Free Lydia's Party: A Novel by Margaret Hawkins Page B

and rubbed it now and then, then sniffed her fingertips. Now, alone in the car on her way to the Baptist home, she wanted another.
    It had been a sin of opportunity, really, not one of volition. On weekends she walked Horatio to the park in the morning, and if no one was there she unclipped his leash and let him run. This morning he’d galloped ahead, crashing through the deep snow, checking for new smells. They were all the way across the field when he’d stopped and turned, then raced back to the entrance. Someone, thickly bundled in purple, approached. Jayne knew he hoped for another dog. She watched him go, feeling guilty. She and Douglas had left him alone while they worked long hours. Now he was old, still trying to make up for a puppyhood he’d never had.
    Jayne trudged back through the snow, hoping the woman didn’t have some tiny dog inside her coat that she couldn’t set down for fear of Horatio, who only looked fierce.
    •   •   •
    Jayne smelled the cigarette before she saw it. The woman had taken off one of her big mittens and was wearing a thin leather glove on her smoking hand. She blew a mouthful of smoke and cold white air out of her pink lipsticked mouth. “Sorry,” she said, turning her head and blowing toward the street. Jayne smiled to show she didn’t mind. “Actually, I like it,” Jayne said. “I used to love to smoke.” She wanted the woman to know she didn’t disapprove.
    The woman nodded. “No one knows I do this.” She raised her chin to blow more smoke. “Can’t, at home. Kids.” She rolled her eyes.
    Jayne nodded. The woman was holding the cigarette behind her back. “Sorry,” she said again.
    “Really,” Jayne said. “Don’t apologize. I love the smell. I miss it.”
    “You want one?” the woman said.
    The question came as a small shock. Did she? She hadn’t thought so, not especially, though it did smell divine. Except for the occasional communal lapse at a party, Jayne refrained, for Douglas’s sake. Douglas’s sister had died of lung cancer. He thought it was repulsive, a deal breaker, he’d called it. Besides, she’d never been a morning smoker. Her favorite time had been at night, after dinner, preferably with a glass of wine, sitting outside on her balcony in the summer, in that funky apartment she’d loved, flicking ashes over the railing. Or in a restaurant, with a man, pre-Douglas. What a pleasure that had been, after dinner in some outdoor place, on a summer evening just as the day began to cool, at a table on the street, watching the late commuters hustle past, the hungry-looking men in suits scanning women’s faces for an instant of illicit eye contact. Funny to think that such a simple pleasure was illegal now.
    The woman waited for Jayne’s answer, tilting the pack in her direction, a pleasantly neutral expression on her face. She shook the pack slightly. One cigarette slid invitingly out.
    Jayne felt touched, by the graciousness of the gesture. Just right, friendly but not pushy. Nicely anonymous. No names had been exchanged. If interrogated later, neither could say who the other was. The woman continued to hold the pack tilted toward Jayne, not looking at it.
    “I never buy them,” the woman was saying. “I found these.” She tapped her cigarette once, as if in punctuation, and the ash fell off in the snow. “In the break room, at work.”
    What little Jayne could see of the woman, between her hat and her scarf—a stripe of glossy brown forehead, flashing brown eyes, pink lipstick—smiled. Stuck to one of her straight white teeth was a single fleck of tobacco. She took another deep, thoughtful drag. “They’re not even my brand,” she said, exhaling.
    “They’re mine,” Jayne said.
    The woman crinkled her eyes at that. Like the devil, Jayne thought. Debonair. As if she already knew they were Jayne’s brand, and had conjured them, for her pleasure. This is how these things start, Jayne knew. Half of temptation was social