CHAPTER SIX:
We had to go straight to the airport if we wanted to make our flight to Cuba. We could only use one suitcase for clothes, as the other was filled with cigarettes. I argued with Puffgustus that he should throw them out but the luggage had a combination lock on it and if we didn't leave now, we'd never get to the poker tournament.
Our flight left that afternoon. We got to the gate an hour before our scheduled boarding time. This was mostly because my watch had broken again and now read 4:20. I couldn't tell if we were running late or early.
As seats around the gate started to fill, Puffgustus said, "I'm gonna smoke a cigarette before we leave."
But before I could protest, he had already lit up letting the wafting whips of a freshly lighted cigar fill the cabin.
I could feel everyone watching us, wondering if we knew the dangers of smoking; whether we knew it would kill us. Wondering if we knew that in the US 33,000 nonsmokers die each year from coronary heart disease stemming from secondhand smoke, or that smoking cigarettes was one of the leading causes of deaths related to fires in America, or that in the 21st century, worldwide tobacco deaths could total one billion if current trends continue. That was the worst part about smoking, sometimes: The physical evidence of what it would do to you. I took another hit of my vape as the pilot prepared to take off."
"Excuse me," a blonde stewardess said to Puffgustus, breaking me from my thoughts, "Sir, this isn't a Cuban airline. You can't smoke on the plane."
"That's what you get," I said, sticking out my tongue.
"Mam, I'm going to need your vapes, as well. Vaping or any kind of recreational substances on this airline are strictly prohibited."
"But it's a metaphor," I tried to explain, as she pulled the vapes from my hand. "You put the killing thing in your mouth and you give it the power to kill you. No," I paled. "No. Please. I NEED MY VAPES. I NEED MY VAPES!"
"You can smoke your metaphor when we arrive, miss."
It was a long flight to Cuba without my vapes. Five hundred twenty- five thousand, six hundred seconds, to be precise. Not that I was counting.
But if I had been, counting, that was, it was literally five million years before the flight attendant gave me back my vapes. When she gave Puffgustus back his cigarettes, I thought he would cry from relief. He walked off the terminal a broken man.
"There there," he whispered to his cigarettes, stroking the side of their packaging like a precious crown jewel. Puff looked out into the distance, for the first time, catching a glimpse of the smog that bruised over the sky in smoldering stacks of gray. "God, that is beautiful," Puffgustus said mostly to himself, pulling a coffin nail from his pack.
"Observation: it would be more beneficial to my health if you vaped instead," I said, offering him mine.
"Also I'd live longer," he yawned, lighting the stick in his hands up anyway. "You know, carcinogens or whatever."
"Are you sleepy?" I asked him.
"Not at all," he answered.
"Yeah," I said. "Me neither."
"Want to watch another movie when we board the next flight?" he asked, looking through his bag. "I've got An Abundance of Cigarettes, Looking for Asthma, Paper Filters..." Puffgustus stopped. "Wait. These are books. Ah ha!" he exclaimed a moment later. "Charlie and the Cigarette Factory. Perfect."
"I don't know," I told him. "I still think we could do better."
"Well too bad, Hazy Vapes. The world is not a cigarette granting factory," Puffgustus said, quoting Charlie and the Cigarette Factory as we handed our tickets to the stewardess and boarded the our connecting flight.
"I want to watch something you haven't seen. Lets try this one," I said, handing him a movie from my carry on as we took our seats.
"Nightmare on Smoke Street? Is that anything like The Chainsmoker Massacre?" Puff asked as took our seats. I grabbed my laptop from my bag and popped the CD in.
"Just trust me."
Five hours and twenty-seven cigarettes later, Puffgustus refused to sleep. "It's gonna kill me in my sleep," he exclaimed. "Emphysema, bronchitis, OSTEOSMOKOSIS!"
"That's not even a disease!"
"Not yet," Puffgustus said, gazing longingly at his tobacco fingers. "But just you wait."
"You're being ridiculous!"
"How many dead people do you think there are, huh? How many dead people do you think have died from smoking cigarettes? A lot, okay? I'm one of them. I know I'll be. I'll be another statistic one day. You know it, I know it, and it's time I make my peace with it. I'm smoke in the wind, Hazy, and everyone knows it," he said. "But there's still hope for you. You can still beat this."
"There's hope for you too," I said to Puffgustus. "You just have to quit smoking them."
"I'm in love with them," he said quietly.
"Puffgustus," I said.
"I am," he said. "I love my cigarettes," he whispered quietly to his pack of Marlboro red 100 lights. He was staring at the carton, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "But I'm in love with them, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple decency of health and longevity. I'm in love with them, and I know every cigarette I light shaves another minute off my life, and that my hair will thin, and my skin will dry out, and that vaping is hella safer and way less cool, and I love my cigarettes."
"Puffgustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like the billowing stacks of smoke that rose from the space between his fingers when he smoked a cigarette. He looked at his cigarettes like he was drowning in this air-thickening, suffocating joy, but I knew that it would kill him. I couldn't say anything back. I, too, knew the pain of withdraws. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he pulled another carton from his coat pocket that we both knew the flight attendant would inevitably take away.
