It was about two in the morning when I decided to go out for a smoke. I was visiting relatives in the mid west and since the last two nights it had been below freezing and when I came back inside it had caused my ears to sting I bundled up in my tackiest winter gear. I walked outside and like an idiot almost slipped on the ice again. I’m still not used to icy floors fuck this weather.
Anyway I’m visiting my grandparents at an independent living old folk’s home, so I always walk a distance away partially because I like to think I don’t want my smoke to somehow magically find it’s way into the ancient one’s ventilators or something and kill them in their sleep and partially because I just want to go for a walk. The holidays are always pretty stressful.
I’ve been going out to smoke in this parking lot area where there’s a roofed alcove with cars parked in it. Usually I’m alone except for occasionally a nurse about three hundred feet away on the night shift smoking a cigarette.
There was a woman pacing back and forth underneath this alcove smoking a cigarette and wearing an eared hat that reminded me of the one Holden Caulfield wears in Catcher in the Rye.
She kept pacing back and forth. She wasn’t wearing scrubs or anything, so I didn’t think she was a staff member.
It would have been kinda funky for me to just leave so I took out a cigarette and lit it, dooming myself to company which I didn’t feel bad about at all because subconsciously I wanted somebody to talk to.
Of course I kinda forgot that I was an adult because I still think of myself as a kid and if a woman sees a man and she’s alone in a parking lot and two in the morning then she gets scared because adults tend to rape each other, which kind of made me feel awful for not doing anything.
She was definitely wary when she saw me but she seemed pretty tough and her nose was red and there was some red hair peeking out from underneath her weird hat. She had on red nail polish too and I wondered for a second if that was a thing that red haired women could pull off well.
I smiled at her and tried to be as nonthreatening as possible and when she came round to me on her track of pacing I said hi, but I really didn’t know what to say after that. I was glad that she was able to get a good look at me though and see how young I was and know that there would be no raping going on unless she wanted to do some sugar momma shit.
After she said hi back and we shuffled around a bit and her cigarette ran out and she went to get another and I offered her a light and wondered if that was a thing people did I said something fucking ordinary like “So why are you out here so late?”
She quirked her mouth in a weird way around her cigarette and exhaled. Then she said, “Can’t sleep when you’re in love.”
Which I knew to be true.
It might have been a really random thing to say but I completely got her for saying it so I didn’t care.
I asked her if she was here with family for the holidays and she said she was. Then I asked her if she was here with the person she loved and she said no.
I said that was rough.
I asked her about it and she just waved her hand and ash fell out of her cigarette and I looked at her red nails.
She took a pretty vicious hit off her cigarette and blew it out and I did the same except less viciously. It was cold as balls.
I wondered if maybe she was some kind of free spirited chic who did hippie shit. I wanted to ask her but I kinda felt like she didn’t want to talk.
So then I just said, “It’ll all be ok. Eventually in some way.” As if I had the answers instead of being an eighteen year old child with absolutely no knowledge about anything.
She nodded and said probably. Then she smiled at me, finished her cigarette, said it was nice talking to you and left.
I smoked out there for another ten minutes and felt ok.
ambitiousbastard 