Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
I need to know how much time is left.
I go outside for a smoke. Frankie’s still at the easel, where she’s been for the last several hours. Her foot’s tapping to the beat of the song on the radio, and she’s singing along. Her voice isn’t that of an angel. It’s pretty fucking horrific, actually, but I find myself watching her anyway as she sways from side to side while painting away.
I don’t know what I expected her to paint or why. I didn’t give it all that much thought when I bought the damn thing from the art store in town. I just wanted to keep her occupied so she’d stop asking questions, stop wanting to tell me stories. Stop making me like her. Want her.
The problem is that she’s stopped making the effort, but I still find myself liking her.
Wanting her.
I light my smoke, and my foot brushes against a canvas drying in the sun on the top step. I crouch down and turn my head to get a better view of what it is. It’s a very large and very realistic looking eye. A blueish circle lines the bottom giving it the appearance of being tired.
Damn. She’s good. It isn’t just an eye either. Inside the pupil is where the real art begins. It’s a landscape of some sort. No, it’s here. The prison yard. Only, it’s different. The sky an apocalyptic-looking orange with brown clouds.
I stand up to take in the bigger picture. I take a drag of my cigarette and choke out a cough when I see the blood. The bodies strewn about what looks like a prison yard turned battlefield. In the very center is a man carrying a woman.
Holy shit. It’s me. It’s us.
More specifically, it’s me... carrying Frankie into Hell.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Why do they call you Smoke?” I ask.
It’s late afternoon, and we’re sitting on the porch. We haven’t spoken in a long while and despite my anger I’m tired of the silence.
Smoke’s drinking whiskey straight from the bottle, and I’m reading a novel I found in a container in the guest bedroom. Or I should say I’m trying to read a novel. We’ve been out here for over an hour, and I’ve read the same paragraph a hundred times without yet understanding a single word. It’s hard to focus when all I can think about is his lips on mine. The way he rocked me against him.
The redhead.
Smoke pulls the cigar from his lips and holds it up before my mind can wander further and before my blush has a chance to reach my cheeks. He raises his eyebrow like the answer to my question about his name is obvious, but I can sense there’s more.
“No,” I say. “That can’t be it. If smoking cigars was the reason to call you Smoke then you would have already told me.” I think for another minute and decide to change tactics to find out what I want to know. “What’s your real name?”
“Smoke,” he answers around the cigar now back between his lips.
“Will you tell me if I guess?” I ask, deciding to ignore the obvious lie about his real name being Smoke.
“Sure,” he says. “I’ll play along. What you got?”
“Max?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Jerry?”
He rolls his eyes and gives me a look that says try harder.
“Tim? Killer? Sven?”
He scrunches his nose. “Those all sound like dogs,” Smoke scoffs, taking another puff of his cigar. He blows it out, clouding his features in puffs of white. “I’ll save you some trouble. It’s also not Fido, Spike, or Spot.”
“Well, all the other names I can think of are so…regular. So…boring. They wouldn’t suit you,” I tell him, although I could be here all night, and I still think I’ll never come up with something that does besides Smoke.
“I don’t know my real name,” he admits, flicking the ash at the end of his cigar into an empty beer bottle. “Some shit went down with my folks, and after that, I just couldn’t remember it. Still can’t.”
I’m taken aback and don’t know what to say to that. Thankfully, I don’t have to come up with something because he continues after taking a long pull from the bottle of whiskey. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“The first time I went to a group home, they wanted to know what to call me, and since I didn’t know my own name, they called me Johnny, for a while, anyway, but it didn’t stick.”
My heart stung for the child version of Smoke. Abandoned without so much as a name. And not JUST abandoned.
Thrown away.
Smoke clears his throat and looks out over the horizon. He seems almost peaceful here. Well, as peaceful as Smoke could be. His hard edges are still there but not so sharp I’d prick my finger on them if I stand too close.