Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers

matter below the escalator steps. Someone was responsible.
    She stood up and looked over the fence into next door’s garden. It was neat and pretty, regimented flowers in beds and a well-maintained rockery. She wondered if they’d notice if she
crept onto their lawn, lay down on the lush turf and slept. It was a strange idea and one that hung heavy in her head. She wanted to sleep; she wanted all the sleep he was denying her, but instead
she took in another huge lungful of smoke.
    On that evening, Peter had been drinking in a pub in Soho with his then girlfriend, Simone. They were drunk and had argued over something and nothing. On the Underground their disagreements had
become more personal. In front of an alarmed carriage, they had argued in her native French and later in English, his Galway accent increasingly loud. At Euston she ended their relationship and at
King’s Cross she danced past the crowds with Peter in pursuit. He lost her in the tunnels somewhere near the Piccadilly Line. He took the escalator and on the way up to the ticket hall struck
a match, lit an Embassy and let the match fall. I think I killed some people . Thirty-one people to be precise. Jean even knew some of their names.
    When his confession was at an end, she had, of course, told him not to be so stupid. In that rented cottage she’d taken him in her arms, her ring box still tight in her hand.
    ‘Sshh,’ she’d said. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Pete.’ And she’d explained about how it could have been any number of people and
that it was an accident just waiting to happen and that there was no possible way he could know it was him who had caused such a catastrophe. She felt starchy and nanny-like. She stroked his hair
and could almost feel the relief flooding from him. They stayed like that for a long time, Jean telling him it wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t to blame, that he was not
responsible.

    She watched next door’s cat pad along the fence. For a moment she was tempted to flick her cigarette at it. She could see how easy it would be to hit its black and grey
flank. The cat jumped down and still she had the cigarette poised, though now her shot was compromised. If she missed now, the cigarette would be lost in the tangle of weeds and nettles by the
fence. It could start a fire. A real one, not the one that just burned up her nights. She had plenty of matches, she could set the whole lot alight and watch it go up, watch it rage from the
upstairs bedroom, taking every garden with it.
    She wished that he had never said anything. That the man she fell in love with was back; the shy, lonely person with a constant look of surprised happiness on his face. The killer of some
people. Of thirty-one people. Absolved from that blame, he had become divorced from himself, and from her. Despite everything, she had preferred the remorse.
    She put out her cigarette and looked back inside the still, dark house. Each night she watched for his bare ankles on the stairs, the look of horror on his face, his T-shirt and shorts damp with
sweat. ‘I had the dream again,’ she’d hear him say, and she’d hold him and tell him that she’d got him and that he was safe. She wanted him to have the dreams again;
she wanted him to take them back from her. But he never came down the stairs and never saw her smoking cigarettes sitting out on the canvas chair.
    The cat stretched, sleek in the night, then washed itself for a time. When it stopped it nudged its nose against a stray piece of timber. Jean looked again at the matches and then back at the
house. When she turned around again the cat was looking at her, holding her gaze with reflective, filmy eyes. It was still for a second, then darted off through the garden and out into safety.

Lou Lou in the Blue Bottle

It was all O’Neil’s fault that I started running. Since I’d moved to New York, we’d quickly become close and were soon living together in a small