Read Online Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers - Free Book Online Page B

in the empty air.

    An hour or two later, David opened the door to his hotel room. John was curled up in an easy chair, rocking slightly. He was in his underwear, his hair ruffled and an empty
bottle at his feet. He didn’t seem to notice David come in.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘I lost track of time. I went for a walk see, and before I knew it I was out in the middle of nowhere, I mean, really lost . . .’
    David wanted to tell John all about Flagstaff, about the casino, and its clientele, but the words died on his lips. He could see that his friend was shaking, his body stuttering in the
twilight.
    ‘Are you okay?’ David said. ‘What the hell happened?’
    John looked at his friend and then to the floor. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ John said. ‘I don’t ever want to talk about it.’

Underground

For several years he had spun a solid and convincing story about an inherited sleeping disorder. It had been passed down, he claimed, on his mother’s side of the family
and it meant he often woke up screaming, or was unable to sleep at all. It wasn’t anything to worry about, he’d reassured her with his arms hooked over her ribs, it was just a part of
him, like his height or his shoe size. ‘Doctors call them the night terrors,’ he’d said with a wry smile. ‘Makes them sound like some old aristocratic family, doesn’t
it?’ She’d laughed a little and then kissed him. He slept right through that first night, and slept for many nights afterwards.
    Some weeks later, when the attacks first began, Jean felt prepared for them. She woke instinctively and immediately tried to calm him. She held him tightly and felt the erratic beat of his
heart; she stroked his hair and told him that he was safe, that she’d got him. Peter lay in her arms immobile. When she tried to hold his hand it did not easily yield and when it did, it did
so grudgingly. She spoke softly, reassuringly, saying the very first things that came into her head. She talked about her dreams and her ideas for the house they would own; the cars they would
drive, the places they would visit. And she held him close until he eventually drifted off to sleep. This went on for months. By the time they moved into their three-bedroomed house, however, she
had become accustomed to his screams and shudders, and neither now woke her in the night.
    Her father and mother had been a pair of sometime insomniacs. As a teenager, she was used to getting up in the night and seeing one or other of them sitting on the sofa, perhaps reading a
magazine or sipping a hot drink. Sometimes she would stay up with them; other times just get a glass of water and take it back to bed. She always thought this was normal, so she was surprised to
discover that her first husband could sleep through just about anything. She’d always found this somehow creepy. ‘I was dead to the world,’ he’d say and she’d think
what a perfectly horrible phrase: so chill and unpleasant. That the marriage lasted less than a decade was not solely down to his sleeping, though she couldn’t help but believe it betrayed a
fatal flaw somewhere deep in his character.
    Peter’s flaws were more obvious, apparent from the moment she first met him. It was the company summer party and he had been coerced into attending by his boss. Jean had never seen him
before – he was a consultant – and he looked uncomfortable. He was dressed in a slovenly suit, with persistent flakes of dandruff on his shoulders, pricks of sweat on his top lip. They
were in a garden under attack from an abundance of greenfly. An unfortunate woman in yellow was covered in them, dots of them sticking to the fabric of her dress. Jean was standing next to him when
they both saw the woman – Kathy from sales validation – lose her patience and try to brush all the insects from her skirt.
    ‘I bet you’re glad you didn’t wear yellow,’ Jean said to him.
    ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘It would clash