Stale

(Fade in. INTERIOR: SMOKES’ HOUSE. On stage is a couch, facing towards us, a coffee table about knee high, and a record player stage left, with a shelf containing an extensive record collection behind it. SMOKES is already sitting on the couch when we fade in, flipping and turning an ashtray in his hand. He puts the ashtray down on the table with a thunk and takes from his pockets a box full of rolling papers, a small plastic zip-lock bag for his filters and a packet of rolling tobacco.)

Smokes: I like telling stories. I’ve been told I have a talent for it, that I’m a natural at speaking, but not for shutting up (he takes a paper from the box and sets it on the table.) I like telling stories with morals at the ends of them. The hare gets beat by the tortoise because the hare is arrogant, and the tortoise is determined. Slow and steady wins the race, boom, simple as. (He takes tobacco out the pack and pours it in a groove on the paper, making sure it’s laid out neat in a line) All the stories I’ve wanted to tell before are that simple. But not this one. Hear me out.

(He diverts his full attention to getting the tobacco in a rollable state, picking the paper up and holding it at different angles for him to inspect. He continues to speak as he carries out his work.)

Smokes: My wife and I shared our first cigarette before we shared our first kiss. She taught me how to make one from scratch; we sat down on the grass in a park and I had to put everything on my lap. I was clumsy, and I was nervous, and I spilled most of it onto my lap and onto the ground, but we got it done. (He rubs the widest ends of the paper together with his fingertips, letting the tobacco settle horizontally down the middle. Then, he puts it down on the table and takes out a filter). Now I remember what she did next; she placed the end of my cigarette to hers, and took in a deep drag, lighting my own easily. (he starts to roll) She told me to take short, quick puffs, but the second the thing was lit I breathed in with her and my insides started to burn, and I started coughing. She laughed and promised not to tell a soul. After she had finished both of ours off, we kissed, and that burn spread to my face and my hands, my fingertips. On the walk back to her place, I couldn’t stop smelling my fingers, couldn’t stop smelling that stale ash and the tobacco under my fingernails.

(He’s finishes rolling. He takes some overflow tobacco from the unfiltered end, ties it shut, and speaks again.)

Smokes: All that led me here, to my new house. I’ve been here a month or so. I found the couch and the table online; my brother-in-law got me these curtains as a housewarming gift. But that record player was hers. (He pulls a lighter out of his pocket, lights the cigarette, and takes a very deliberate drag, tilting his head back and blowing it all out in one cloud of smoke. After dusting off the ash into the ashtray, he gets up and walks towards the record player, take small puffs at irregular intervals.) I kept some of her stuff in the move, but not everything. Not everything had a use by that point. Hell, I haven’t started this thing since well before the day I got here. If I didn’t take it, I would’ve had to dump it before I left her old place, and I was fine with doing that. But on moving day, I saw this record player sitting alone in that broken down living room with that massive shelf full of records and I don’t know what came over me, and suddenly it found its way here. 

(SMOKES kind of strokes the record player with his free hand. He flirts with letting the needle down, letting it play the record that’s loaded up. But he retreats, and on the way to setting himself on the coffee table, he speaks again.) 

Smokes: When he dropped the curtains off, my brother-in-law asked how I’ve been doing since moving in. I told him that I was lonely, but I needed to be lonely, that I had to feel peace with loneliness. He replied that that wasn’t true at all, but he understood. (He picks up the ashtray and puts it on the floor between his feet.) I showed him around, to the kitchen, the bathroom, upstairs to the bedroom, and at the end we sat down right here. I put everything on my lap, and I started to roll. I asked what he thought of my couch, my table. Did he think his swanky new curtains would fit in my luxurious abode? I didn’t get an answer, and when I looked up from my rolling, I saw him staring at the record player like a dog, waiting for it to move. I told him that I remembered the last record she played on it, how she danced to the music. He turned and saw me holding my handiwork in between my fingers. And he said that I should quit. He said he didn’t want his curtains to start stinking, and I should know that this is what killed her. (Drag. Flick, flick. He turns directly to look at the audience.) Can a man not live in his own home? I lit the damn thing, and I told him that I was gonna drown this place in smoke. I would light one in every corner of every room, ‘til the couch, the table, and your curtains turn grey and stale. The next owners after me will clean the floors with soap and rag, they will tear down the curtains and repaint the wall, but I’ll still be there. I will make this place reek of me.

(Drags, He gazes in the general direction of the record player.)

SMOKES: I get it now. When I told you I burned inside, it wasn’t because of my virgin puff. I burned inside because, when she gave me a light, her fingers had touched mine, and our faces where as close as they had ever gotten before that night. (Final drag. He inspects the length of his cigarette before throwing it into the ashtray). I can’t stand that silence. 

(Exit. Everything is taken off with him except that ashtray.)