ELSEWHERE. Care for a smoke?

Pete bounces up the driveway in high spirits. “I’m CURED!” he says when I ask him what the news is. He no longer has Hepatitis C. “It’s the new drugs,” he says, when we’re sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts, drinking coffee. “They don’t work for everyone, but they worked for me.” I asked him how long he’d been sick. “Eight years,” he said. “Lots of people don’t make it. But I did.”

He’s so happy he’s radiating light. “I wasn’t ready to die, you know?” It was an uphill struggle — I know because I saw some of it. There were days when his skin looked like it belonged on a withered apple and he seemed as fragile as a dried autumn leaf. Yet he smokes! He has to do it surreptitiously because the building is Smoker Unfriendly and Rebecca upstairs is a vigilante about the least whiff of tobacco.

I have seen him, some mornings, toiling up the shallow rise from the parking lot, the thin coil of white smoke emerging from under the cowl of his hooded jacket looking like a lifeline. Keeping him tethered to this world.

Of course, I know that smoking is an unhealthy, dangerous habit. I’m not a smoker in part because I have asthma, in part because I never had cash to spare on cigarettes when I was young. Still. I’m sympathetic towards those who can’t or won’t give up. There’s a homeless man, for instance, who hangs out near my gym. He’s got fierce blue eyes, a tattered thatch of grey-blond hair and is medium-dishevelled. He doesn’t ask for money, but I’ve seen him smoking. He just sits cross-legged on the sidewalk roaring and muttering about the various bureaucratic injustices that have rendered him homeless. One day, when I was crossing the street, he called out to me, “Stop! There’s a car coming!” Ever since, I’ve smiled and waved at him. He waves back. Doesn’t smile.

The other day he asked me if I could spare him a cigarette. I said I didn’t smoke. Then he asked me if I could do him a favour and buy him a pack from Cumberland Farms, across the road. “I can’t walk much,” he said, “my legs are weak. I’ll give you the money.” And he held out four damp and dirty one dollar bills. It was two days before Christmas. I said, “It’s okay, I’ll buy them for you.” He didn’t bat an eyelid. “They know what kind I like in that store,” he said and he named a brand I’d never heard of.

Sure enough, in the store when I said I’d like a pack for the homeless man across the street, they said, “Oh, Andy? Sure. This is his brand.” I crossed the street again. Andy thanked me and once again tried to pay. “Merry Christmas,” I said. But the thought crossed my mind: cancer sticks to a homeless man! Was that kind? Or cruel? “The same to you, lady,” muttered Andy. His mouth bent in the shadow of a smile. “The same to you.”

(MANJULA PADMANABHAN, author and artist, tells of her parallel life in Elsewhere, US, in this fortnightly series)

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