Renegade Bench Drag

Aren't you smarter than that? Said a passerby with a tote bag, to The Renegade relaxing on a bench and following slow drag with slow drag. He looks at her without malice and does not respond. Adjusts his arm on the back of the bench as she walks away.

A man comes up, he's in that ambiguous 30s age range, with a short sleeve button-up (plaid) mostly tucked into jeans, and New Balance's in an unassuming gray. He's like an amorphous clay ball that has already started baking a little on the windowsill. He sits down on the bench next to The Renegade. Says, “Smoking?” where his voice changes pitch two and half times in the word, like he started out scolding and realized that and changed his mind and wanted to be conversational and then just wasn't sure in the end. You know, “Smoking?”

The Renegade, he coughs phlemy, allergic, turns his head to face the man then says, “Well because I have this cold anyway, I may as well smoke.” Coughs, drags. Coughs. Glances unhurriedly across the grass. “You know it cancelled out the coffee breath, sort of. Ha-ha.” Ha degenerates to cough and he continues the thought, while ashing the cigarette, “There's a classic combination- coffee and cigarettes.”

The man is picking out a position while he listens, settles for hands on knees and a slight incline towards The Renegade. Is unaware of the tiny furrow in his brow.

The Renegade continues, “The inside of my mouth- maybe now it tastes like Such a poetry slam.”

The man responds. “That would be the pretty- romantic?- version.”

The Renegade had been taking a drag while the man spoke, exhaled with his face turned away but not his eyes, and then said, “Ok, or a truck stop then.”

Quick, is the man, with, “Hey I wasn't judging, wasn't judging” and his words trail while he nods. Both of them look out from the bench, together on the bench surveying the grass. The Renegade lights another cigarette.

“We all die anyway, right?” says the man, and at this, the smoker, The Renegade, he looks at the man who can't decide if he's old or feels old or what- and if he wasn't The Renegade he might have sighed- but he just looks a moment and gets up and hold out his hand with the cigarette.

“You want?”

He walks away when the man takes the cigarette (and the man is smushing it now, a little bit, between his fingers) and, in a couple of seconds when he looks back at the man on the bench he sees a smoky aura rising. And sees him put the cigarette out.