My first college year, regularly, would find me late night walking across Bellingham to visit who, now, are very old friends indeed. Up and out of bed by 5pm, I'd head out from the track-side apartment in The Letters, wander through downtown, hike up the hill to campus, and wind up over with friends in Fairhaven, where one day I would live.
On this night, later than usual and already far into the wee hours of the morning, I had made it up to the first half of downtown, past the Old Town Café. Next to a shuttered building just short of Woolworth's, an old man with grey, short-cropped hair, approached me, keeping eye contact the whole way. Only a foot short, he quickly stopped, offered me a drag of his cigarette, thought better of it and proffered up an unlit one from his pack. It was my brand. He lit the smoke for me. I said, 'Hey, thanks', as he abruptly passed me by, vanishing into the darkness.
I'm sure I had no smokes at the time as I wasn't smoking one then, which in those years I rarely did. He knew I was out of cigarettes, he carried my favorite brand, and he looked, I thought, as I would look, years and years from then. I'm still not quite that old, but I'm getting closer, and I'm looking forward to it.
Maybe this time I'll say more...
