1981 (Part Twenty-One)

When Steve offered us a cigarette, I took one out of the pack he extended.

It was from one of the packs he brought from Britain a couple of months earlier.

I was not good with cigarettes. But I was also not good at saying no to cigarette offers. All my friends smoked. And I loved to hold a stick of cigarette stylishly and watch the smoke rise from the tip of the ashes.

We sat there in the dark, watching the moon, smoking, silent. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning crashed across the sky, followed by a ripping sound of thunder. Instantly, the moon and the stars disappeared, and the sky was an endless black canvas coughing out intermittent flashes of jagged lights filled with throbs of thunder.