SMOKE BREAK

When I saw my elderly neighbor, Ms. Lakshmi, shivering on the bench outside our apartment as the clock crept up to midnight, a part of me wanted to laugh. Another part of me, the part that hadn’t been numbed by tequila, felt bad for the old wench. Ms. Lakshmi had been the bane of my existence ever since I moved to Jackson Heights two years prior. Every day, without fail, she filled my apartment with the thick stench of burning tar. No matter how many windows I opened or scented candles I lit, a seemingly continuous stream of cigarette smoke wafted through my vents to hotbox my studio with sooty air. It coated my clothes, my hair, my books, with its sticky smell. I tried sliding sweet notes, signed off with an affectionate ‘xx’ and a smiley face, into her mailbox, or catching her attention in our hallway with a smile plastered across my face to get her to change her ways. I even considered slipping weed under her door with the hopes of making her addiction pivot, but it was all to no avail. Eventually, I began to wonder if she purposely blew smoke into our shared vents just to piss me off. It would align with her unfriendly nature, seen by the way she refused to return my pleasantries whenever we happened to share the elevator.

I watched her silhouette, lit only by the soft glow of the streetlight next to me and the weak sparks of the lighter in her hand, in sick fascination. Ms. Lakshmi’s frail thumb struggled to push against the wheel of her lighter. Over and over again she tried, her concentration carving a thick crescent moon between her eyebrows and halfway up her forehead. It was guilt more than pity that made me stumble over her. After all, it was the fourth floor’s joint effort that forced her out of her apartment and into the chilly night for her nth cigarette of the day. Led by Unit 405’s Cheryl Morgan, whose yappy dog kept me up into the late hours of the night, we sent a petition to my weaselly landlord to stop Ms. Lakshmi’s apparent attempts to give us lung cancer with her secondhand smoke. She stared up at me in shock as I plopped down next to her on the bench. I suppressed a shiver, though I didn’t know if it was from the cold metal pressing right above the band of my jeans and into the small of my back or from how deeply her eyes sank into her face. 

“I got you.” I reached into my purse, fishing through old receipts and lip glosses to find my lighter. I always carried it with me, even though I didn’t need it. I was never a smoker, although I kind of wished I was. I had tried, once, as a freshman in college, but Daniel, my boyfriend at the time, laughed with such condescension when I told him it burned that it still rang through my ears six years later. But I still carried a lighter with me because the press of it against the inside of my palm made me feel grown-up. It was a reminder that I could be a smoker if I wanted to be if I tried hard enough at it. Earlier that night, I had used it to light some Columbia grad student’s joint as I lied to him for sport. I’m Raina, Psych major. I’m a senior in my undergrad, yeah, I also go to Columbia. I let him make out with me like a teenager in the bathroom and relished in his ugly little grunts, in the power I had over him, a grad student at Columbia. Now, I was pulling my Hello Kitty lighter out for Ms. Lakshmi, who had still never spoken a word to me. 

My lighter birthed its fire with the very first press of my thumb. I held it in front of Ms. Lakshmi’s small mouth, my other hand cupped around the end of her cigarette to protect it from the August night wind. From up close, the warm light illuminated different dimensions of Ms. Lakshmi’s face, exposing a new wrinkle on her wilting skin with every flicker of the flame. Her eyes were surprisingly large, framed by long eyelashes that looked almost doll-like and suggested that she might have actually been pretty in her youth. A red dot, which according to Cosmopolitan’s article on Gwen Stefani’s most iconic looks was called a bindi, punctuated the middle of her forehead, right between her barely-there wispy eyebrows and above her long, hooked nose. Her thin lips, darkened to a blackish purple from years of smoking, tightened as she took a deep inhale. When she exhaled, her chest rattled with the force of her breath. I did my best not to cough, but my eyes squeezed shut instinctively to stop them from tearing up from the intensity of the cigarette smoke as it blew into my face. I hoped she didn’t notice, and she didn’t seem to, too caught up in her own relief as the nicotine hit her bloodstream. I knew I could get up to leave at this point, instead I let the soft breeze and secondhand smoke sober me up as the two of us sat in the dimly lit silence. When she was done, she flicked the end of her cigarette into the dirt, grabbed her walking stick, and hobbled away without a word. 

•••

The next morning, Ms. Lakshmi was back on the bench. Somehow, she looked smaller in the sunlight. She was wearing a dull green sort of long dress, with sleeves halfway down her sun-spotted arms, and loose pants. The late summer heat had left her with pellets of sweat dripping down the side of her neck and two thick sweat stains under her armpits- a clear sign that she had been sitting outside for quite some time. So, despite the fact that I was running late for work, I took my seat next to her. I didn’t care much for the job anyway. Working in HR at a startup that would never take off could not arouse passion even in the lamest of people. It was meant to be a placeholder, something to satisfy my parents as I chased my dreams in New York. The issue was that an undergraduate degree and two years had passed and I still hadn’t found a dream to chase. I tried my hand at writing songs but kept accidentally stealing melodies that I heard off the radio. I took acting lessons and dance classes and bought sketchbooks but only used the first few pages. My desire to be a starving artist died with my lack of ability and the realization that 24 was probably too old to be a prodigy. But maybe being a few minutes late to work could count as an act of passion, a revolt against corporate America through the form of helping an old woman with her nicotine addiction. 

“Thank you.” Her acknowledgment was almost as shocking as the way her voice rumbled, sounding the way that running your hand across rough asphalt would feel. 

“No problem.” I tried to sound nonchalant and not like my throat was closing at the secondhand smoke from her Marlboro Blues. Once she was done and ready to hobble away, I stopped her for just a moment. “I’m late for work now.” She just hummed in response. “I’ll come downstairs earlier tomorrow.” She hummed again, and a routine was set. 

•••

  I found that her presence really sobered me up after a night out. On weekends, I’d stagger over to her and sit in silence until my head stopped spinning. Sometimes I’d struggle with the lighter, but she never commented on it. When I didn’t go out, I set an alarm for 11pm so I’d remember to head downstairs and sit with her. I scarcely needed the reminder, though. I strangely looked forward to her silence, the peace of just sitting in her stench. The bench felt like a neutral zone, where the pressures of bills and my failed dating life didn’t exist. However, weeks after we had first met, I broke our silence on one of my many drunken nights. 

“You smell like a chimney.” My drunk self couldn’t help it. 

“You smell like rum.” This was probably the most words I had ever heard her say in succession up until this point. 

“Tequila, actually. Are you wearing makeup?” She seemed to have put effort into looking good today. Her long, artificially black hair forewent its usual tight bun for a thin braid that lined her spine and went half way down her back. Instead of her usual attire, which Google taught me was called a kurta, she wore a dark blue saree. 

“Only kajal.” Thick black eyeliner coated her top and bottom lash lines. 

“It looks good.” It didn’t. Her shaky hands had smudged the eyeliner messily, and she was left looking somewhat like a raccoon. “Did you have a hot date or something?” She tutted at me before a shy smile broke over her face. 

With her lips wrapped around her cigarette, she said, “I went to visit my son.” I had never seen her without a stern look in her eyes with her lips typically pulled taut and twitching downwards at their corners. But now, the wrinkle between her eyebrows that I had grown accustomed to eased and a softness overtook her features. I had no idea she had a child, had assumed that she was alone in the city just like me. A strange part of me felt betrayed, maybe even jealous, at the warmth in her tone, though I kept this hidden. 

“You have a son?” She hummed. “What’s his name?” 

She took a deep drag and spoke through the smoke, “Karan.”

“How old is he?”

“45.”

“Is he single?” She turned to me, her eyebrows drawn together in feigned annoyance and lightly smacked me, cigarette still in hand. She was careful not to let the ashes hanging off the cigarette butt fall into my lap.

“Arre. Don’t be stupid.” The offense in her voice made me burst into laughter, and soon enough she followed suit. 

•••

Daniel, my college ex-boyfriend, messaged me for the first time in two years the night after Halloween. He swiped up on a selfie of me in a slutty teacher costume on Instagram where my arm out of frame held up my tits to create the illusion of cleavage I didn’t actually have. He sent a simple “damn I missed out” accompanied by three fire emojis. It took me four glasses of wine to muster up the courage to respond. I met him during my orientation week as a freshman at NYU and lost my virginity to him on that same weekend. I let him fuck me in a bathroom at a frat party and faked a laugh as we cleaned the blood from my first time off the sink once he was done with me. The first time he cheated on me, I cried for a week straight and allowed myself to indulge in endless calories to grieve my self-esteem in the way that rom-coms had trained me to. We dated on and off for four years, and I went back to him every time I felt bored or worthless or needed to suppress the urge to give myself bangs. There was a sick satisfaction in the predictability of it all, in the catharsis of being allowed to cry when he slept with someone else. I replied with a heart emoji and we soon made plans to meet at his favorite bar.

At the bar, he refused to let me order a cocktail, insisting that I drink what he called “the best craft beer you’d ever try.” It was a Friday night and he had come straight from his job at J.P. Morgan. He was wearing a light purple button-down shirt, khaki pants, and a Patagonia vest. There were at least 3 other men in the exact same outfit scattered across the bar. He told me about his newfound passion for movies, and how The Joker had been robbed of a nomination for Best Picture at the Oscars. He insisted we split the bill, a stance that he supposedly took out of his staunch feminist beliefs. Clearly, he was obnoxious. He honestly always had been, but the familiarity of his hand over mine, coaxing my fingers open so they would interlink with his, stirred something in me. When I asked him if we could go back to his place, he said his roommate Chase had called dibs on bringing a girl home tonight. And so, with one last tequila shot freshly in my system, we took the cab back to my place. 

I knew Ms. Lakshmi would be waiting outside, as she had done for months, and though she had already seen me in various degrees of intoxication, there was a newfound humiliation in the fact that I brought Daniel in tow. Ms. Lakshmi already had a cigarette waiting between her pointer and middle fingers when she spotted us. 

“You should head up without me.” I handed Daniel my keys. 

“Babe, what?” The term of endearment made me feel more nauseous than even the disgusting craft beer had. 

“I’ll be up in a sec.” He seemed unconvinced, but he conceded. Before leaving, he reached behind me to give my ass a firm squeeze. I tried to swat his hand away, but he mistook my embarrassment for flirtation and gave it a slap as well. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole as Ms. Lakshmi watched without comment. I took my seat next to her.

“He’s not my boyfriend.” I don’t know why I felt the need to justify myself to her. She hummed, as she always did, in response. I lit her cigarette and watched her take a drag. 

“You shouldn’t date such stupid boys.” Her comment shocked a laugh out of me. 

“I don’t really like him.” It was the first time I had admitted that to be true. Despite how annoying he could be, his predictability made my investment in him feel worthwhile. 

“Good.”

“Like, I’m just keeping him around for now.” I felt the need to justify my actions to her, to make sure that even though I was being stupid, she knew I was being stupid. “I’m still young, you know? I need to explore and all that.”

“I was already married at your age. And I had Karan only a few years later.” Hearing details about Ms. Lakshmi’s life felt like a luxury. I cherished the intimate details she so rarely shared with me, hoping that one day I could fit them together like puzzle pieces to get a grasp of who Ms. Lakshmi really was. To know what her life was like.

“But, don’t you feel like that was too young?” I couldn’t imagine Ms. Lakshmi under the layers of her wrinkles and sun spots. When you chipped away all the years of chain smoking and hard work, who was the young woman left underneath? 

“Compared to most people, I was already quite old. And it was good. I liked my husband. He was my friend.” The simplicity of it all made my hands clench. As much as I wanted to know more, I was afraid to pry. I felt that Ms. Lakshmi may skitter away like a scared animal if I asked too much of her. I let the silence linger and watched as she exhaled a cloud of grey smoke into the air.  

“Can I try one?” I don’t know why I asked. I had shied away from them since Daniel shamed me back in college, but something about the knowledge that he was waiting for me made me feel desperate. I needed proof that I had changed, at least in some little way, since back then. That I was more mature now, or at least mature enough to hold my own against some burning tar. She held the cigarette up to my lips and watched me closely as I inhaled, praying that it would go down smoother this time than it had all those years ago. It did not. But when she laughed her booming, rattling laugh at me as I spluttered and coughed, it somehow did not feel cruel. Her laughter sounded painful, like every exhale of breath made her lungs jolt. It was pitiful in the most comforting way. I found myself laughing too and then we were both doubled over, gasping for air. Her sharp coughs punctured through our laughter, but that just made us laugh even more. 

“How the fuck do you enjoy that?” She clicked her tongue at me. 

“Arre. Don’t swear.” 

Once Ms. Lakshmi and I had collected ourselves, I went back upstairs to Daniel. I told him I was too tired to fuck, and pretended I needed to throw up when he tried to change my mind. He went back home that night, and though I did keep seeing him, it still felt like a small victory.

•••

The other residents of our apartment building didn’t understand our friendship. Their questioning eyes lingered on us when they passed us on their way inside, quickly diverting when I looked back up at them. I could imagine we were a peculiar sight, a young woman enabling her elderly friend to smoke day in and day out. One time, Cheryl from 401 even stopped me in the elevator to question my motives.

“You spend a lot of time with that Ms. Lakshmi.” 

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“It’s nice of you to help out the elderly.” Her sickly sweet voice reeked of condescension. I decided then and there that I hated her. 

“We’re friends.” 

“That’s cute.” Oh fuck, I hated her so much. “You should tell her not to smoke so much. It stinks up the entrance.” 

“It’s better than our apartments, isn’t it?” I had signed the petition to stop Ms. Lakshmi from smoking indoors, and I was glad I did because it brought us together, but I still felt an internal rage towards Cheryl, and her annoying dog, on my friend’s behalf. Cheryl made me realize how much I liked Ms. Lakshmi, especially compared to most other people. 

•••

On a Saturday afternoon, a man I had never seen before was waiting outside Ms. Lakshmi’s apartment. He was tall, his dark hair peppered with specks of grey. He was casually dressed but still kept checking his phone for the time, impatient though he didn’t seem to have anywhere particularly important to go. Despite Ms. Lakshmi and I’s interesting connection, I had never actually crossed the line and ventured into her personal space before, opting instead to just see her on our designated bench. It seemed that this man, who was waiting outside her apartment but wouldn’t knock to be let in, felt the same. 

“You must be Karan.” My curiosity towards Ms. Lakshmi’s mysterious son got the best of me. He flinched and turned to me in surprise.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?” 

“No. I’m a friend of your mom’s.” A pause. He stared at me, looking up at down at Lulu Lemon leggings and oversized hoodie. 

“I didn’t know she had many friends around here.” 

“Are you here to visit?” My jealousy towards him manifested into a weird need to evaluate him, to make sure he was good to his mother. 

“Oh, no. She has a doctor’s appointment today.” I didn’t know that. A part of me felt betrayed that she didn’t tell me, though I knew she had no reason to. 

“Why are you waiting out here?”

“She makes me. It’s probably for the best anyway, it’s like an ashtray in there.” He chuckled at his own joke, undoubtedly expecting me to laugh along with him. I didn’t. Though it was something I would say, it didn’t feel right coming out of his mouth. His words were twisted with an ever-so-slight cruelty, a disdain towards his mother that I didn’t appreciate. Before I could ask him why they were going to the doctor, and if she was alright, Ms. Lakshmi herself came outside. She opened her door just barely enough so she could slip outside, almost as though she was hiding her apartment’s interior from her own son. When she looked up at me, her eyes quickly darted away. Mine did the same. Somehow it was awkward to meet within the context of our real lives, away from the safety of our bench. Karan held onto his mom’s arm, helping her walk to the elevator as I just watched. When he held it open for me, I waved him off, pretending I left something at home. That night, for the first time, I didn’t go to our bench. 

•••

“I think that weird old woman who always sits outside tripped me today.” Daniel and I were laying in bed together. The mention of Ms. Lakshmi made me jolt. I had bailed on her tonight, slightly off-put by my interaction with her son in the hallway. Instead, I finally caved and let Daniel fuck me after weeks of stringing him along. It was nice to know I had the power to keep him interested, to make him chase me if only for a little while.

“What happened?”

“I was just walking into the building and, I swear to God, the bitch stuck out her walking stick or whatever and made me eat shit.” I struggled to hold in my laughter at the thought of Ms. Lakshmi being petty enough to trip him. 

“Don’t call her a bitch.”

“Whatever. It was weird.”

“She’s my friend, Daniel.” 

“She’s not your friend, Raina, she’s some weird charity case that you picked up off the street. I don’t get it.” I had a lot of reasons to hate Daniel, but I never quite felt rage towards him like I did in that moment. 

“Get out.” I considered kicking him out the kinder alternative. Otherwise, I would have clawed my acrylic nails into his eyes. 

“You can’t be serious. Baby, come here.” He tried to grab my naked body to pull me closer to him, reaching over with whispered apologies on his lips, but I pushed him away.

“I’m serious. Get the fuck out.” I’d never had the nerve to talk to him this way, not even when he would break my heart. I used to beg him to stay with me just to feel his stability, to feel the intimacy of being hugged by a body I already knew well. But I respected Ms. Lakshmi far more than I respected myself.

“Fuck you. You’re a bitch anyway.” He looked pathetic in the dim light of my bedroom, scampering to grab his discarded clothes from where they were scattered all over the floor. He continued verbally abusing me, almost out of breath as he shimmied into his overly tight skinny jeans. How embarrassing. “And you smell like a fucking chimney after you hang out with that weird ass woman. It’s disgusting. You’re going to get lung cancer.” He grabbed his strawberry-flavored box-mod vape from my bedside table, took a deep hit, and released a sickly sweet cloud from his chapped lips. The smell made me feel sick. 

“Don’t text me again.” I wrapped myself in my blanket and stood up. 

“Trust me, I won’t.” He still wasn’t leaving my room so I resorted to physically pushing him out the door. 

“And delete my nudes.” 

“Fucking whatever.” After a lot of struggling, I managed to get him to the front door but he refused to step outside. He turned to look at me and the harsh angle of his eyebrows softened. He always did this. His big brown eyes widened and his arms reached back around my waist. 

“Baby, please. You know this isn’t you. You’re just tired, we can put this behind us.” I wanted nothing more than to lean into him, to allow myself to fall back into our facade of intimacy. His rough hand reached up to smooth down my hair and for a brief moment, my body melted to his touch. But then I saw the small upturn at the corner of his lips, the sign that he felt like he had won. I pulled away. 

“You need to leave before I call the cops.” I reached behind him and opened the door. 

“Fuck you.” Finally, he left. When the door slammed shut behind him, I crumpled. My hands were shaking and I hadn’t even noticed. I slid to the floor and the blanket wrapped around me unraveled. Naked, I sat on the floor with my back to the door and just breathed. It felt like an ice pick had wedged itself between my ribs, an uncomfortable pain that reverberated through my chest. Despite it all, I couldn’t bring myself to cry. It wasn’t cold but I couldn’t stop shivering. Like an addict going through withdrawals, I wrung my clammy hands together and let myself shake. It wasn’t that I would miss Daniel himself. But I would miss the warmth of his body on the left side of my bed. I would miss having the option to text him, to have another presence in my empty apartment, even if it was only once the sun had set. I would even miss the sex, as bad as it was; I’d miss the forged affection of his kisses down the side of my neck. 

I only stood up when I remembered the half-full handle of Absolut vodka sitting in my freezer. I did not care to grab a mixer or even a shotglass. Instead, I grabbed a lemon, bit a chunk out of it, and spit it out. With every swig, I bit into the flesh of the lemon in an attempt to dull the taste. I drank until I did not even need the chaser anymore until I grew so used to the hot burn of liquor rushing down my throat that it felt like water. I drank until my arms grew too heavy to lift the large bottle up to my lips. The tension left my shoulders and the heat glowing from within my belly stopped my shivering. But it was not enough. The ache in my chest would not leave. I tried to alleviate it with yet another shot but my hands were too unstable. The vodka spilled all over my naked body and fell to the floor, shattering. Daniel could not make me cry but this did. In a drunken stupor, I knelt on the ground and tried to collect the delicate shards of glass that had dispersed all over the floor, but through my tears and hazy vision, I could not see their jagged edges. I didn’t feel the sting of the deep cut on my hand until after I saw the thick red droplets of blood hit the floor. 

The urge to see Ms. Lakshmi hit me like a truck. I imagined her patching up Karan’s bloodied knees as a child and a selfish part of me felt that I deserved the same. The picture of her, younger and less wrinkled but with the same stoic glaze over her face, staring at her son in dismay as she dipped his wounds in betadine would not leave my mind. Almost as though I was in a trance, I rushed to get ready to see her. I stumbled back into my bedroom, leaving a trail of red droplets behind me. I threw on my dress from the night before, picking it up off the floor where I had discarded it to fall into bed with Daniel. The smell of his Axe Body Spray and strawberry vape stuck to the collar of my shirt as a nauseating reminder of what had transpired. But somewhere under that, the stench of cigarette smoke lingered. It brought me peace. In my haste, I did not even think to put on socks. I did not even think of how my bloody hands would soil it. 

Though I knew Ms. Lakshmi was probably asleep, I still rushed down to our bench to check for her. Of course, she was not there. It was almost 2am and it would not have made sense for her to wait around for so long just to see me. And yet, a part of me still felt abandoned by her. I wondered if she had felt abandoned by me when I didn’t come down to meet her, if her throat also constricted at the thought of our friendship falling apart. I wanted nothing more than to see her and have her look at me with loving disgust. My feet tripped over each other, feeling lead-heavy, as I made my way back into our building, up the elevator, and to her door. I could not bring myself to care about the blood stains I had left behind on the carpet. Black dust rubbed onto my finger with every incessant press of my finger against Ms. Lakshmi’s doorbell. When minutes passed and she still didn’t come to the door, I started to pound against her door with my fists. With one arm propping me up against the wall so I didn’t fall over and the other slamming for her attention, I shouted for her.

“Ms. Lakshmi! Ms. Lakshmi! Come out, Ms. Lakshmi!” I slid down to the floor and leaned against her door, too tired and too wasted to stop myself. My right hand kept beating against the door, smearing blood all over it. At this point, our other neighbors were starting to take notice. One by one they peeked out of their doors to watch me, covered in my own blood with my dress riding up far too high for the public’s viewing, as I called for my best friend. 

“Are you hurt?” Mrs. Johnson from 405 had the decency to show me some care. “Should I call 911?” I understood what I must have looked like, drunkenly blabbering and clearly injured, but I did not have it in me to tell her to fuck off. Instead, I just sobbed in her direction and continued to pound at the door. Frank from 408 did not offer me the same grace. He threatened to call the cops on me, his voice reaching the frequency that only an angered old man’s could. I tried to apologize but my mouth could not wrap around the words. And then I heard the tell-tale yap of Cheryl’s dog. I turned in the direction of Apartment 401 to find Cheryl, fucking Cheryl, with her phone camera pointed right at me. I’m sure she would insist it was just to capture proof of my wrongdoings, but I could see the slight upturn of her lips, the satisfaction she found in the fact that I was a wreck. I imagined her sending that video to our apartment’s board, accompanied with a message of feigned concern. I flipped her off and burst into another fit of tears.

“Ms. Lakshmi, please.” The door opened while my entire body’s weight was resting on it, causing me to tumble backwards into her apartment.

“Everyone, go!” Ms. Lakshmi had never raised her voice before, her vocal cords too fried to speak above the quiet tones in which she confessed her secrets to me. But now, her abrasive roar quickly had our neighbors scattering back into their apartments. “Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.” She started whacking me with her walking stick, not quite hard enough for it to hurt, but enough for me to feel like a petulant child being punished by their mother. 

“I’m sorry Ms. Lakshmi, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I babbled in between sobs and reached for her feet. She stopped hitting me and let me hold onto her feet and weep. 

“Stupid girl. Why is your skirt so short, chhii, chhii, chhii,” she berated me gently. She did not comment on the blood that I was smudging over her legs. When I finally stopped crying, she let me hold her walking stick to hoist myself up. Ms. Lakshmi walked me to her living room and sat me down on her dining table. It was covered in envelopes and bills but she did not seem to mind that I was bleeding all over them. She went into her bathroom, returning with rubbing alcohol and a set of children’s patterned band-aids.

“Silly, silly girl. How did you manage to hurt yourself like this, hm?” With a wet cloth, she wiped at the blood coating my hands. When I flinched at the burn of alcohol hitting my open wounds, she shushed me and ran her hand over my head. The tenderness in her touch initiated a whole new set of tears, that she chastised me for while continuing to hold me. Once my hands had been thoroughly cleaned and covered in bandaids, she sat in silence while I cried. I have no memory of going to bed or what happened next, but I woke up on her couch with a lint-covered thin cotton blanket over me, an aching back, and a crick in my neck. Now that the world wasn’t moving like an impressionist painting, I could finally take in her apartment. The lowered blinds were covered in a thick layer of dust, though the pale light peaking through them suggested it was still very early morning. The apartment stank not just of cigarette smoke, but also with a slightly sour tang like she hadn’t taken the trash out in a long time. Dirty dishes littered the tables and countertops, and old pamphlets and mail lay askew across the floor. The corner of the room boasted a plant that was long gone, its leaves brown and shriveled, and large cobwebs covered the conjunction between all four walls and the ceiling. 

My feet padded across the dirty floor softly, careful not to make too much noise and wake Ms. Lakshmi, who must have been asleep in her bedroom. I went to freshen up in the bathroom only to find it similarly grimy. The floor was covered in long black stray hairs and the shower curtain boasted mildew. My reflection was obscured by the large smudges running across the mirror, but even then I could see my disheveled state, with eyeliner, lipstick, and dried tears smeared across my face. My fingers combed through the large knots in my bird’s nest hair. I pulled it into a tight braid and scrubbed at my face with the same little towel as last night, determined to get rid of as much of the grime as I could. I brushed my teeth with my index finger and Ms. Lakshmi’s Meswak toothpaste and headed to the kitchen in search of some food. However, Ms. Lakshmi’s fridge was almost empty, devoid of anything except some sauces and surprisingly enough, a jar of tomato sauce. 

I went to search through her pantry, hoping to make her breakfast as the first installment of my repayment to her but was quickly sidetracked. What looked like hundreds of cigarette butts lay in piles over Ms. Lakshmi’s gas stove. Their ash had stained the stovetop and some seemed to have made their way under the burner, now charred black. I realized that, with her frail hands, she likely needed the stoves to light her cigs when I wasn’t around. My chest constricted. Determined, I scooped the old cigarettes into my bandaged hands and, handful by handful, tossed them into her rancid, nearly overflowing trash can, which I resolved to deal with once I was done with the stove. I lifted the burners and brushed out every scorched end I could find. Ms. Lakshmi came out when the sun had risen considerably higher and I had moved on to scrubbing at the black soot with her old dish sponge and dish soap. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” The gentleness I had seen in her last night was gone. Her face was all hard edges. 

“I’m just cleaning up a little.” She staggered towards me. She didn’t have her walking stick with her, so she had to lean her weak arms against the walls to balance herself.

“Don’t. Just leave.” My heart dropped. 

“I’m sorry for last night.” 

“Forget it.”

“Just let me clean a little.” She limped closer towards me in an attempt to put her body in between me and the stove. I simply side-stepped her and kept up with my cleaning.

“Stupid girl! Stop!” I tried to act like the anger in her voice didn’t phase me. 

“Come on Ms. Lakshmi, just a little bit. As a token of my gratitude.”

“Get out!” Her voice boomed through the tiny apartment. 

“No!” 

“Stupid! Stupid girl!” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I felt like a teenager again, indulging in a fight with my mom. We shared a look and suddenly she was laughing as well. How crazy we must have looked, a young woman in a slutty, blood-covered dress and her elderly, nicotine-addicted best friend. She leaned against the wall in defeat and watched me scrub under the grates of her stove. I worked in a silence that was only occasionally interrupted by her voicing her disapproval, which I pointedly ignored. Once the stove was clean, I looked up at her and smiled. 

“Let me have one last one in here. As repayment.” I didn’t have to respond. I walked over to her dining table, where one of her many packs of cigarettes lay askew. She turned the knob of her stove, watched me light it, and once its end was glowing dark orange, gingerly took it in her hand. She inhaled, exhaled, and I breathed in her second-hand smoke once again.