I’ve just taken up a light smoking regime after five years off the darts. For 20 years I worshipped the odious durrie as slavishly as the next sad gasper. Then, in the name of love, I went cold turkey. My pink-lunged, sweet-tongued bloke and I skipped wheezeless down the smoke-free bridal path of life.
But as addicts of any stripe will tell you, shit gets you when you least expect it. I now have three packets of risibly renamed Mevius cached in various orifices around our flat.
I shower after each secret, sordid suck. I feel dirtier than coal.
I blame my recidivism on another furtive and thrilling development in my deeply local apartment building. It’s not more German documentary filmmakers bent on scenic grit, or petrol-sniffing ne’er-do-wells with K-pop hair and bag-snatching on their minds. To a man they smoke like chimneys – not the wisest choice for the huffers especially – but it’s not them what made me do it.
Instead, a chain-smoking bookie has installed himself at the bottom of my stairwell. The siren allure of each freshly lit Ara has proved inescapable. I stump two flights down to increasingly futile gym classes, or waddle up 27,000 feet with groaning Lucky bags, reflexively scrabbling for my Bic. I’m Pavlov’s bitch to his fragrant butts.
As tourists sally past in green fleets of smoke-free cyclos, Ron, as I call him inside my head, arcs up another lung-buster and borrows wifi from the blind masseurs next door. Like a dapper bridge troll, he and his laptop lurk taking bets on the English Premier League. And he never lurks alone. Men of every ilk flutter around the irresistible flame that is Ron, his hot tips and the chance of untold bounty scored by 11 unpronounceable Poms. To Ron’s credit, and in contrast to the raucous chess smack-downs that daily ricochet round the neighbourhood tuk tuks, the transactions proceed with surprising restraint.
Given his nefarious career choice, Ron’s a twinkly and not at all shystery older fellow: natty from his backless loafers to blade-sharp safari shirts and a suspiciously jet-black combover.
He’s as close to a Cambodian OCD sufferer as I have ever seen. At 7.45am he folds out his tin table and computer in exactly the same place, to the centimetre, fastidiously wiping every surface over and over with a clean cotton handkerchief. He lights up on the dot of 8, cracks his first Angkor at precisely 10 and, fagging steadily, conducts brisk business with punters till 6 sharp. Then it’s up sticks with his meticulous tote book down the mini-mart for free wifi and a few more nails before heading home.
As I passed this fledgling enterprise for the first time I naively questioned, out loud, the legality of the whole setup. I was vehemently shushed by my Khmer-speaking husband. Ron’s customer demographic includes a good many patrons currently serving their country in a law enforcement capacity. Some days it’s like walkie-talkie Jenga down there.
But there’s another reason why my sainted other half likes the status quo. Apparently he places the odd wager with Ron and won almost 70 bucks on a recent Arsenal/Fulham match.
This is news to me. And, it dawns on me, golden leverage for later, when he hits me up about those filthy, dirty, delicious fags.