Читать книгу: «Clouds Of Smoke… The Story», страница 2

Part five (stop the clock!)

Sonia had just left the Doctor’s Office; the results of her tests were not good at all. Her hands were trembling from the sudden feeling of weakness; she almost fainted before those papers on which her destiny was written. Inexorably.

“First of all you need to stop smoking immediately, - the Doctor admonished her severely – your habit can’t win over your will, we’ll try every possible treatment to slow down the progression of the tumour”.

These words echoed over and over in Sonia’s head; her thirty-four years of age had become as heavy as boulders, perhaps they contained all her life and maybe in another life, she would have lived longer. She felt old and out of place, all around her she could only see the uselessness of it all.

What good had her commitment to her University studies done her, or the job she had recently undertaken as an architect, designing homes that would live longer than she would, even from their foundation stage, or the job that promised her a successful future?

Then there was love. She put her love life on hold in order to study and now that she was finally exploring this new world together with her new boyfriend, her time had expired. Everything expired. Time had expired, beauty had expired, pleasure had expired, and she was running out of life.

From behind the counter of the store, Damien saw Sonia, still standing in front of the window of the Doctor’s Office, which was just across the street from his store. He looked up from his laptop and took a better look at the girl.

She also looked up from those condemning papers, she looked at her Breil watch which indicated a stupid and useless nine o’clock in the morning and while looking around her, she met Damien’s gaze. Although the shop windows were a little obscured, the interior light brightened and allowed her to see inside even from a distance. Sonia had a perfect vision of Damien who got up from behind the counter and started walking towards the door. A sign, the kind with colourful LED letters, lit up in the stained glass window of the store, the LEDs lit up and began chasing each other, reading: “Open”.

A flash of lightning followed by a long loud thunder, tinted the lead grey cloudy sky with blue-violet for a moment. To Sonia it seemed that it had always been that colour. Now she couldn’t even imagine a different colour than the “Fifty shades of grey”; yet her life, unlike the film, had not been erotic at all.

The weather promised rain soon, the air was particularly electric. The wonderful spring weather of the day before seemed a distant memory. On television she had heard that there would have been yet another return of winter weather. Perhaps one last sprinkle of snow, even at low altitudes.

Sonia crossed the street as soon as the predicted rain started to harshly pour all over her. Covering her head as best as she could with her cellophane covered medical records, she ran straight towards Damien’s shop door, quickly opened it, walked in and felt a welcoming embrace that she gratefully accepted.

“Thank you, excuse me!” she said to the man that let her in from the rain.

“Don’t worry, - he answered, kindly - you’re welcome to stay here until the rain settles down, it’s no problem”.

“Thanks again, but I don’t think it will stop soon!”

Damien ushered the girl to one of the two armchairs in the store, which he used for customers in line or for those who stopped by for a chat, which happened often. He sat on the second chair, never taking his eyes from Sonia.

She was a beautiful girl, blonde with a modern short haircut, tall and thin, with the right curves in the right places, she could be a model, with her graceful movements and tone of voice. She was wearing a suit, black jacket and pants with a white silk blouse, a little unbuttoned, she wore high heeled pumps which enhanced her ankles and well-shaped feet.

Her hands were beautiful, Damien watched as she rested them on the arms of the chair; he would have liked to take them into his, to feel their softness. Surely she had a rare beauty about her.

“Is this an electronic cigarette store?” Sonia asked to break the ice.

“Yes, - said Damien bringing his eyes back to hers - one of the many that have been opened over the last three years here in Florence”.

Meanwhile, it was really pouring rain outside.

“I have seen some of them - said Sonia - but I never stopped to ask for information on these articles, maybe I should have…”

She put her hand on the clinical records.

“I don’t want to take advantage of this occasion to sell you something - Damien interrupted her, standing up – instead, may I offer you some coffee? I was just making one for myself”.

“That’s very kind of you, - Sonia nodded – but, do go ahead, maybe I’m interested in the topic, you can tell me about it in the meantime.”

Sonia’s frankness was disarming. Damien was fascinated by her and while he prepared the coffee with the electric coffee maker he kept in his shop and then, while they drank the two cups of coffee, he improvised an explanation of the e-cig that was brief, clear and comprehensive.

It was obvious that Damien wasn’t very interested in Sonia as a new possible customer; rather he wanted to know more about her and her story, if she wanted to tell it to him.

But she received a phone call that somehow prevented her from staying a bit longer in the store.

She had to leave in a hurry, therefore she said goodbye to Damien handing him back the empty cup of the excellent coffee he offered her, and as if she wanted to repay him for his gracious hospitality, she pointed to a small statue in the showcase packed with various trinkets.

“This is nice, is it for sale?” She asked indicating a little statue of a man sitting on an old suitcase with a hat in his hand. As she looked at it better, she realized that she really liked it.

“For you it’s on sale” said Damien as he picked up the statue and handed it to Sonia, enjoying the chance to touch her hand.

When she came into contact with Damien’s hand, Sonia felt a shiver down her spine, a pleasant feeling, while she noticed that the man’s pupils widened and their colour went from emerald green into an indigo blue.

“Really, - said Sonia still under the effect of that sensation – how much is it? I like it a lot and I’d like to buy it for my office”.

“I told you it's on sale, so let's say eight euros and the promise that you'll come back to see me and to try an electronic cigarette, okay?”

Sonia opened her purse and took out the money, promised she would be back soon, maybe even on the next Saturday; she said goodbye and went quickly out of the store carrying the bag in which Damien had put the statue.

It had stopped raining, perhaps not for long. She looked at her watch, it was nine o’clock. Still nine? Maybe her battery was dead? She decided to check it out later, now she had to run back to work, or rather, to her Office.

Part six (a second chance)

She ran towards the bus stop, the bus no. 29 was scheduled for 9:15 and, if her watch hadn’t stopped, calculating her twenty minute stopover at the store, she had probably lost it. The next one would pass at 9:40. So there was no need to rush. Walking, she removed her watch from her wrist and checked the dial, which appeared to be running again and it signed 9:10. Sonia thought that some juice would do her good, to regain a little strength following the bad news she had received and her strange encounter. She entered the bar close to Damien’s store, the same one where Massimo had stopped due to his urge to smoke a cigarette.

It wasn’t a relaxing drink. As soon as they served it to her, outside she saw a parade of ambulances and police cars with their sirens on. People rushed out to see what had happened, even Sonia, who looked out and saw the cars trying to convey to a single lane, leaving room for the emergency vehicles, which were desperately trying to find a passage way in the traffic. From a distance, less than a kilometre away from her viewpoint, she could clearly see a black smoke cloud rising to the sky. For about fifteen minutes, she and many others, some patrons of the bar and others just passers-by, kept watching in order to understand what had happened. It had to be something serious.

Some rumours were passed from one person to the other, bringing back news that was mostly unreliable. Some said it was a bomb, some claimed that a tank truck had exploded, some already shouted about a terrorist attack, others said that it was a terrible car accident.

Sonia realized that the situation was getting worse. She would not have made it to the Office on time for her morning meeting, as she had promised her colleague who had called her earlier, so she thought it best to warn him of her delay or maybe even her impossibility to attend, which seemed to be the case. She went back into the bar and dialled her Office’s number.

Stefano, her colleague, anxiously answered following the first ring: “Sonia, finally! Is everything alright?”

“Yes, of course Stefano, why do you ask?”

“So you weren’t on that bus?”

“My God, no, - said Sonia, alarmed – what happened?”

“A bad accident, Sonia, they’re talking about it on the local radio station, the bus that you usually take, number twenty-nine, collided into a truck and caught fire. A disaster, they say that one person is dead and several wounded!”

Sonia recoiled. She couldn’t believe that such a thing had happened and that it had happened to her bus that morning, and at that hour. Yes... That hour... The hour her watch had stopped on, allowing her to avoid such a tragedy.

“I was late Stefano – said Sonia reassuring her colleague – so thankfully I didn’t take that bus. Now I see that there is a lot of traffic and I won’t be able to make it on time for the morning meeting. You can go ahead without me; we’ll catch up later, okay?”

“Okay Sonia, don’t worry!” And as Stefano hung up, she could hear the relief in his voice.

It was almost ten o’clock. Sonia considered that it would be better to go back home by foot, it wasn’t that far away.

The morning was gone now. Once home, she would try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, the absurd picture of a nightmarish morning, which ended luckily for her, compared to the tragedy if she had taken that unlucky bus no. 29.

Part seven (Damien’s resistance)

On Saturday mornings, especially a sunny one such as “that Saturday” of the end of April, Damien’s store was rarely visited, while in the afternoon there was always a lot of work, whatever the weather. Therefore Damien took advantage of that time to restore his manual regeneration atomizer, a job which gave him great satisfaction.

The work consisted in building a coil, namely a “spring” made by winding a resistance wire around a small screwdriver, forming a series of turns, very tight and not crossed, heated by a flame of a caramelizer and then pressed down again with pliers.

Finally this coil was mounted on two conductive towers, placed on a base, called “the heart” of the atomizer, and through this spring, he passed a cotton strip which he then put around it, after closing the whole device with the steel cylinder that was the pre-funnel of the atomizer.

Once he soaked the cotton with the liquid to be vaporized and once he assured himself that the resistance he built had the right value of desired ohms, once he set the right dispenser voltage, he pushed the button of his electric battery. Thus, the incandescent resistance caused the liquid with which the cotton was soaked to nebulize into the atomizer’s combustion chamber, coming out full of aroma and fluffiness, when a person inspired from the little tube called drip-tip. Every time he built a coil, he had the foresight to try its incandescence before he dipped the cotton into it, in order to be certain that the resistance became incandescent from the centre outward in a uniform manner and within the required time.

That Saturday morning, something extraordinary happened to Damien’s resistance, something which explains the need for the above explanation.

The coil had just been placed on the conductive towers, Damien had screwed the little screws that held the two ends of the resistance wire to the positive pole and to the negative pole, and was about to mount the stand on its battery to test its value, when Sonia stepped into the shop.

“Good morning!” said Damien. He sounded as though he was expecting her.

“Good morning Damien – said Sonia with a radiant smile – I came to thank you for the other morning, you have no idea how lucky I was to stop in here!”

Damien looked at her with the tenderness of a father who is about to receive a gift from his child, he leaned on the counter, resting on his arms and turning his palms to Sonia as if waiting for a gift.

“What happened?” He asked while holding out his hand to shake Sonia’s, and she promptly shook his back.

“Did you hear about that bus, number twenty-nine, which caught fire at the end of Via Baracca?”

Damien nodded and shook his head as if to say: “Okay, go ahead!”

“I could’ve been on that bus, and maybe I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it!” She said with her eyes wide open.

“Yes, I heard about it, an awful story, I heard that the passengers couldn’t get out of the vehicle”. He said.

Sonia was wearing a pair of tight-fitted faded jeans, a pink cardigan and a pair of strap sneakers, also pink. Even without heels she was tall.

Although not as much as Damien was.

Sonia told him that her watch had stopped and that thanks to that, she had missed the bus that went up in flames, and especially thanks to his kindness, when he had distracted her by offering her a coffee.

They chatted about this event for a while and finally Sonia decided she could trust Damien and the items he sold. She asked him if she could try a VAPE and he happily agreed, also tempted to bring out a sampling of coloured batteries so she could choose the one which, (he was sure); she would buy that Saturday morning.

Sonia had a craving to smoke, and talking to Damien elated her extraordinarily. She had never felt so attracted to a man, mentally and physically.

Damien handed her the electronic cigarette, after charging it with a good tobacco liquid containing a certain percentage of nicotine and Sonia took it from him as a child taking an ice cream cone from the hands of its mother.

She took two or three puffs, long and close between them, turning her back to Damien, maybe to hide the yearning she was feeling.

It was a good chance for Damien to watch her from behind. He noticed her rounded hips, straight legs, which were so tightly wrapped within her tight jeans that he could admire their perfect shape. Her shortly cut hair, allowed him to admire her long elegant neck.

Damien walked silently towards Sonia, stood to her left and then moved in front of her like a dancer who takes the hand of his companion to invite her to dance. While he moved he could smell the fragrance that radiated from her neck and hair.

He closed his eyes and fully savoured the scent, mentally picturing Sonia, as if he had a three-dimensional view, in front of her mirror at home, as she sprayed the scent on, raising her neck, turning it, bowing her head and lifting it up again to see her reflection, in all its beauty.

Sonia turned her face towards Damien’s, who was just a few inches away from a kiss; they looked at each other for a moment that seemed endless and eventually Damien, more alert than Sonia, took the cigarette from her hands, which she gave up as a robot without its CPU.

“What do you think?” asked Damien, while moving slightly away.

“It’s good! I didn’t imagine it would be!” Sonia answered, recovering from her momentary confusion.

“This might help you stop smoking, Sonia. You have no idea of the benefits that you will find, not only for your health, but also for your whole being. Don’t allow tobacco to waste what nature gave you, your beautiful smile, the colour of your skin, its softness!” Damien spoke as he continued to look into Sonia’s eyes, trying to communicate that he really believed that those words were meant for her wellbeing.

At that moment Sonia decided she could talk to him about her illness, surely he would listen to her; something told her that he would help her face her disease with a positive attitude, rather than let go and give up fighting. Maybe Damien was the right person to offer her some moral support.

“When I came here the first time, - Sonia started, collecting her courage - I had just come out of the doctor's office across the street, I went to pick up the tests that confirmed that I have a tumour.”

“Oooh! – Damien interrupted her, visibly shaken – Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. Excuse me if I told you this, I know it’s a little confidential, but I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t part of my family or friends; I think you can understand why.”

“Yes, I understand – answered Damien – people who have known you for a long time, always feel very emotionally involved or very embarrassed in these cases, and at the end they are incapable of seeing the situation from a different perspective than yours. You put a lot of faith in me to tell me about it, I thank you for that.”

Sonia sought for a way to ease the drama of the topic, not that she regretted have confided in Damien, who was really only a “stranger”, indeed, she was glad; however, she believed that she would have the opportunity to talk to him on more occasions, since she was about to become a new customer of his, therefore she would have met him again.

She approached the counter and saw that strange metal object on which Damien was working before she entered the store. She picked it up and asked him what it was.

It was then that he moved closer to her, took her hand which held the basic atomizer with the mounted resistance and at that moment the resistance became incandescent.

Sonia, frightened, immediately dropped it into Damien’s palm who sharply said:

“Be careful! I forgot to turn it off – he lied – luckily you didn’t burn yourself, I’m sorry.”

“No excuse me, - said Sonia, who at that point assumed that the object had an internal battery – I shouldn’t have touched it, it’s my fault, anyhow I’m not hurt.”

Damien shook his head. This shouldn’t have happened.

His heart could have resisted her beauty, but not the heart of that atomizer, which had not put up a strong resistance to her.

Part eight (Sonia’s dream)

The new electronic cigarette’s battery was still hot, when Sonia put it down on the nightstand next to her bed. She was glad to have been able to smoke, oops!... “Vape” as Damien said, even in her room, without filling the air with that disgusting scent of tar.

She had inhaled a good dose of nicotine for that Saturday night, following a tasty pizza she had delivered to her home, which she had eaten in the company of her favourite TV show: Columbo.

Once she turned off the TV, she checked her bookmark, which indicated that she had another twenty pages to finish the novel she was reading; She shook her head undecidedly, trying to choose between reading or sleeping, took another look at the electronic cigarette, thinking that she could still vape while reading, without having to worry about shaking the ash or not falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Finally she gave up and decided that it would be better to turn off the light, close her eyes and let herself fall sleep without the anxiety of the ringing of the alarm clock. The next day was Sunday; she had already planned a bike ride with Giorgio, her boyfriend.

For almost a year now, Sonia lived alone in a two-roomed apartment that her parents had bought her with the savings of a lifetime, even though that meant they would be separated from their only daughter, who had chosen to live in the city of Florence, which she preferred to Turin, where she was born and raised. She got out of the bed and, as she did every night, she walked through the sixty square meters of her apartment. Every single night, she had to make sure that she had closed the front door, leaving the key in the door, half in and half out, as she had read in a police warning.

She then proceeded to control the windows and the shutters, and finally, with the adrenaline of a scared child who has to cross a dark hallway, she always checked the closet, which required opening the built-in wardrobes to see if anyone was hiding inside it, waiting to jump out in the middle night to attack her as she slept.

She never stopped to wonder, however, what she would do, if she had ever really found someone in the closet.

After carrying out her ritual control, she locked herself in her room. She climbed back into bed and turned off the bedside lamp.

She never fully shut her bedroom window shutter. Sonia always left a few gaps through which the light of the street lamps could pass through. Living on the second floor of an apartment building, the light coming through was enough to reassure her. She didn’t like to sleep in complete darkness.

From the upstairs apartment, or from the one below, came voices and music that she had never heard before. Maybe someone was throwing a party. After all it was Saturday night, some preferred to read a good book in peace and others chose to celebrate in their home, inviting their friends. All in all, that noise in the background kept her company and she fell asleep, feeling a little less lonely.

Before she closed her eyes, she saw streaks of light cast from the open gaps of the shutter, shining on the medical records that she had left open on the dresser opposite the bed. The headlights of a car bounced their light onto the windowpanes, (she never quite understood this phenomenon), and the play of reflections it created was sometimes curious, sometimes entertaining. This time, it was ghastly...

She turned the lamp back on, got out of bed and closed the folders, went back to bed and, when she saw the electronic cigarette on the nightstand, she remembered that she had to put it in charge by connecting the battery to its appropriate charger, as Damien had taught her.

Again she turned off her bedside lamp, the LED of the battery charger flashed three times in a bluish colour, then became solid red. To Sonia it seemed like a greeting: “bye, bye, see you tomorrow!”

And goodnight.

The air had cooled, the woollen blanket that the nurse had tucked in tightly under the mattress, was not warm enough. The door opened onto the hallway of the oncology department, in addition to the cold light of neon, let in the voices of the nurses who were joking with each other.

Sonia wished one of them would come into her room, so she could ask for another blanket. Furthermore, a sudden severe chest pain forced her to pull herself up, but she had to be careful not to pull out the needles of the drips in both her arms.

She leaning back on the two pillows behind her, and tried to take some deep breaths, slowly, to see if the pain would subside.

A shadow cast over her bed, it was that of a tall, strong man, wearing a lab coat. He stood in the threshold of the door with the light behind him, and she could not see his face.

She strained to call him, trying to guess his role:

“Doctor?”

She found she had a weak voice, almost feeble, her mouth was dry, her lips glued.

The dark silhouette of the man didn’t move. He looked like a mannequin.

“Doctor?”

A cough and a muscle spasm in her chest made Sonia blink her eyes and the menacing figure disappeared.

But then she felt a hand touching her face and she saw the same man near her, who, after stroking her cheek, began to adjust the flow of the IV.

“Don’t worry, Sonia. - Said the doctor or nurse, whoever he was - It's all right, it's all under control.”

The voice was fatherly and reassuring. His touch was light and gentle. She felt the warmth of that touch on her face and it cheered her up. The man gently helped her lie down again, arranged the pillows behind her head and when he bent down to wet her lips with a damp cloth, she saw his eyes.

A lightning followed by thunder and in that light his eyes were those of a cat in the dark.

Sonia woke up. She was in her room, she recognized it from the light coming in through the window shutters.

The electronic cigarette LED was green.

“Hi, I'm ready!”