8️⃣ The Smoke-Free Smoking Area — Chapter 8: A Morning Without an Ashtray
The Smoke-Free Smoking Area — Chapter 8, "A Morning Without an Ashtray." A short story.
The next morning, Mr. N woke early.
He wasn't thirty-two minutes late, his lunch break hadn't vanished, and he had no sense of having forgotten some plan. The world wasn't especially shining. It wasn't that birds were singing. Breakfast hadn't suddenly grown rich in flavour.
It was simply morning.
When he went to the kitchen, his wife was boiling water.
"You're up early today."
"Yes."
"Are you going to smoke?"
Mr. N hesitated a little, then shook his head.
"Not right now."
His wife only said, "I see."
That "I see" was slightly longer than it had been up to yesterday. Mr. N sat at the table and watched the steam without doing anything. The steam resembled smoke, but it wasn't smoke. The way it disappeared was similar too, but it carried no smell of something burned.