettes high, above her head, pinkie out, one burning white finger between each of hers, and it's the burning you watch, and the smoke, curling, and she takes a sip from the cup she is holding and spits it out.

On you.

Sorry, she says. It's too hot. Then she pours all the coffee from the cup into a puddle around your knees.

You can't and don't move.

She picks up another cup and sips from it. Too bitter, she says.

A second searing spit to your face. And on it goes until she skips with the sipping and just pours the coffee right to the floor. Because it's getting cold, she says, but it's not.

She likes the pool, she almost touches it with her boot but then doesn't, she decides it might stain the toes is what she says. Watch it, she says. Then she takes a long serious drag on one of the cigarettes, like it's the last she'll ever take. By then all three cigarettes look short. She sweeps the three of them up again in a bunch in her hand and moves them
so close to your face you hear ash break off, and her breathing.

I know you know nothing, she says.

You say, Yes, you know nothing.

She moves the cigarettes between her fingers, then further down, to the joints, and makes a fist. She has done this before, the cigarettes hold steady, her fist is poised.

I know nothing, you say again. Nothing.

She waves the cigarettes in front of your eyes then drops them into the coffee pool at your feet. The hiss could be a snake's.

I can wait, she says.

© 2006 Terese Svoboda