First time for everything

Jacob had never smoked cigars because the smell is too strong. His audience and coworkers would tell right away, and that would require too many small-talks to explain his origin stories. That winter, he ran down the cement stairs stuck with decade-old gums and cigarette ashes from men and women around the world, picking up his pace while playing with the few dollars cash in his right pocket as a left-hander. Under his polyester windbreaker, Jacob practiced smiling at whoever that will see him next, and imagined possible awkward moments that he has absolutely no resolution to. Do I apologize? Will that make me soft? Will I regret later, Jacob thought, and end up wasting more time?

It never occurred to him that it doesn’t really matter if he was rude for one second. He was very stressed, clenching his knuckles and tightening his grip on the crisp bills he relies on in exchange for an unhealthy lifestyle.

He stepped in front of a smoke shop and slipped his lips without looking up, “Just a bottle of water, please.” “A bottle of water? You can’t get that anywhere else but here?“

A pitch higher than his but lower than what he anticipated responded with a neutral tone, though letting out obvious disapproval. In college, Jacob played club soccer. He didn’t notice this when he played on court, but when he observed the varsity team’s rare victories, he noticed that people screamed with an unimaginable range of voices, in all variations, saying things they didn’t understand why anybody would speak out loud. Of course his electrical engineering degree landed him a job in the entertainment industry. Years of lacking laughter made him a therapist of his own, still offering solutions and problem-solving, but in a more realistic and efficient way, he argues. He’d put on fourteen pounds — he measured after a whole summer of goal settings — after college, and realized that staying healthy requires energy, and that energy needs a source too. He couldn’t find the source, and naturally, his health failed unimaginably.

Jacob said he wasn’t feeling lonely. It’s not like he was scared of anyone, he thought, he just didn’t find a reason to be otherwise. His last employer told him he dressed too ambitious for the seasonal job he took on with the company, which sold beddings, and only needed comedians to tell jokes to combat the awkwardness in the store from one moment to another. He remembers thinking, I knew this was gonna happen. Life was going to be hard, and I was definitely ready for this. I signed up for this, he thinks clearly, I signed up for this.

“I’m Linda,” Linda said as Jacob’s frustrated gaze ran into her relaxed eyebrows. She said it as if she was forced to say it, as if they were set up by our friends and she wanted to be here a little bit less than he does. He hoped it was just a little bit less. He wouldn’t have noticed the ring on her thumb if he didn’t pretend he was trying to find something in his pocket. “Nice ring.” Jacob made his way back to Linda’s voice,

“Did I joke a bit too much?” she leaned in an inch further, “If you want the water, you can have it, for sure. I was only kidding, which I’m sure you know.” She had sounded like she cared, but not worried or stressed. Just cared, a clean stream of attention paving its way to him, a total stranger completely free of entanglement with her, or this untidied location laying beneath the streets of a busy city.

“No you’re good,” said Jacob, “Do you take cash?”

“Course.” Linda pulls the bottle out from a dozen rest of them held together by a plastic sleeve. She was twenty-eight and he was twenty-seven. He handed the cash to her and she instantly rested her mind somewhere else. He grabs the water and slips onto her ring. She didn’t notice, nor will she ever. But she asked, “Your name?”

“Sorry?” “What’s your name?”

“Jacob.”

“Nice to meet you. Hey, you can chill out, you seem stressed.” Linda’s eyebrows lifted.

“You sell cigars?” He asked.

“I do. Have you smoked cigars before? Similar to cigarettes, but you shouldn’t inhale it. Some do, but it didn't go well for them,” She turns around and taps on a case of paper cylinder with her pale fingers, “Do you smoke, in general?”

“Yes, but not habitually.”

“Habitually? You always use big words like this?”

“Habitually is not a big word!”

“Wow! What’s your job? A lawyer? Oh my — you one of those with a huge ego that needs everyone to know about your tax bracket?”

Jacob thought it was very odd she felt comfortable talking about him, someone she’d barely met just now, and his tax bracket. He was never too stressed about his money, but he was stressed when others told him he shouldn’t be. It implies that his situation made his acquaintances empathetic enough to try to cheer him up — a standup comedian usually assumed with infinite joy and scarce troubles.

“Have I seen you somewhere before?” He asked.

“Yeah you have. I probably didn’t notice you, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why’s what?”

“You didn’t notice me but I probably noticed you.”

“I don’t know — you’re not that noticeable, per say, no offense. Just another customer I guess.”

“And you?”

“I sell water. And cigars. And everything else. They’re not that big of a deal, but when you need it, you have to come to me. You have better places to be and better stores you can think of, easily, but you only have access to this location when you need these problems solved,” Linda looked into his eyes, sounding important, “I offer solutions to people’s needs. That’s why I put my little convenient store here, anyways. You think I wanna spend most of my days here?”

“Is this your full-time job?” He felt okay to be just as invasive now.

“Wow — something wrong with that?”

“No, of course not! Jesus,” he was confused, genuinely, though he doesn’t know why. This interaction with this Linda woman had gone on for way too long, “Sorry, I’ll get back to work now.”

“I watch your shows,” Linda spoke with the same volume of voice as before, “You have another one coming up too, right?”

Jacob was drawn to her by then, but only because she gave him the attention he needed at a time that nothing was his. At least he could pretend this was his, a completely random interaction with a stranger who mostly sells cigars but sold him a bottle of water for three dollars with no change.

“Yes,” he said, “I do. You wanna come? Did you like the last one?“

“Not really. Some of your lines were funny, but most of them too repetitive. Sounded like I could search them up and change up the word and use them anywhere I want. I could be you, per say.”

“Why don’t you, then?“

“Be you?”

“Yes.”

“Because I like being this, even though yours does look interesting enough, but mine is not bad either.”

“Being here? I thought you didn’t like it much here.”

“True, but I don’t hate it either.”

“Cool.” He’d always thought that he was cooler and more poetic than his peers because he has a degree that gives him a chance to live another life. But another life is just an illusion if it doesn’t come true, his mom would say.

“Cool.” She responded.

He couldn’t tell whether he liked her or not, or that he liked the attention she gave him. He felt pathetic for even questioning himself based off this. But it’s true and reasonable. Linda didn’t try to make him feel better, or asked him to do otherwise. His friends have texted him at late hours for pieces of jokes totally available online, taking up his time that he wouldn’t know how to spend otherwise. He once thought he should appreciate his friends for keeping him accompanied, even through using him. A good group of friends. He didn’t think he could solve his social crisis more efficiently, or more on time. If he tried, that would tire him. Which was perfect, because he secretly enjoyed his alone time more than gatherings. He’d love to have Linda around, actually. The brief exchange of words with a woman claiming to be his temporary audience was needed because he needed to see what’s out there, other than his close friends circle, which happens to be all of his friends. It wasn’t a good mechanism. But by then, he met Linda.

It was never going to be a healthy story, or one that deserved yearning. History should remark him as an example of ignorance, or at least arrogance, who sought himself too good for human interactions on a daily basis. He decided to talk with Linda a bit longer.

After they discussed the movies, the books, and the music, Jacob asked her some basic questions on the numbers in her life. When were you born, what’s your lucky number, what time do you wake up, what time you go to bed, how many shots of espresso you add to your procrastination coffee — to keep the flame of his interest going. He wants to be interested in something, for that gives him a purpose to throw himself after even when he practiced detachment almost religiously. He loved the equanimity detachment had given him for the past decade of his life, but it’s reached a point where his animal mind craves attention and a little bit of drama. Just enough to get him started but not sufficient to cause him trouble, or distract him of this stress-free life.

“My family back home is so worried, about everything,” Linda said, “that I need to achieve something before I go on about my passion and interests. There was a saying that, if I’m in my 20s, I need to give my life to others before it’s about mine.” She thought it was stupid, stupid, and unnecessary — so unnecessary that she could think about cutting all of her relatives off once and for all. “Of course I’m just being dramatic,” she said, “I could never. Nowadays people have issues telling a difference between my jokes, what I really mean, or I’m just exaggerating for the sake of it. Gosh, it gets so hard sometimes.” He told her he completely understands even though he didn’t.

His mind was searching for a feeling, and when it found it, he pulled it back without pouring his affections out. A tilt, and his secrets about his feelings are exposed. Jacob thought it was impossible for her to figure him out if he convinces himself that this is simply an attempt on friendship by a man that appears as socially awkward.

“You don’t speak much about yourself.”

“Me?” “Yes.”

“There’s nothing much to me.”

“I’m sure there is. Are you shy?”

Jacob smirked. Had she known him, for real, he thought, she’d laugh at her own comment. No, I’m not, he said, I talk too much about myself regularly, and I try not to in my off time. I’m a comedian, as you know. Sometimes people find me obnoxious. I don’t think so, Linda responded, arching her back and lands her tailbone on a wooden chair with brunette leather topping a metallic structure, I think you — what you do — is very impressive. Many people consider themselves well-spoken just because they speak often, but they don’t take into consideration whether or not their audience really enjoy their presence.

“Do you enjoy my presence?” ‘

There, Jacob risked it. He was too blunt, but she liked it.

“I do, I guess.”

She spoke frankly and efficiently, as if she calculated the minimum efforts needed to leverage maximum yield of return. But she had a complicated way of writing notes on her blended yellow pad, not shaking her wrists like most people do to show off their self-taught cursive, but angling her slim fingers from her knuckles, and treading through each line with the bottom of her other palm. The outcome was that the texts she had written down were so sharp that it poked through the sheet sometimes. She peeled off the thick layer from the stiff black top of the notepad as she agreed to take a walk upstairs with him, and nothing was said about what will happen next.