Night skies and dirt mouth: A short story

When my best friend lifts her legs and puts them on the table, I know that she is drunk and will spend the night. So, I walk out of the house, whisper something to my neighbour, Muzamil, and come back inside, to a continuation of her drunken swearing.

My bedroom has a door that leads to a balcony that overlooks the city. My best friend -still swearing- joins me as we pull the wooden two-seater from my bedroom onto the balcony, from where the city stares at us through its endless myriad of bright lights -shiny, blind eyes. There is a struggle to pass it through the door, but instinctively, like we have done for so many years- and before she could swear again, we tilt it a little and suddenly it swoops through smoothly.

In a minute, we are out on the balcony, the tiles of the floor cold under our feet.

Fuck, that was cold.

I leave her to arrange the chair on the balcony while I whip out the small table that I keep near the door, and place it in front of the two-seater.

Ten minutes later, Muzamil returns with a pack of cigarettes, a large bottle of whiskey and a two-litre bottle of water. I hand him cash- a couple of notes- and mumble a thank you, after which I close the door behind him. I come back inside the house, and proceed to the balcony, whiskey and cigarettes in one hand, and two tiny glasses in the other, dexterously balanced between my thumb and forefinger.

I place all four items on the table and join my bestfriend on the couch. I pick up the pack of cigarettes, nip a bit of the cover open, and that is when I remember that I did not bring the lighter.

“Lighter?” my best friend asks instinctively.

Immediately, there is a flicking sound and a tongue of blue fire that in the darkness seems to appear from nowhere like magic, and then disappear again.

“Yes,” I reply, relieved.

I tap the cigarette pack with my finger and one stick comes out, which I pass the pack on to her for her to pick it. I tap again and pick one for myself too. She flicks the lighter again and both our cigarettes meet in the middle of the flame, becoming alive in an instant and consuming themselves in a fiery red.

“You curse too much,” I say a minute later.

“What?” She asks, suddenly straightening up in her seat.

“We all go through things, but we should be careful to guard our language when we express our frustration,” I say.

She pulls the smoke deep into her soul.

“Hm. You say I curse too much?”

“Yes”

“You also say that I should guard my language as I express my frustration.

“Yes”

She chuckles thickly from her throat.

Then she proceeds to speak with surprising clarity:

She says her fucking brother has fucking sold off the house which their mother left them as their inheritence- the only fucking thing that they really truly owned. Her fucking boyfriend won’t respond to her fucking texts. It’s the a hundredth fucking time she is bailing him out with her money- and he just does nothing but sit at home and smoke that fucking marijuana shit all day.

“And you want me to stop cursing?” she asks rhetorically.

The silence that ensues is heavy and dramatic as she slowly pulls in the smoke even deeper into her soul. She then deliberately removes the cigarette from her mouth, flicks off its ashy end, and places it on the piece of broken clay that we use as an ashtray. I feel her eyes tear through me in the dark as she looks my way.

“Fuck no,” she concludes.