Nicotine by Nell Zink

cigarette. And that’s where I say somebody’s consciousness is fucked-up.”
    â€œIt’s because they’re good leftists,” Penny says. “They want to blame perpetrators, not victims. And everybody is the smokers’ victim. They’d triumph in the struggle and be living in the new Jerusalem, except we’re killing them with our cancer sticks.”
    Rob and Sorry trade admiring glances, as though Penny had jumped through a hoop. She is thrilled to be sitting with them at their big table, reaping spontaneous approval for spontaneous utterances. She beams with joy. Rob is so cute—and Sorry so not in the running as competition—that she sees herself getting very close to him very quickly.
    â€œI like you,” Sorry says.
    â€œIf you don’t mind my asking, how’d your name get to be Sorry?”
    â€œIt’s Sarah,” she explains. “‘Sari’ for short. But people in this country think I’m saying ‘sorry.’ I grew up in a settlement on the West Bank, so I spend half my life saying ‘sorry.’ It’s a shortcut.”
    â€œYou got any beer?”
    â€œWant to see our bodega?” Rob replies.
    He and Penny go on a beer run.
    When she comments that the empty brick “brownstones” could be crack houses, he says they are empty because they were built on fill. Rather than install a drainpipe to carry the stream he buried, the developer 120 years ago dumped it full of dirt and trash. “The back halves are in ruins,” he explains. “Every day they slide a little farther down into the creek.”
    â€œThey could still be crack houses.”
    â€œI don’t know. This is more of a heroin-type neighborhood.”
    They turn and walk for a few hundred yards parallel to a high chain-link fence separating them from an enormous asphalted schoolyard. The children have gone home, and the chain nets of the basketball court rattle in the wind. The afternoon is warm, but so dense with humid haze that the sun seems to have set already.
    Rob holds the door of the bodega open for Penny. A small silver bell rings as it closes. They stand in front of a tall refrigerator, studying the selection. Rob chooses a bottle of eight-ball, and Penny buys a can of Foster’s and three packs of American Spirits (an impulse buy, based on a sudden decision to quit Marlboros) because they cost five dollars less—each!—than they do across the river in New York City.
    Back at the house, the conversation deteriorates into open flirting. Sorry goes upstairs. Penny gives Rob a slightly buzzed kiss on the cheek. He touches her arm with a kind of tenderness, but does not kiss back.
    They make curry sauce with coconut shavings because it goes with carrots. When Sorry comes down to eat, they serve her in the dining room as though they were host and hostess and she the guest.They say very little but look at each other often. Sorry finishes her plate and excuses herself.
    Penny and Rob wash and dry the dishes. They do some nicotine, a bit drunkenly.
    Around eight, before the last bus, he takes her hand and leads her to the stairwell. He returns her peck on the cheek. His hands wander the outlines of her body, briefly. He enfolds her in his arms like a long-lost friend. “You look like the sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,” he says.
    â€œI’m not sad.” It’s her first best honest answer.
    He draws away to look in her eyes. Then, hesitantly, aiming carefully, he kisses her on the mouth. His lips rest on hers without moving for a full five seconds. His eyes close and he squints a bit, as though lost in thought. Then he pulls back, seeming to have considered and reconsidered and decided he shouldn’t move too fast.
    Penny decides it’s sexy. It’s like he thinks really kissing her would pose a risk, so he’s slow to step on the slippery slope, take the bait, enter the trap. She feels spontaneous