It’s just a little yellow box, 2” x 3” x 1”, but it calls out to her as though it was broadcasting Bert Parks from the old TV show, “The Price is Right.”
“Come On Down!” Kate can hear him screaming at her every time she walks past the coffee table. She manages to avoid the living room and the voice in the box until almost noon. But while she’s running the vacuum cleaner in there, her hand reaches out, grabs the pack of cigarettes and shoves it into her shirt pocket. Why, it’s almost as if it’s someone else’s hand.
Most of her had vowed to quit smoking this morning but the determined smoker in her might not have heard the news. “I’ll just keep the pack in my pocket then I’ll feel more secure. I don’t have to take one out and smoke it.” She told her self. And that worked for another two hours, but Kate caught her self patting that pocket right over her heart again and again.
So she took off the shirt and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair and made a late lunch in her tank-top and shorts. She took her lunch out onto the back porch so she wouldn’t have to look at the shirt. Her apple juice tasted so good today.
But after she’d eaten her sandwich and picked the last bits of potato chip up off the plate with her moistened fingertip, the voice was back. Maybe it was that Pavlovian lull right after every meal when she usually savored a cigarette. “Oh hell!” Kate said, slammed her chair back and marched into the kitchen for her shirt.
Pulling the pack out of the pocket, she held the box and flipped the lid up and down, up and down with her thumb for a good fifteen minutes. Finally she pulled out one cigarette and stuck it between her lips, but didn’t light it. She gnawed on the filter while she went over all the arguments she’d had with her self last night. All the reasons why she wanted to quit smoking, needed to quit, would quit.
Deciding that it was the readily available pack in her hand that was the problem, she marched out to the garbage can by the curb. She made a little ceremony of lifting the lid and jamming the pack deep into the garbage knowing that today was trash day and the temptation would soon be gone. Back in the house she felt so virtuous and strong until about six pm, when she started thinking, “I may have to make a run to the store later. Damn!”
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Really great the way you portray temptation here. And really, when I read 'Why it's almost as if it's someone else's hand,' I knew I would choose this one. There's something so real - and so likable in terms of the character about that phrase. btw, your piece on Summer Vacation was also a close contender.
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