Fiction - A Cigarette Away From Oblivion by Jessica Kuzmier

    He lay on the hotel bed with her, the room smelling rancidly of the sex they just had. It wasn’t a cheap hotel room, she wasn’t a cheap trick, but the whole thing smelled cheap. He wasn’t even sure what her name was. Randi, the escort service had said. But who knew. He’d lied about his name to her, and once you lied yourself, you could never be sure of the anyone else’s truth.

    Randi announced that she was going to take a shower, so he put on his boxers and jeans to go out on the balcony to smoke a cigarette. The match flickered in the wind as he lit up his tenth Marlboro since Randi came this morning. It was his two-hundred sixth since he started again a month ago. Why was he keeping track? A way to mark the time, he supposed. The higher the number got, the more time passed, the older he was.

    It was chilly in the April ocean breeze, but he didn’t care. Not much had mattered since he came home to an empty house and a good-bye note from Cathleen. But that was another life, not the one he lived now.

    Today was Easter Sunday. For six years, Easter had been a day of no sleep, just like every other holiday in between. The kids always woke him up, jumping on the bed between him and Cathleen, shaking him out of sleep like some kind of earthquake.

    He’d joke with them to compensate for the initial annoyance he’d feel at being startled out of slumber. His little tornadoes, he called them, making them laugh. He could never be mad at Shawn or Kevin for long. And then the two of them would drag him out of bed, off on the holiday hunt to find the treasure the Easter Bunny had left them. The results were always just as much a surprise to him as to the kids, because Cathleen was always the one who set up the hunt, bought the presents, wrapped them up and hid them. Somehow it never occurred to him to help her. He felt as if he’d missed out on something important.

    Today, they were all missing and he still hadn’t gotten any sleep. Some things never changed, he mused, usually the wrong things. He hung over the motel balcony smoking his cigarette, watching the hotel restaurant where all the families were coming and going for their Easter dinner. All the little girls wore their Easter bonnets. He thought of the last time that Shawn wore hers, and he smelled the salt coming off the ocean. Both had bitter tastes as he blinked moisture form his eyes. He wondered if the tide was coming in.

    There was movement coming from inside the room, the sound of a woman, her blow dryer at full speed. He could imagine Randi teasing the mound of black kinky curls that ballooned her head. God knows how he’d watched Cathleen over the years do the same to her red mane. He never understood the maddening frustration she subjected herself to over her hair. She’d look in the mirror, scrutinizing and pulling at tangles he couldn’t even see. You look beautiful without doing that, he’d say. She’d just look at him like he was an idiot and turn her attention back to her masterpiece in progress.

    Hearing Randi now, he saw her in his mind the way he saw Cathleen. She was after all, a woman, just like Cathleen was. Strange that he thought of his wife of ten years and an escort in the same vein. He wondered what was happening to him.

    There was muffled laughter coming form the balcony next to him the voices of a woman and a man. He wondered what they were doing here on Easter Sunday, if it was someone who had just found company like him for the evening. The laughter got louder and he decided, no way. They sounded happy, like lovebirds, the way he and Cathleen were ten years before, and, he thought darkly, the way he and Rachel had been a month ago.

    Funny how now all he could remember clearly about Rachel was her body, not her face. The only face he saw when he thought of Rachel was the one of rage and anguish on Cathleen, the one that told him she knew everything. Ten years gone, and he didn’t even have a good memory to show for it.

    The pack of Marlboros teetered on the edge of the railing where he’d left them and he grabbed them, panicking at almost losing them. He had to laugh as the adrenaline subsided. He was just as much of a junkie for them as when he first quit four years ago. Cathleen got him to stop. He remembered that last day. She was carrying on like a Baptist preacher, that he was acting like a bum when he was supposed to be an example for the children. How can you call yourself a Catholic, take Communion every Sunday, call yourself the head of the family when you can’t even control an addiction to a paper stick, she’d admonished him, grabbing his last cigarette from his mouth, flushing it down the toilet like it was a virus.

    With bemusement, he said then that he’d quit for her, doing it partially so he wouldn’t have to hear her yell anymore. Now all he wanted to do was hear her voice again, but as he took another drag on the cigarette, all he heard was silence.

    He wondered what his family was doing now. He hadn’t even gotten to speak to them today; when he called them, they were already out. They were at her parents’ house in California, three thousand miles from home. Cathleen was already talking of moving there for good. Shawn was starting first grade this year and she needed to have a permanent school. Besides, the kids liked the weather better there, Cathleen said. But there was no mention of his joining them.

    He imagined Shawn and Kevin lying on an LA beach, packing a sand castle together. He always was so proud of how well Shawn treated her brother. He wanted to see them again. He imagined them staring into a stranger’s eyes and smiling, calling him Daddy. What Cathleen had stolen from him. What he had stolen from himself.

    He felt an arm around him. Randi was ready for the evening. He looked at her, long African hair, sharp bony features, olive complexion hidden underneath a tan foundation, the huge sunglasses that masked emerald green eyes. Her red silk dress was one of simple elegance; she was, after all, an escort, not a streetwalker. She smelled strong; strength being something she had to convey, he thought, to make her living by dong this. She smelled like a bottle of hairspray and perfume had spilled on her, another mask to hide herself.

    He wondered what her story was, that she had come to live like this. They could have been in high school together, for all he knew. Maybe she could have been voted most likely to succeed; after all he had been voted most athletic. But she had wound up here instead. And after thirty-four years of Catholic upbringing, so had he.

    Slinking a seductive hand on his buttocks, Randi brushed his cheek with her lips. It was six o’clock; she had an hour left with him. He wondered if he would remember her tonight, after it was all over, and if she would remember him. He wondered if he would care.

    Lighting another cigarette, he beckoned her inside, closing the door behind him.