Arfur took a different way home this time. He always walked from work, a stroll of maybe 30 minutes, 35 minutes if he was feeling wistful, and he had no problems with it. He liked the exercise if not necessarily the environment. He lived in Los Angeles; Koreatown specifically. The sounds and smells of Little Manila bombarded him from the moment he left his office. Perhaps he was being uncharitable. He DID like it. It just didn’t nourish him. But he PERCEIVED the compressed society squeezed into the urban maelstrom that was the cultural epicenter of the United States.

He passed Maria’s Food Tacos on 3rd street like he usually did. He was on a first name basis with Maria, primarily because he frequently patronized her cart once or twice a week, dependable as ever.

“Hello pinoy,” shouted Maria from behind the sizzles of her smoking asada, “kamusta ngayon?” Random pedestrians filled the sidewalk in a haphazard jagged line, minding their own business but still paying attention.

“Great thanks,” Arfur waved back. A bloated underfed dog trundled back and forth in a 20 foot loop, yipping playfully and waiting for scraps. Carlo the dirty mutt. Friendly.

Okay, so he wasn’t taking a different way home. But he would. As soon as he scarfed down two of these tacos. He dropped a few bucks into her hand and ate as he walked. 5:15pm traffic screeled past him on 3rd. This was a busy street. Streaks of white on one side, red on the other: an endless scraping of rubber on concrete.

The palm trees above him wafted lazily in the non-breeze. Los Angeles in summer, or maybe it was just Koreatown in summer, he supposed dryly, had no space for wind. It was already packed with cars and kids and pawn shops.

He dropped his finished tacos into a nearby overflowing garbage can. All these apartment buildings lined up like cubes in a frying pan. He lived in one of these. About 30 minutes east on Ardmore. The small, lazy hills of the neighborhood rolled so subtly you never really noticed them unless you were on foot.

He pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket. It was safe to wear jackets in LA. You could get away with it. This time of year can go either way, and it was a cheaper social cost to err on the side of fashion. Maybe not in Koreatown, but in LA proper, status signals were, well, signals.

These cigarettes were killing him. Not literally. Yes literally, but psychologically they had a murderous glint to the lit end. He loved smoking and he hated smoking. He had picked up the habit from one of the many women who had not requited his love. It was just a social thing. It was something to do with his hands at the time. Plus, Caya had smoked like a briskethouse and it simultaneously repelled and fascinated him.

Caya had left without an explanation or even a word. The truth was she had, but none that satisfied or made sense. Too insistent, she’d said. Too obvious, too interested. He freaked her out apparently, sent her away into the void of the unavoidable. Caya was gone, and all that remained of her were his memories and her stupid cool cigarettes.

Arfur had gone through several more such flighty women in the intervening years (just two years if we’re counting, but it felt like twenty, and just two women if we’re counting those too, which also felt like twenty), and they all smoked and then vanished like smoke. They were going to be the death of him, he knew it.

So he pulled out another cigarette and lit it with the practiced ease of a man who had someone to impress. The nicotine rush started like a snow-clad avalanche, a cool breeze to make up for Koreatown’s lack.

His throat burned and he got a little dizzy. He liked that part. The beginning was always the best. He knew he needed to stop but he had just bought another pack. After this one he would DEFINITELY cool it. It was short term gains and long term consequences, he knew. But everybody made that trade in some capacity.

For now though he would take a detour down Catalina. Better trees here. Patches of grass even. This was a quieter road that was peopled with little Mexican and Filipino kids playing some sophisticated ball game that adults had long forgotten.

The sidewalk was stained with something. It was probably of human origin. Or wine. He was passing the Vons after all. They sold everything there. At any rate Arfur sidestepped it and kept his head up and breathed out. Smoke whirled into the sky and added to the hazy contaminants that made LA’s sunsets so sharply captivating.

Deep down he knew this was an addiction. Something as socially acceptable but psychologically destabilizing as tobacco had slipped into his life without effort. Briefly he contemplated the absolute monster he would unleash on himself if he ever became heartbroken enough to seek heroin.