Harry

The child, a dark haired girl of seven or eight, sat in the well of a front room window, one foot resting on the apartment’s only heat register, the other dangling freely in the air, three floors above the Rue St. Martin. Elyse Bonnaire leaned forward studying her handiwork. Something about the small blue paper airplane bothered her. She placed it on the sill between her legs and adjusted the fold in the right fin several times before giving it one last inspection. Perfect. Holding just below the wings, she tipped it sideways and sent it sailing high into the filtered light of a Paris autumn afternoon. She gripped the window frame and leaned out to watch as it circled down in graceful arcs. Below her, sixty-three year old Maurice Ponard, the ground floor tenant, sat in his garden, smoking and reading the latest copy of L’informateur. The obligatory thermos of coffee, the one with the large Marlboro Cigarette logo on the side, lay on the bench beside him. The glider landed neatly in his lap. He looked up at Elyse and scowled. Without taking his eyes off her, he picked up the glider and sent flying over the marigolds and into the leaf barrel. Elyse imagined that she could hear the slight hiss of his breathing from three floors away. She smiled down at him. Her smile irritated him no end. ###
Ponard turned his attention back to the business at hand. He would deal with the girl when Madame Bonnaire returned from the market. He laid the newspaper in his lap and reached for the thermos. He opened it, placing the cup and stopper face up on the bench. He lifted the thermos to pour, but a headline on the page caught his attention. “Proposed Expansion of Smoking Ban.” He set the coffee down, bent over the paper and took a drag on his cigarette. A long ash hung precariously from the filter. Ponard absently reached out and tipped the ash into the thermos. The reflex was automatic, unconsciously done. He routinely dropped ash and butts into his thermos once it was empty. From her perch above, Elyse plainly saw that it was not. “The chief of the city health commission,” he read, “has recommended an expansion of the public places smoking ban to include private property.” They would deny him a cigarette in his own garden—his one true pleasure? Ponard choked on an involuntary epithet, coughing up a wreath of blue smoke. A woman passing on the walk made no attempt to hide her disgust. He shot her a foul look and mentally projected on her a healthy measure of bad karma. He had plenty to spare. After a time, he regained his composure, but Elyse no longer had to imagine the sound of his wheezing. Ponard turned the paper over, searching for something more pleasant to read. “Man stabbed in Bungled Robbery Attempt.” Ah, yes—much better. ###
A minute later Monsieur Ponard remembered his coffee. His left hand held the paper. With his right, he poured half a cup. His doctor insisted he cut back. With his cigarette lodged between index and middle finger, he gripped the cup between thumb and pinky. Elyse watched as he raised it to his lips and swallowed the steaming liquid. He held the cup out and stared at it for a moment. He took another sip, set the cup down and wrinkled his nose. Ponard then picked up the thermos, grimaced at the Marlboro logo and muttered to himself, “After fifty years of smoking, everything tastes like an ash tray.”