Short Story / SMOKE
Jonathon Siminoe First North American Rights Only
107 Cedar Street About 3,000 words
Kearney Nebraska 68845
(308) 237-0581
Thailand # 66-9-776-8878
SMOKE
By
Jonathon Siminoe
She leaned back exhaling a cloud of smoke just above Seth’s head; it was her way of avoiding choking him with her self indulgence and usually avoiding his scrutiny. On most days this token effort was enough, but he was particularly sensitive today and the smoke—although it missed him completely—seemed to set him off. His hand came hammering down upon the table, sending plates and utensils jumping.
“Sorry,” she offered mechanically.
“I hate that shit! You know it killed my grandfather!”
She frowned, and when she frowned this angelic Chinese beauty’s face underwent a transformation of decay, a degeneration of such a massive contrast that she looked just shy of a demon. It was her perfectly plucked and brushed eyebrows curving upward like a cat about to strike, and her eyes which narrowed to black slits, and her lips not only turning downward, but thickening with a nearly geriatric looseness, which formulated this evil persona.
“It’s my only one of the day,” she said.
“I doubt that,” he snapped, pulling his fingers through his thick blond hair which he allowed to flop about his face much the way a teenage surfer would do, despite being nearly forty. His eyes, green orbs speckled with gold, fixed upon her face. “I doubt most everything you say to me to be perfectly honest.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He winced with the sharpness of her words; he used to be able to chastise her without retort, but now almost nothing he said went undisputed.
“I admitted what happened which I did not have to do. I told you what I did. You said you forgive me, but every time you have a bad day I get punished for it again. Or are you really just scared of smoke?”
He huffed. “Smoking killed my grandfather, I’m not afraid of it I’m disgusted by it. It’s a dirty habit; besides, it’s so primitive, like a black and white movie or a steam engine.”
“Well you are such a modern guy.”
She was fifteen years his junior and enjoyed reminding him of the fact that he was anything but up to date when it came to fashion, taste, or attitude. It was a joke between them most of the time; however, at times it was also a point of contention. He was the epitome of a man of routine; struggling with change, new approaches, even with putting on the new clothes which her father’s generous allowance allowed her to lavish upon him. He was afraid of anything unfamiliar to a nearly manic extent and this was getting worse seemingly with each passing week.
He leaned on routine especially when he was stressed. The weekend after her confession to him of a romantic indiscretion—an ‘I didn’t mean for it to happen’ type of offense—they’d driven to a restaurant which they often visited and when on arrival someone was seated at their usual table, he turned to her and with no particular annoyance or contemplation said, “Well, it’s taken (meaning the entire restaurant) so let’s go for Chinese food instead.”
She knew his mind was far too preoccupied with their problems for her to point out that there were several other tables—all be it not the ones which faced out toward the fish pond he loved—which were available. She nodded that he was correct and they silently departed. They went for Chinese food; sitting at the table they always sat at located near a tall Ficus which he enjoyed hiding their conversation behind. He was always in contradiction with himself about being in public, desiring privacy while being out—wanting crowds and noise to keep things lively—but to observe it from solitude and serenity, from his private reserve.
His coffee arrived, an Americana Black, which he would add two packets of sugar to, stir with five quick circular churns, and then—before it had cooled in the slightest—take a lip smacking sip. Once he had finished this ceremony she knew his mood would mellow. She waited.
“And will we go to the sea tomorrow night or should we put that off?” he asked between the stirring and the drink.
“Why would we put it off, we’ve been planning it for a couple of weeks now?”
“Well we planned it, but now we’ve been fighting.”
“Are we?” she hummed.
“Aren’t we? Yes. I don’t want to be in a bungalow on the beach together if we are going to ruin it by fighting. It’s a lot of money to spend for a better ring for us to far in.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought the trip would get us away from the arguing. Help us forget our troubles and move on… It’s a perfect chance for us to relax a little bit.”
He wanted to snap at her that it was easy for her to forget, she’d been the one fooling around with someone else and she was the one now starving for forgiveness and complete denial. He did, with every fiber of his being, want to give her amnesty, in fact if he could erase the images of her entangled in the sweaty, urgent arms of some young lover after a night of drinking whiskey and dancing on the beach, he certainly would pay any amount to lobotomize this vision. But, it had happened and no matter how many times he promised her that he would forgive and forget it over time—especially as it was a singular occurrence—he knew it was a cancer that would lay dormant beneath the skin of their relationship until someday it would once again surface. Deceit is never benign.
He had learned from his own mistakes that they are never truly forgotten. Two wives had already departed his life when he had committed similar crimes and just like her, begged for forgiveness and anticipated complete salvation—the kind promised by youth leaders in Sunday school—only to find that any and seemingly all disagreements which occurred after said forgiveness reintroduced a new fervor for opening those old wounds. In the end he had technically left both of them; however, in actuality they’d closed him out of their hearts long before he packed his things and departed.
Now it was his turn to feel the sting of betrayal. When he’d first herd her say the words he nearly suffocated from the shock, it was as if a crushing weight had pinned his chest to a concrete floor, like a dart sticking a card onto the cork of a dartboard. For days after, his gums bled from his habitual mashing of his teeth as he literally chewed upon the agony, silently lost in thought. When his teeth ached too much, he would gnaw upon the knuckles of his hand nearly manically.
It wasn’t the one night stand which was torturing him. It was his unceasing imagination which incessantly crafted an intricate web of betrayal far beyond any weekend imprudence. He envisioned romantic notes, secret hushed phone conversations, rendezvous in dim lit places, and worst of all he pictured their youthful passion abounding far beyond his own rather measured lovemaking. His heart stopped with every phone call she received. He would, after asking about her day, take mental note of every word she uttered with his compulsive need to be certain of her whereabouts and actions. He would question, always silently to himself, the distances she would say she traveled. With traffic, he’d wonder, could she really have gone from downtown to home between lunch and meeting me, or did she come from somewhere else?
“Maybe the sea would be good for us…” he mouthed, attempting to calm the storm within his mind.
“I know that it will be. I’m sure of it. There is no place you and I feel better than the sea. It will be so romantic.”
The idea of romance, the mere mention of it, and immediately his thoughts—unable to bring into focus the multitude of nights they’d shared, the love, the conversations over dinner, the physical ecstasy—and he pictured her with him. In truth he had no idea what the young man looked like, only that he was young, her age, and the son of a wealthy land developer who could afford to whisk her away for a quixotic weekend to any island of her choosing. Seth had been golfing with his work buddies the weekend it had happened and he’d been shocked, when returning home early Sunday afternoon, to find her note detailing a spontaneous trip with college friends to Ko Samui. Ironically it was a location she’d been asking to take him to for months.
Perhaps he had been arrogant or just absent minded about his doting upon her. In Thailand she was the essence of desire. Her China white complexion, long black hair, tiny features, and wealthy heritage made her desired by Thai’s elite and the nation’s common as well. Much like the TV actresses she resembled, she was blessed with the unusual skin tone, the contrasting shade—her white skin was apposed to the usual Thai dark brown and her long egg shaped face contrasted their squared profile—and this otherness made men desire her and women aspire to look like her.
Seth’s thoughts were flashing, but he’d paused too long in their conversing. She exhaled a slow breath. “Seth, are you okay?”
“Yes… Sorry. I know the beach is your favorite.”
“Our favorite,” she argued. “You are always so relaxed there; your face loses all those worry wrinkles. It is perfect for us to get out of Bangkok and smell some salt air.”
He nodded in agreement. His heart was pounding as if he’d been running to catch a cab in the rain, but in truth there was no reason for his anxiety, this had all happened a while back and since then she’d been making every effort to make him blissfully forgetful. There were just days, his exhausted ones, when it seemed to revisit him and both of them knew—without any need for it to be stated openly—that her prior unfaithfulness was why his tongue was razor sharp.
Memory was his tormentor. Her words playing over in his mind like a CD’s song on repeat—crystal clear echoes of her voice, wavering a bit from tears, detailing her journey—with no ill intent—into the circumstances which would lead to her ultimate betrayal of him. She’d only told him the story once, and in fact had made him promise to never ask her to say it all again, but he could recall every sob and syllable verbatim. To make matters worse, as he had no idea of what Samui or the boy truly looked like, he had crafted—probably mostly from movie images—the most handsome young man and the most idyllic of settings, and now his visual memory ran with her narration in the background like a documentary of a tragedy.
He was being too quiet and it was making her uncomfortable. He was staring off his eyes lost upon the pavement and the passing vehicles zooming by outside the coffee shop. “If going is too much for you to handle right now then let’s stay in Bangkok,” she mouthed. “We can see a movie or go to the park and walk. We haven’t visited Thun and Ling in a while, we could go for a nice dinner with them.”
He snapped from his self tormenting. “No. I’m so bored with Bangkok. I’m so bored with my work. I’m really sorry. It’s not you; I just have a lot on my mind from work. Just can’t get any peace and quit there you know.”
“Peace is important.”
“Well yes, I’m tired of the struggle. Maybe I don’t have that rookie vigor I once had… I wish you’d have seen me in my late twenties. I was running a division in Boston back then. I was a handful, never quit, good enough was not good enough for me or for my staff. It was a thrill in those days just to be such a player in the field.”
She smiled. “Your eyes always come alive when you talk about your Boston days.”
“Memories, just memories, but I’m happy since coming to Thailand… Slow paced, but steady and interesting.”
“And the promotion you mentioned last week? You have hardly mentioned it since that first time, and you never told me the details.”
He shook his head, leaning back as if he was about to tell a joke. “I turned it down in the end. A nice offer and a compliment to my work, but not right for me at the present time.”
“Why? I mean maybe a new challenge is just what you need. You’re still very young… Not even forty. Sometimes you talk like your sixty or something and ready to retire and go sit in a rocking chair all day.”
“The promotion would have taken me to Singapore…” he said, pausing to observe her expression.
“A plane ride away… A short one…”
“True…”
It was not the response that he’d been hoping for. Only a few months ago her eyes would have been filled with tears at the thought of him leaving Bangkok, but now, despite her begging for his forgiveness for her infidelity, her heart had hardened—tempered by his verbal shots and their recent squabbling.
“What if I said,” and he paused to look into her eyes and be certain that she could feel his words, “I said that you were my new challenge. I make plenty of money, well for living in Thailand anyway, but I’ve never had a relationship worth anything.”
Her eyes closed as if she was catching his words behind her eyelids and holding them there for a moment; and then she smiled. “Maybe we could go to Singapore together? Maybe we could move there, just the two of us.”
“You want to go to Singapore?”
“Together, I want us to be together and why not Singapore? It would be the two of us; it would be the place for us to start our relationship again.”
That was it, he thought, Singapore, an island refuge from their Bangkok problems. A place for them to begin a new—be alone, without her friends and their incessant phone calls—and there his painful memories could be endured if it would finally bring about peace. Every man had to sacrifice to achieve a peaceful existence. Every prize comes at a price. And what a sweet surrender this would be for him, a doting girlfriend spurred to please him by their dependence upon one another in a city of strangers. He could picture it and this was returning some of the color to his pallid cheeks and putting a smile on his face.
“Besides,” she continued, “Singapore is a lovely place, so clean and orderly. It is the exact opposite of Bangkok.”
He hesitated, fighting an eruption, feeling the tremor before an emotional earthquake. It was his memory, that most specific and distrustful mind of his was rotating a detail—chiseling it from the hundreds of arguments and discussions concerning the boy she had given herself to, and suddenly the nation of Singapore became vividly clear. “You would like to live there, in Singapore?” he said, just as monotone as he could manage, but beneath his words was an air of suspicion.
“I think it would be away from Bangkok and I want to get away from Bangkok, from our problems, and start over. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. You and I to have a chance…” her words faded as his eyes, intense with distrust and indignation seized her tongue.
“Wasn’t he from Singapore?”
She shook her head. “He’d gone to university there, but why does that matter? It has nothing to do-”
“Is he there now?” he insisted, “Is he there?”
She lowered her head hiding beneath her long black bangs. Her nails scraped lightly across the tabletop as she slid her hand in his direction.
He did not allow her to reach him; instead he lunged forward and combed her shock of black hair away from her face so that he could unveil her eyes. It was a stage curtain falling down around its players or a film real melting frame by frame within the projector—all fantasy evaporated.
Every patron in the coffee shop turned their eyes to him as he began laughing, not a chuckle or a snicker, but a belly-laugh which rattled up through his lungs and bounced from ceiling to floor and from the coffee counter to the patio door. Her head went from side to side in a slow motion acknowledgment and then, he rose to his feet looking down on her as if he was a priest upon a pulpit. “He is there,” he muttered, “Isn’t he?”
Her top row of teeth pressed almost undiscernibly into her bottom lip. She sipped her coffee as if in thought, then set the mug down. He stood there waiting for her response—a denial or confession—but she said nothing. She was mute even as she, after gathering her things into her purse without haste, brushed past him on her way to the door. She exited the shop, leaving him standing there with a room full of strangers watching the scene from behind their coffee mugs, magazines, and laptops.
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I like the tittle. Smoke is an interesting, shape-shifting elelment.
I don’t know anything about Thailand, but I will try.
I really enjoy the interactions between the two cgharacters. Good job with that.
The “he didn’t bother to answer…” paragraph doesn’t make much sense. It contradics Pon’s statemeant. I am confused.
“the Whiteman’s Thai” I don’t think that whiteman needs to be capitalized.
You do a wonderful job of explaining the culture.
“thickening with a nearly geriatric” thickening of the lips and geriatric do not see to go together at all.- But I do like the description of her frowning face.
The stuff about his routine needs some smoothing out.
They almost feel more like friendly co-workers than a couple.
I don’t feel like it works when you decribe how contradictory he is in public places about being private. I think that you can do without and just let the reader pick up on it on their own if you know what I mean.
“miss understanding,” – misunderstanding.
I am not a fan of the jump in perspective from her’s to his.
It drags on and gets a bit boring in the middle.
Too much detail with the ex-wives. Just don’t need that much.
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I don’t understand. Humor? Wicked? Explain what you meant here. I’ve just put a number in the box, for now.
I read this original version. And I’ve started--don’t think I finished--the updated version—which, in the updated version, I must admit, I like the addition added at the start of this original piece, but I like this piece too. So play it, either way, depending on where you wanted to take this.
For me, personally, I find the dynamic between the two people is good. They get to the point, in their conversations and nothing rings false.
Sometimes--particularly when the man is contemplating things--the flow gets a little slow (not always; and I’m not sure why, as this whole story concept is pretty straight forward.)
I’m not sure why (maybe I’m out of the habit of reading this level of prose) I find some of the metaphors clunk…on me. They sorta get in the way of the flow, is my point. I’ve taken to reading this stuff aloud—as I’ll continue to do with your stuff (and again, sorry for the delay, but I’m glad I did, cos I figured you and your writing out and it’s very good!)
Let me know what else you’d like me to watch for or comment on, in this piece. I really like the descriptions. Well placed; and well timed.
Thank you.
Heather
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First of all, get rid of all those long sentences and the hyphens (-). It is very tiring to read. Then, dispurse the narration a bit with more dialogue even if you have to have ‘flashbacks’ to the scene where he had cheated on his ex wives or the scene when she got caught cheating, herself.
You describe the girl but you need to open up her description a little at a time to the reader and same for the man, Seth. Don’t put all the description in one paragraph. Show more than tell. The narration just goes on endlessly, getting quite boring with what description you do include. This could be a very good story if embellished a bit.
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