Smoke Break - I
Ray Partrite has a bad night. Part of the Blackwater Project.
This is my contribution to the Blackwater mythos. Since this one started to get a bit long, I’ll be splitting it into two parts. Maybe three, depending on how the next scene plays out.
I sincerely hope that you enjoy.
Oh, and remember:
“You goin’ home for Christmas?”
Ray shifted from one foot to the other, her weight still supported by the concrete wall against her back. With stiff, mechanical motions, she raised her hand and put a thin, white vape pen between her lips, shrugging as she inhaled. The end glowed with a white LED light that always felt like a poor, sterile alternative to the smoldering red end of burning paper and plant matter, just as the crisp, minty vapor was a miserable substitute for tobacco. But it was preferable to that awful, sticky, cloying, fruity shit everyone else liked to huff.
“Prolly not,” she mumbled, a pasty, billowing cloud of thick smoke tumbling from either side of her mouth.
“Why not?”
She took another quick drag before taking the pen from her mouth and sticking it back in the pocket of her white coat along with her hand. The empty bag of ShrimpCrisps™ wadded up inside of it crinkled, since she’d been too preoccupied to throw it away at first, and too lazy to throw it away later.
“Not worth it,” she said with a shake of her head. “Three grand to go drink myself sick in a house full of people who can barely stand being around each other?” She clicked her tongue. “Hard pass.”
To her right, Dev gave a dismissive scoff. “Three thousand bucks? Really? To get from here to Vancouver?”
Ray grit her teeth. Every time she even thought about how expensive it was, it pissed her off so badly she could feel it. Literally - a hard pressure, right between the eyes, like some sort of invisible hydraulic press bearing down on her skull. It made her want another hit of nicotine. So, she let herself have it.
“Twenty-seven hundred, actually. But close enough.”
Dev sighed. The warm cloud he exhaled through his nostrils had a vague, sweet scent to it that smelled like some sort of chemical synthesized to mimic every fruit at once and, somehow, none of them at the same time. “God damn.”
A moment of silence passed between the two. Overhead, thin, gauzy clouds passed overhead, streaks of gray set against a starless black sky. All but a thin sliver of the moon had been erased by the lights that kept the research facility’s grounds illuminated, each and every one of them the same harsh, unfriendly LED white as the one burning at the end of her pen. The campus where the Beaverton branch of Elysium’s research department was based was all like that - nothing but concrete, LED lights, flat walls and right angles, all white and gray and black, neat and clean, slick, smooth, polished, shiny; a collection of boxy buildings connected by a grid of concrete and asphalt with neatly trimmed and meticulously manicured courtyards in between. In the distance, Ray watched a white, glossy automated monorail noiselessly speed down a thin rail, ferrying a handful of employees from one side of the campus to another. The cool night air was only disturbed by the distant roar of interstate traffic and the slight trickle of water from the fountain in the nearby pond.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“I said, what about you?” Ray asked again, this time enunciating each word.
Dev scratched at his dark, wiry facial hair. “Well, I haven’t looked at how much it would cost to catch a flight to Bangalore, but - Christ, if it costs almost three grand to get to Canada, I don’t even want to think about how much it'll be to fly to India.”
Ray hummed as she took another drag from her pen. She didn’t want to think about that, either.
“You gonna stay here, then?” she asked.
“Hell no,” Dev replied with a low, joyless laugh. “I’m about ready for a change of scenery.” With his eyes fixed on the featureless sky above, he crossed his arms and added, as an afterthought, “Maybe I’ll take the train to Seattle. Use some of that vacation time I’ve been building up.”
“You got family out there?” asked Ray.
Dev shook his head. “Nah. I just wanna go to go. Never been that way. Do something different, y’know?"
“So, your idea of doing something different is… going from one big city to another big city?”
Dev shrugged. “Portland is only one million people.”
“And Seattle is, like, what? Three and a half million?”
“Neither of them are that big. Not compared to, like - L.A. Or New York. If think those cities are big, you should see Bangalore. Or Mumbai. Hell, isn’t Vancouver bigger than Seattle and Portland combined?”
“Same shit,” said Ray. “Different place. Portland is Seattle is Vancouver is New York is Mumbai.”
Dev was quiet for a moment. “What about you? If you aren’t going back to Canada, what are you gonna do over the holidays?”
“Work,” said Ray flatly.
“Seriously?”
“Yup,” said Ray flatly.
“Do you, like… ever take any time off?”
Ray took another hit from the pen. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I did.”
Dev opened his mouth. He shut it just as fast. Raising his wrist, he checked the smart-watch fastened to his wrist. Whatever he saw on it coaxed him to swear under his breath. He took another quick hit of his own vape pen. The sleek, raspberry red metal was the only spot of color to be seen around save for the muted green of nearby trees, only to disappear into his pocket. “Gotta get back,” he muttered. “Later, Ray.”
Ray only offered a listless grunt as Dev hustled off, disappearing around a corner. She heard the chirp of the ID scanner accepting the chip in Dev’s hand, followed by the slight hiss of an automated door opening, and another hiss of the same door sliding shut. She sighed one long, exasperated, minty sigh, now mercifully alone save for the artificial koi fish aimlessly milling about the pond. Even they glowed with white LEDs. Because everything had to be illuminated. Shadows. Darkness. Places to hide. It all had to be burned away by light. None of it could be tolerate. Everything had to be starkly visible to the ever-watchful eye of Elysium, sewn into the very breast pocket of her coat.
At least the artificial koi fish didn’t talk. Yet. Ray had once said that the minute that someone found out how to get them to start spouting off advertisements, they would, and the relative tranquility of the courtyard would be broken by the constant din of commercials being played on the sides or backs of mechanical fish. It had been meant as a joke, but Ray also knew that it was an inevitability. Anything that could be a platform for advertising would be one. If they were any closer to Portland proper, she wouldn’t even be able to look up into the sky without seeing fleets of drones organized into screens that played bright, flashy, annoying ads for diabetes medication, insurance, lab-grown meatless fast-food, and whatever new hot video game or movie or streaming series that was currently in the midst of a market blitz.
The pressure between her eyes increased. She shut them, but it did little to diminish the ever-present sterile burn of LEDs that saturated the entire campus. The sharp, menthol burn of the vapor in her mouth did little to ease her nerves.
Around the corner, she heard the doors slide open again. Her muscles tensed. Her brow furrowed. Dev had probably forgotten to tell her something that wasn’t pertinent to her job or important to anyone else besides himself. He was a decent guy. Smarter than most of the knuckle-draggers that someone managed to get hired at this place. But she wouldn’t have been friends with him outside of work. She wasn’t friends with him now. Though, he certainly seemed to think they were. He was always asking if she was alright. Like he was really concerned if she was, which, if he was - his mistake. She wasn’t, and he knew that, and he knew everytime she shrugged and said, Yeah, she was lying, and for some reason, he always asked anyways.
Maybe he was going to invite her to go get drinks with some of the other lab techs tomorrow, like they always did when the work week was over. He did that every week, and, every week, the answer was no. She wondered if his pattern recognition abilities still functioned well enough that, one day, he might be able to put two and two together and come to the epiphany that she was never going to get drinks with them.
Ever.
After five straight days of working, eating, sleeping, and doing every other bodily function in between on campus, the last thing she wanted to do was listen to a bunch of morons she was forced to spend every day interacting with against her will run their mouths about whatever the hot new thing of the now was. She’d made that mistake once.
Once.
And there wasn’t enough hard liquor in the cheap, ugly, piss-poor fast-casual slop factory the others chose to do their drinking at to make all their chatter about the new Star Wars show streaming on Disney NEXT tolerable. She’d vowed then and there that she’d sooner jump in front of the monorail before she ever listened to Todd in sim maintenance give her another dissertation on why Star Wars Episode 19 was the best of the franchise. Too bad they changed the monorail so you couldn’t even do that anymore after one lab tech lost his mind and actually did it.
Maybe that guy had listened to Todd’s inane ramblings one too many times.
A morbid, mirthless grin spread across Ray’s lips as she felt the slightest twinge of amusement at her own middling joke. She girded herself to withstand whatever was about to happen. The fleeting moment of silence had been nice. Or, it might have been, if she hadn’t wasted it hyper-fixating on the miserable state of the world.
Maybe she really should go on those pills the site doctor had recommended. They’d done wonders for that one guy - Aiden, or whatever. He’d always been pissing and moaning whenever Ray saw him. Now, he was quiet. He didn’t look any happier, but at least he was quiet.
Ray took another hit. Stood up a bit straighter. She opened her mouth to say something snarky - what, exactly, she wasn’t even sure - when whatever words were going to flop out of her mouth hitched in her throat. The footfalls she’d heard rounding the corner weren’t Dev’s.
“Miss Partrite.”
Ray quickly pocketed the vape pen, along with both of her hands. The perpetual slouch she carried herself with disappeared and her eyes opened wide.
“Doctor DiMassi?”
Even though Doctor Daria DiMassi was an actual, accredited somnologist with a medical degree from the University of Southern California, she didn’t dress like one. Ray didn’t see much of the woman, but, when she did, she was always dressed more like she was about to go out for dinner and drinks and spend more than all the lab techs at on campus made in a year in one night. Sharp, neatly-tailored, dark-colored blazers. Thin, hip-hugging skirts. Impractically tall-heeled shoes that were polished to a blinding shine and enough ostentatious silver jewelry to fill a store, with dark, expertly coiffed hair that looked as if it took hours of meticulously styling to prepare - she cut a distinct and unmistakable figure on the campus grounds.
It all struck Ray as a bit ridiculous - gauche, even - but, at the same time, she clearly had the money and authority to dress however she wanted and summarily fire anyone who might deign to criticize her choice of dress. So, no one ever did. Among the rest of the white-coated, plain-dressed staff, she stood out like a wolf among sheep. She conducted herself like one, too - always smiling, always polite, courteous, considerate, and affable in a way that was just a little too well choreographed and a little too impeccable to be anything other than a front.
No one else seemed to think so, but Ray just hoped they were just too smart to avoid openly admitting they thought Doctor DiMassi’s affect was questionable rather than genuinely too stupid to tell.
Doctor DiMassi regarded Ray with a small smile that verged on a smirk. Or maybe that was just the way the lights fell across her face. She had both her hands raised in front of her, as if to signal that she was no threat. It was obvious that she didn’t do any real work, what with the long, artificial nails gleaming black in the glow of the LEDs - Ray couldn’t imagine anyone even being able to type with talons that long.
“Apologies, Miss Partrite,” said Doctor DiMassi, her low, husky voice tinged with an accent that betrayed an upbringing somewhere on the Northeast coast. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Ray shook her head. She blinked furiously. When was the last time she’d spoken to Doctor DiMassi? When was the last time she’d ever even been this close to her. When she did stop in, it was always with the company of a supervisor or member of the managerial staff. She always had a cadre of cronies scuttling along in her wake. It was odd to see her alone. It was even more strange to see her this close for a change.
“Y-you - you didn’t,” Ray sputtered. “You’re fine.”
Doctor DiMassi feigned a look of relief. “Oh, good. Good. I’ve been told I have a way of…” Her dark eyes scanned the surroundings, as if she were afraid someone might be listening. Convinced that no one was, she leaned a little closer to Ray and said in a conspiratorial stage-whisper. “Sneaking up on people.”
Ray gave an awkward giggle. “You… you don’t say.”
Doctor DiMassi nodded, her lips fixed shut tight in a broad, thin grin. “Apparently. Oh, and - you don’t have to hide that on my account.” She leveled one of those long, black nails towards Ray’s coat pocket, one brow arched and a knowing gleam in her eye.
Ray slapped a hand against the pocket and - oh. Right. Hesitantly, she pulled out the vape pen, careful not to dislodge the trash from her one pitiful meal of the day stuck beside it. Doctor DiMassi nodded.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You aren’t offending me with it. And, hopefully…” From where exactly Doctor DiMassi procured the small, orange box of cardstock, Ray couldn’t tell - she reached behind her and then, as if by sleight of hand, it was there. “These won’t bother you, any.”
The color of the box, the art deco-esque label and text printed along the front - it was all unmistakable, but, still, Ray felt her eyes squinting behind the thick lenses of her glasses as she studied it with disbelief.
“Are - are those cigarettes?”
It was a stupid question. They were, and she knew it. The orange box was a signature of the Vesta brand, which had been credited with making smoking cool again with the moneyed elites of America. And only the elites - restrictions had made the sale of tobacco illegal in most states, loopholes had made them legal again, but those some loopholes and restricted ensured that they were both expensive and difficult to find. She only ever saw Vesta’s in pictures between the fingers of celebrities.
“Vesta’s,” DiMassi confirmed. She looked proud of herself.
“Tobacco’s illegal in Oregon,” Ray said dumbly, as if DiMassi wouldn’t already know.
Still, DiMassi feigned shock with a theatrical gasp. “Is it, now?” Her act lapsed back into a smug, self-assured smirk. “Well,” she hummed. “I suppose I’ll just have to hope you won’t tattle on me. You don’t strike me as someone who’d do that…” There was a soft click of a hard nail against cardstock as DiMassi flicked the top of the box open. “Would you?”
“No,” Ray whimpered. She winced at the pitiful sound of her own. She coughed in her fist and stiffed her shoulders. “No, I - it's fine.” She tried to sound less timid and deferential. It wasn't as if DiMassi was her boss - she was just another higher-up in the staff that got paid way too much to do way too little. There were several of those types, and Ray never felt particularly intimidated by any of then whenever they came poking around to justify their absurdly high salaries. And DiMassi wasn't even doing that much. So what if she wanted to smoke a cigarette? Plenty of people did, they just… weren't so brazen about it. Then again… most people didn't have DiMassi's money.
DiMassi plucked a smoke from the box, only to pause before fully pulling it free. She arched her brow and narrowed her eyes.
“Honest?”
“Listen, l-” Ray had to stop herself from calling DiMassi lady. It was a bad habit she had. Something she called people who annoyed her. She didn't actually know how old DiMassi was - she assumed not that much older than her, but she looked as if she could be anywhere between thirty five to a very flattering fifty. She swallowed the word. “If you wanna smoke… more power to you. Trust me, I do not care.” Ray raised her hand and glanced at the smart swatch strapped to her wrist. She still had a good five minutes left on her break, but she'd rather go back to her assignments than spend five minutes trying to make small talk with Daria DiMassi. “I, uh - I was just about to take off, anyways, I g-”
“What?”
Ray stopped mid-turn. Daria stared back at her with a questioning look.
“You aren't going to stay?”
Ray adopted a rickety, uneven grin. There was no way Daria DiMassi was inviting her to stay for her smoke break. She supposed it would be a valid excuse for staying out later than she was supposed to. But she also didn't want to do it.
“Huh?”
“You aren't going to stay and keep me company?” DiMassi fluttered her eyelashes.
Ray shook her head. She blinked harder, and, for some reason, DiMassi didn’t disappear. “Uh - well, I - I wasn’t expecting, um - I really need to get back to the lab. We’ve got another subject coming in at the end of the hour, and - an-”
Daria made a dismissive sound. “Don’t worry about it. If anyone gives you any grief for being late, you just drop my name and tell them they can talk to me, if they have an issue.”
DiMassi put the smoke between her lips and used a metal lighter - one procured from the same mysterious, unseen place as the cigarettes - to light it, making no acknowledgement that she’d heard Ray at all. She took one drag, two, before exhaling through her nose and filling the air with the smell of burning tobacco. It wasn’t one Ray hadn’t smelled in some time - she’d been young when tobacco was banned in Canada, and no one in her family had been a regular smoker when it was. Her father indulged in the occasional cigar when she was young, but the smell of a cigarette was different. It wasn’t the pleasant, leathery, woody kind of smoke of a fine cigar. It was chemical. Acrid. Biting. Stifling and choking and stinging, but paradoxically, comforting and pleasantly familiar.
It reminded Ray of Arizona. She’d worked there when she’d first been hired by Elysium, at the research facility outside of Tucson. Tobacco was legal there. Not everyone smoked it, but everyone who did indulged heavily. She’d picked up her taste for nicotine there. And, while she’d never been fond of the oppressively heat of the Sonora, the smell of the burning Vesta… one whiff, and the cool, brisk air of the Pacific Northwest was gone, replaced by a dry, stiff breeze rolling across the desert, carrying with it the scent of sand and dust and nameless things that defined the air of that place.
Her fingers twitched. She watched the tip of the cigarette burn an angry, petulant orange before dimming. DiMassi exhaled, and the smoke was thinner than anything that came out of a vape pen. The wisps danced in different ways.
Daria grinned. “Humor me?”
Ray said nothing. The acrid smell of tobacco smoke had seized her from head to toe. It wasn’t the nicotine rush of second hand inhalation that grabbed her - it was the sense of nostalgia. The strength of that memory of smoking cigarettes on the Tucson campus, burned into her brain, forgotten, and reactivated by the smell. It turned something off in Ray’s brain and turned on something she hadn’t been aware was there before.
When her wits returned to her, Ray found herself staring at a cigarette pinched between the nails of Daria’s forefinger and thumb. It took her more than a moment to realize that it was being offered to her.
“I - I can't." Ray shook her head, the short, unevenly cropped locks of oily, muddy brown hair slapping against her face. “I really can't, I c-”
“Rachel.”
The sound of her full given name gave her pause. She hadn’t even been aware that DiMassi knew her first name - every time they’d ever interacted, she was strictly Miss Partrite, since that was the only thing printed on the lapel of her coat. She blinked, and the cigarette was closer than it had been before.
“It's fine. Really.” Daria's smile grew taut at the edges.
Ray blinked again, and the cigarette was clenched between her forefinger and thumb. A flame danced at the tip of Daria's lighter. As if possessed by some foreign power, Ray leaned forward, cigarette placed neatly between her lips, and inhaled. The smoke felt different than anything she could get from a vape pen. The nicotine rush was stronger, too. For a moment, she could have sworn that she was back in Tucson, beneath the same starless sky, the air cool but dry and different in a way she just couldn't articulate.
She exhaled.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
DiMassi smiled around the smoke between her lips. The tip flared orange.
“Of course, Miss Partrite. Thank you.”
Ray inhaled, though the action felt involuntary. For a long, quiet moment, the two simply stood there, backs against the wall, inhaling and exhaling as clouds of smoke drifted up and off into the black void above. At some point, Ray closed her eyes. She kept them closed, too, until -
“You look like you’re enjoying that.”
Ray opened her eyes. Nothing had changed, though half the cigarette was now smoldering ash. A twinge of disappointment ran through her.
She nodded. “I am.” She inspected what remained of the cigarette. It felt like a crime to throw it away. It felt equally silly to smoke it down to the butt, savoring every huff and breath and inhale and that delightfully terrible taste of tobacco on her tongue again.
“Been a while?”
Ray nodded again before letting her head tilt back and eyes shut once more. “Too long.”
“People like you probably don’t come by these too often these days, do you?”
People like you - what kind of comment was that to make? The smallest rumor of an inkling that maybe DiMassi wasn’t as conceited as she acted or above it all as she looked disappeared in a wisp of smoke. The taste in Ray’s mouth went sour. She did her best to keep it from manifesting on her face.
She shook her head. “No. Kinda makes me wonder why you’d waste one of them on someone like me.” There was a slight but audible tinge of venom to her words. Probably not wise to get mouthy with someone who just generously shared contraband, but - what the hell. Ray was in a bad mood.
If DiMassi cared or even noticed the sleight, she made no show it. She shrugged and tilted her head to one side, taking a drag from her own smoke before saying, “Consider it a professional courtesy. It helps me feel a bit better about having to tell you that you’ve been relieved of your current responsibilities with Elysium.”
God damn! Brilliant piece you got here. That entire scene played out like detailed move in my mind. As The Chronicler said, "that ending gave me whiplash!". Entirely shocking twist. But hey, now Ray has a reason to be in a bad mood.
The dialogue in this was second to none, unbelievable!