Conflict Resolution

My Dad’s a smoker. While in Walker, MN we ate at a Mexican restaurant that allowed smoking in its beer garden. My Dad stepped outside to light up, and a woman sitting at one of the beer garden tables began coughing when he grabbed for his pack and lighter. He sparked up and the coughing continued, the woman stared at my Dad while doing so. My Dad decided it wasn’t worth getting into it with her over the cigarette, so he put it out and joined us inside to eat.

My Dad’s got a million of these stories. He’ll light up a smoke and someone next to him will start coughing, so as to say: Put that out, asshole. Conversely, I get the same looks when I cough around someone who’s smoking a cigarette. I’ll cough, not noticing someone has lit up (or is about to light up), and the smoker will give me a look that makes me seem like I’m the asshole. I don’t mind smoke. Sometimes I have to cough, though. I have asthma, so coughing is kind of my thing. Why should I have to feel the need to explain myself for coughing? I’m not trying to tell anyone that they need to put their smokes out with my coughs.

I’m against the smoking ban in bars. As much as I enjoy not reeking of stale cigarette smoke at the end of the night, I understood the consequences of going into a smoke-filled bar. If you don’t like it, don’t go. I know, I know: the smoking ban is in place in an attempt to improve the staff’s health, as well as the customers’. But how many waiters/waitresses/bartenders smoke?

I’m sick of all the face making from both smokers and non-smokers. If you’ve got ‘em, smoke ‘em. If not, keep on walking or go inside. Anyways, enough with the ranting; I’m curious as to how Detective Gary Tropicana might handle a bitchy non-smoker:


Detective Gary Tropicana bangs his head against his apartment door. Peeling gray paint flakes from the hallway walls and dots the warped hardwood floors. A small chunk of plaster crumbles from above the doorframe, exposing the moldy slats within the walls. The summer humidity hangs in the hall, choking Tropicana like mustard gas. He’s locked out again, can’t remember where he forgot his keys this time. His head pounds, causing his whole body to throb.

His eyes are webbed red from the eight ball he pinched at a drug bust on Independence Blvd. three days ago. He hasn’t slept since then, dipping into that stash of coke six, twelve times a day. It’s almost gone, he thinks, and that’ll be it. He’ll kick it once he’s finished with the bag. He’ll sleep once he’s out. Right now, he needs something to take care of the jitters—the buzzing in his chest, the fingers pulling at his brain like kids ripping apart cotton candy. He needs a smoke. He even says this out loud. To himself, in the piss-stench stairwell of his roach-infested apartment in Garfield Park. He thinks he’ll be okay after a few puffs. It calms him.

No smoking inside, though. One of the tenants almost burned the place down this past winter ashing into a garbage can. The landlord also implemented this policy in an attempt to weed out the tenants smoking crack. One strike and you’re out, she had said. Tropicana guesses she doesn’t trust that having a detective living in the building is enough of a deterrent for would-be drug users. He thinks about this as he steps outside, patting at his pants pockets. He feels the wadded baggy of coke next to a small tin squirt can of Ronsol lighter fluid, both items running low.

Tropicana parks himself on the stoop outside the front door. The bright sun causes him to squint, and he wears the humid air like the tank of a sweaty toilet. He pulls out his pack of American Spirit and a nickel-plated Zippo that’s all spark and no flame. Cars zip by on the Ike, coughing exhaust and blaring horns. Tropicana clamps his teeth on the filter of a cigarette and slides it out of the pack. He thumbs at the Zippo, but the wick refuses to catch. He tosses the pack on the stoop beside him and cups his hand around the lighter, hoping for its cooperation. Still no flame. This irritates him: he can already taste the rich tobacco, feel the smoke expanding his lungs and let his limbs become flimsy from the nicotine kick. Just thinking about the first drag makes him salivate, a thick line of drool escaping his lips and swinging from his chin in the hot June breeze.

After several more unsuccessful attempts at getting the lighter to light, Tropicana says, Fuck it, and reaches inside the pocket of his slacks for the Ronsol lighter fluid. He struggles to separate the two parts of his Zippo when a fellow tenant—the wiry Irish guy from upstairs—begins climbing the front stoop steps. Tropicana’s seen this guy a couple of times—just moved in. He’s not sure if this new guy knows he’s a cop, but he figures the guy’s put two and two together. Tropicana’s strapped, wears his gun under his arm without a jacket. Like right now. Who else would do that?

The guy stops on the step even to where Tropicana sits. The detective sees him out of the corner of his eye, hears him cough—probably to clear his throat, he assumes. Tropicana continues to fumble with the lighter and the guy coughs again, this time more of a hacking cough. Tropicana looks up to see the guy staring at his cigarette.

Guy says, “I hope you weren’t planning on lighting that up right here.” He stands there looking at Tropicana like he’s a monster. Like the president just announced smoking will lead to the apocalypse, and being a dick to strangers about this habit is the only way to prevent the End of Days. “You’re too close to the front door. Did you forget the new rules?”

The new rules? Tropicana mulls the one rule his landlord set out for him after the fire: Don’t smoke inside the apartment. Were there more? He’s not sure. Can’t remember. He replies, “Must have slipped my memory. I’ll have to check with the Super.”

The guy lets loose a barrage of insults, but Tropicana doesn’t listen. He redirects his frustrations, channeling them to his work on the lighter. In no time the two parts of his Zippo separate, the spit still dangling from his chin slingshots past the guy’s head.

Guy says, “You disgusting fuck. That almost hit me.” He steps up to the top of the stoop, puffing up his chest like he’s about to jump Tropicana. On a normal day, Tropicana would lay out anyone trying to step up to him. He’d tear his face off, restrain the asshole, and charge the guy with assaulting an officer. He might even plant the coke on the guy to boost his arrest record. But today is a different day. Tropicana just wants a smoke. He’s too tired and strung out to physically take this guy down. Still holding the Ronsol can, Tropicana squirts a stream of lighter fluid past the Zippo’s cloth guts and onto the guy’s pant leg. The guy looks down at the line of lighter fluid pin-striping his slacks.

“Must have slipped again,” Tropicana says. And before the guy can respond, or attack, Tropicana fits the Zippo back together and presses the lighter to the guy’s pant leg, thumb on the wheel. “Don’t want me to slip a third time. Do you, Chief?”

Tropicana removes his badge from the back pocket of his pants and places it on the stoop beside him. The guy backs off; he retreats into the building. Tropicana lights his American Spirit with the fueled Zippo and takes a deep pull from the cigarette. He holds in the smoke not wanting to exhale, not wanting the moment to pass. This relaxes him. He’s calm and content, and he finishes the cigarette in what feels like three drags. This break passed too quickly; he’s not ready to return to reality just yet, not when sleep is just around the corner. So he pulls out another and decides that he’ll take his time with this one.