_There comes a time in the life cycle of any smoke break, when you know it’s time to stub out the butts and go do something else. It may seem temporarily tempting not to— maybe for a moment you feel as if you could just waste there forever, smoking and knowing secret things, until the space cows come home in a capsule. But if you did that, and some self-preserving part of you won’t forget this, and won’t be dissuaded, your smoke breaks would lose their potency. Then you’d have to start taking non-smoke breaks, and what the hell would be the point of that? No, better to ash the last ash, stretch, stand up, glean what pleasure you may out of temporary dizziness laced with an edge of nausea (what the fuck, why do we do this to ourselves?), and actually go do something—if for no other reason than to earn your next smoke break._ _And so it is that Him and Me decide at length to get up off their asses, and continue down the corridor in which they find themselves refugees. There’s really nothing to do but walk; still no doors on the right side._ ME: Do you want to talk about anything? HIM: Yes, more than anything. But I don’t know what it is I want to talk about. ME: I know that feeling. _And just like that, they are talking about something. Moments like this are the only evidence we have that we are not all completely, unreconcilably, desperately, irretrievably alone._ _Or if we are, at least we have moments like this to make us feel as if we aren’t._