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Description
I made a friend, in the summer of '96. This is pretty significant because I don't make many friends, and that year was a particularly lonely one. We worked together in a hotel bar on the outskirts of Vegas, and after work I'd smuggle half a bottle of rum or bourbon from behind the counter and we'd finish it together in the carpark while smoking our lives away and talking about tomorrow's weather.

We were both depressed. People used to tell us that we were sad because we were pessimists, but they didn't have a damn clue. True pessimists are the happiest people in the world. No, we were cynics; which is to say, optimists who had their hopes dashed a few too many times, but secretly couldn't stop believing in the world, in all its ugliness and promise. It's a terrible state to be in.

Her husband had left her, or she had left her husband; I never asked which. Like me, she'd been pinballing from state to state for years by the time we met. You don't get from Washington to Nevada by foot and car without it leaving something behind. On hot days you could see the scars where Tennessee had taken its toll. I hid my Californian marks better.

She smoked exclusively through her nose. I've never met anyone since who's quite done that. She'd suck deep on her cigarettes, her eyes blinking shut rapidly like faulty fluorescent lights. She would hold the smoke deep within herself for what seemed like an era. Then a pair of twin vapor trails would leave her nostrils, dissipate, make love to the humid afternoon air.

She once told me about a dream she'd had.

"In my dream," she said, in between cigarettes, "I was a snake. An immense snake who slept deep, deep below in the secret chambers of the world that hold no names. And then the earth above my head cracked and split open with a roar, and I realized at once that the world was an egg, and all the cars and pollution on the surface had incubated me, and that I was supposed to destroy the world."

"Did you?"

She nodded. "I think so."

"That sounds horrible."

"No," she said. "It was a good dream. It felt good."

She hung herself in '99. I saw it in the corner of some newspaper. She was convinced the world was going to end, and she didn't want to get caught in the traffic. To be perfectly honest I think I might have been in love with her. Or at least the way she smoked.

Description
I made a friend, in the summer of '96. This is pretty significant because I don't make many friends, and that year was a particularly lonely one. We worked together in a hotel bar on the outskirts of Vegas, and after work I'd smuggle half a bottle of rum or bourbon from behind the counter and we'd finish it together in the carpark while smoking our lives away and talking about tomorrow's weather.

We were both depressed. People used to tell us that we were sad because we were pessimists, but they didn't have a damn clue. True pessimists are the happiest people in the world. No, we were cynics; which is to say, optimists who had their hopes dashed a few too many times, but secretly couldn't stop believing in the world, in all its ugliness and promise. It's a terrible state to be in.

Her husband had left her, or she had left her husband; I never asked which. Like me, she'd been pinballing from state to state for years by the time we met. You don't get from Washington to Nevada by foot and car without it leaving something behind. On hot days you could see the scars where Tennessee had taken its toll. I hid my Californian marks better.

She smoked exclusively through her nose. I've never met anyone since who's quite done that. She'd suck deep on her cigarettes, her eyes blinking shut rapidly like faulty fluorescent lights. She would hold the smoke deep within herself for what seemed like an era. Then a pair of twin vapor trails would leave her nostrils, dissipate, make love to the humid afternoon air.

She once told me about a dream she'd had.

"In my dream," she said, in between cigarettes, "I was a snake. An immense snake who slept deep, deep below in the secret chambers of the world that hold no names. And then the earth above my head cracked and split open with a roar, and I realized at once that the world was an egg, and all the cars and pollution on the surface had incubated me, and that I was supposed to destroy the world."

"Did you?"

She nodded. "I think so."

"That sounds horrible."

"No," she said. "It was a good dream. It felt good."

She hung herself in '99. I saw it in the corner of some newspaper. She was convinced the world was going to end, and she didn't want to get caught in the traffic. To be perfectly honest I think I might have been in love with her. Or at least the way she smoked.