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CHAPTER 3: SMOKE Maxine tossed a plate of them on the passenger seat of her jade-green Land Rover, slammed the door and peeled out of The Pendulum’s parking lot so fast her tires spat gravel onto her coworkers’ cars. Those people! They’d ignored all her work, left the whole plate of freshly baked delights to go dry all day, and without so much as an apology, or a smile. Couldn’t they see that she’d gone to the extra trouble of drizzling imitation orange-flavored frosting on top? Didn’t they care? She glanced at the plastic wrap, the way it flapped off the far edge of the plate, like a baby waving bye-bye. She hit the brakes hard at the next stop sign and all 14 pastries flew from the seat to the floor. Homemade flippin’ scones. Over the years, Maxine’s oven had launched a thousand sweets into the bellies of her bosses — chocolate cupcakes, lemon bars, snickerdoodles. All she’d ever taken home every time before was a crumb-covered, empty plate. But then came that damn diet. Everyone at the paper was on it, all thanks to that editor in the Sports Department, the one with that damn East Coast accent, the one who rambled ad nauseam for weeks about how many pounds he was losing. Nah-tin but meat. Nah-tin! Even the temps jumped on board. Maxine tried to dissuade the biggest bosses from buying into it. She doubled her efforts in the kitchen and focused on their favorites. But, in the end, all she really doubled was their resolve. As Buckwalter’s weight increased, so did the attraction of that damn diet. The proof lay beneath that upside-down plate on the carpet of her SUV. Buckwalter told her it was all about a new tuxedo and a pair of press credentials to the Academy Awards, but to Maxine’s ears that was all so much tripe. She ground her teeth all the way home. “Now what?” she yelled at the windshield. “What?” Her cookbook arsenal offered no new options. No culinary combat technique existed that could defeat a dream diet that involved no strenuous exercise and allowed all the meat anyone could eat. Hot dogs. Spam. Bologna. Lunchtime in the newsroom was awash in wet sandwich bags full of pink nitrates. The Hostess cupcakes in the vending machine had begun to gather dust. Spider webs stretched between bags of potato chips and pouches of Corn Nuts. At least Maxine could say her scones survived long enough to be the last temptation — a victory that warranted no celebration. Maxine looked to the mess of pastries on the floor of her Land Rover, the frosting in the carpet, the shattered pieces of crust all around. She cried her first tear since the last time she lost anything important, and that was just an old earring, probably still beneath the backseat of that boy’s car in Texas. He was easy — sugar cookies was all it took and she was off to the Sadie Hawkins dance with a wrist corsage and a pint of peppermint schnapps. Everyone had a weakness. All Maxine had to do was figure out Buckwalter’s.
She sped up her driveway at 5:35 p.m., her 10-minute drive reduced by half in the rush to get home. Frosting stuck to the floorboard carpet as she turned over the mess of scones and took her plateful of problems up the back steps and into the kitchen. She looked to the refrigerator first, then to the stove. A cooked meal? With everything else going on? Not a chance. There was no time for dinner. Maxine’s impending loss of clout was a level-red threat. About all she could still count on was that Stan’s arrival would be delayed by the usual LA traffic jams, which meant she had at least another 90 minutes or so alone. That was serious thinking time. Stan could fend for himself. The kitchen table was clean of all but the plate of busted scones and several blank sheets of white paper. No sifter or mixer was necessary. Not even egg substitutes or artificial sweeteners could help Maxine now. She scrawled the first thought that came to mind, then scratched it out so hard she cut through to the tabletop. Carb free. Baked goods without flour were as pointless as jelly doughnuts without jelly. The specialty bakery at the corner of Main and Peach might have considered it “a confectionary coup,” as proclaimed by a sign in its window, but Maxine gave the place six months before it went the way of wheat germ and bean sprouts. Only matters of the mind could be denied forever. The gut governed itself. Cravings could only be resisted so long before the mouth reclaimed control. The body always fought the brain. Maxine knew enough alcoholics to understand that. The Friends of Bill W were no different than eaters, and plenty of people were both. Hard as some worked to climb aboard the latest waistband wagon, reality regularly bounced them out and back to where they’d been before, each fall more forceful than the last. Maxine’s flock would return, but she wasn’t about to practice patience. She had to force herself to properly preheat an oven, never mind waiting for people to warm to her way of thinking. This situation was beyond Betty Crocker. This required something more powerful than raw sugar, and more artery clogging than real cream. Maxine needed to tap the very essence of longing, the source of the ache that accompanied man’s worst wants. She had to harness harm itself, with zero calories and no carbohydrates, but all the guilt of warm shortbread and cold buttermilk. Her weapon had to be lighter than the best meringue — virtually weightless — a provision capable of such euphoria that even trendsetting, anorexic ingénues would be powerless against it. Ingénues. Accessories. Ingénues loved accessories — little dogs and sparkly bags and colorful little cupcake boutiques that wrapped all purchases in beautiful cardboard boxes tied up with string. Maxine would have to have some of that — the appeal of an accessory. What could be better than an addictive consumable that said something about the consumer as it was being consumed? Maxine stared so long and hard at the page that the surface of her eyes seemed to dance with liquid smoke. And then all was clear again. Smoke! Buckwalter was a smoker. The craving! Smoke! Maxine dashed off a quick note to Stan, suggested he seek out the eggplant parmesan leftovers and some store-brand, crinkle-cut fries in the freezer, then she added a little PS and propped the paper beside the plate of broken scones. “PS Sweets 4 U! N-joy!”
———— Maxine arrived at the Memorial Promenade shopping mall with two hours left until sunset. It was the only shopping mall in Waters End and the only place Maxine had ever seen so many elegant smokers gather all at once. She parked in the lot outside the PasPourVous Day Spa and remained behind the wheel to spy and take notes: Inhale — pinky extended. Exhale — head up, hair back. Laugh — never with cigarette in mouth. Sway hips — gently. Repeat. The Land Rover’s window tints concealed her as she mimicked the movements, an imaginary cigarette between her fingers, the rearview mirror turned down to reflect her face. These women weren’t so pretty. She got good sense and they got good fortune. No other difference. Once the last two women climbed into their Bentleys to depart, Maxine slipped into the well-lit lot. With quick steps in her clogs, she scooted to the knee-high ash container, skimmed the surface debris into a sandwich baggie, then clip-clopped back to her Land Rover. With a pair of eyebrow tweezers beneath the vehicle’s dome light, she picked through the cache of lipstick-stained filters, chewing gum and torn foil pill packets. She inspected each butt as a detective might, assigning each to one of four rows of similarity set up on the passenger seat. There were 20 cigarettes in all, but one brand dominated the bunch. She bundled a sample of that one into a tissue, dumped the remains out the door, and raced south on Highway 101. She knew exactly where to go. The Los Angeles community of Woodland Hills had a 24-hour tobacco shop located in the same strip mall as a designer factory outlet for women’s shoes.
The cashier didn’t speak when Maxine entered to the ding of a motion detector. Neither did he say a word as she slipped one of the used butts through the slot of his glass enclosure and inquired about the brand. He spun to face the wall of tobacco behind him, then slapped two packs on the countertop — a red one and a blue one. The label on each box read “Dunhill.” Maxine pointed to the blue one, said it was “pretty,” and raised her eyebrows at the clerk. “International Mild,” he said in an accent Maxine guessed was Greek. Greeks, she often said, could run any kind of store or restaurant. She tossed a credit card through the slot. “Give me a case of that, Zorba,” she said. “A case?” the man said. “Twenty cigarette packs to a carton. No cases. You buy a carton.” “Carton,” Maxine said as she picked through what little cash she had in her pink, quilted, imitation leather wallet. “I need ID,” the man told her. “Do I look that young?” Maxine said and pulled out her license. “I’m married. See?” “For the credit card,” he said. “For security.” Maxine smoked four cigarettes on the drive home and swore she already felt some significant benefits. Aside from a slight lightheadedness, her appetite disappeared despite missing dinner. That alone made these almost as good as the white, 20 mg Ritalin LA capsules she secretly obtained from her husband’s 13-year-old nephew — a bimonthly brownies-for-medication barter agreement set up two Christmases prior to the last. Ritalin killed her appetite in the daytime, but was no help at night. Taking it in the evening made sleep impossible. Cigarettes were the perfect complement. “Meaty Schmeaty,” she said and punched in the electric cigarette lighter to smoke fag number five. Fags. Maxine loved that the Brits call them fags.
The next morning, Maxine joined Buckwalter on the loading dock. It was his first smoke of the day. Maxine was on her third. “You a secret smoker?” Buckwalter asked. Maxine sprayed smoke up and away with a swan-like dip and swoop of her neck. “They hate us here,” she told him. “But when I saw you weren’t afraid of … I decided I’m sick of sneaking around. No more secrets. I’m with you. We’ll show them what’s what.” xxx
"Boon" can be purchased in stores and online. It's available in hardcover [large print], paperback and eBook formats. The Kindle edition is enabled for text-to-speech conversion. For more about "Boon," visit the official Web site at www.WhatTheBoon.com.
* Boon, By TJ Sullivan. Copyright © 2010 All Rights Reserved. Published by One Red Beetle Press, LLC. This excerpt has been published with permission. This excerpt may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, or in any form, without permission. Boon is a work of fiction. Names, situations, places, businesses, organizations, events, incidents and characters are either products of the author’s imagination or they are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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