“All the Great Ones smoked,” she said, leaning back against the wall, with legs crossed on the mattress on the floor. Ed sat on the metal fold out chair in front of the card table that was a desk and a place for his second-hand computer. Dorothy had a lit cigarette in her lips, and a mass of papers, notes and a few books in front of her.
“It’s true, you know.”
“Really?’ Ed said “Well, in that case, would you please give me a fuckin cigarette.”
She tossed the soft pack of camel wides and he took one out, looked for a match, saw a lighter on the table and lit it.
“Ah,” he said, blowing out a big cone of smoke “I feel great already.”
She smirked. His little cute crazy roommate Dorothy the Clown Faced Killer. It was Ed’s last year in college and her third.
They were both transfers and didn’t know each other when they moved into the flat on the Fenway in the heart of Boston. She was from somewhere in upstate New York and said she was related to Rip Van Winkle but Ed was sure she was part elf.
It was a dark evening in November and they were half way through the semester. She was like a little sister Ed never had, sometimes like the little sister he was glad he never had. A little creative, bad ass black boot wearing film student with a streak of dyed blond running through a crown of pitch black.
“Why do you feel the need to come into my room and study?”
“I like it better in here.” She said, in her particular matter-of-factness, the cigarette in her mouth sticking out to one side.
“Besides, I know you love my company, Ed.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, “I cherish it. You make me a better person.” Two long streams of smoke pouring from his nostrils.
“Dorothy dear, I do love your company, But how can I write with you shuffling papers and talking to me?”
“Alright, look. I won’t talk to you, OK? I’ve got my own work to do,” she said, suddenly angry. She grabbed two fistfuls of paper and shook them.
“See! I’m studying.” Her eyes blazing green.
“OK, jeez, make your self at home.” Ed said, and turned around on the chair and clicked to a new document.
He wrote a few lines, some fragmented poetry or prose destined to be lost forever in a box in someone’s basement. Ed was distracted. He often got distracted. People said he had A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. Some people wanted him to take drugs for it. But Ed knew that the world was complicated and getting more so every day, and perhaps, he was simply as easily distracted by, as he was interested in, a variety of simultaneous occurring thoughts.
Ed turned around with his arm on the back of the chair.
“What are you studying?” he said.
“Ed.” Her voice was low and stern and she did not look up.
“No, really, your company is so fuckin riveting. I’m interested. What is that shit.”
She looked up and sighed.
“Some bogus assignment for V and A.” Voice and Articulation was a required class at their college, and consequentially is world renowned for its articulate alumni. Ed was taking the same class, but with a different professor, and he vowed to graduate with his lazy Rhode-Island-ese/Irish/Spanish accent unaffected.
In fact, earlier that week, the instructor was discussing the importance of repetition and practice and Ed offered a comment: “Sir,” he said, “excuse me, but I think that since I’ve been in this class, my articulation has actually gotten worse.”
“I think you are just noticing the errors more.”
“No,” Ed retorted. “I am sure me diction done got much worse-er.”
The class laughed, and the instructor moved on, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life.
“You know,” Ed said, “you’re not articulating too well with that stogie in your mouth.”
“Fuck off, man.”
“You ever heard of Virgil, or wait, was it Demosthenes, the other Greek dude?”
Dorothy stared down at the piece of paper in her hands trying to ignore him.
“No? OK. Well, I’ll tell you about him. Yeah, wait, it was Demosthenes, the greatest of Greek orators. He was born with a speech impediment. Maybe it was a hair lip, or an extra row of teeth, a forked tongue, hairy gums? I’m not sure.”
Dorothy puffed on her smoke, still not looking up.
“But this guy was determined to be the greatest Greek orator of all time. So what he did do? Everyday he went to the beach and stuffed pebbles in his mouth. Then he’d recite grand speeches and poems and parts of old plays to the sea.”
Ed looked at the top of Dorothy’s head and waited.
“Cool, huh?” he said.
“Yeah. Cool. Really fucking fascinating.”
“Anything to inspire your studies, dear.”
“I wonder why he didn’t just read speeches when he was sucking on Alexander the Great’s dick?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Ed said, laughing.
He turned back to the screen and looked at the lines he had just written and pulled on the smoke. He was getting used to it, again, damn it.
Dorothy was making a regular smoker out of him. The first few weeks of the semester she would come in his room and say, “Let’s have a cigarette!” Like it was the rarest of ideas, brought forth, just then, an epiphany! A celebration!
They’d sit in Dorothy’s room and talk about film and read Henry Miller and listen to music and smoke their asses off drinking coffee or beer. At first Ed tried not to smoke. He had already smoked enough in Oxford the year before to last him three lifetimes. It’s impossible not to smoke in England. He tried. Ed defied anyone who can avoid it. Especially at the pubs, you might as well puff your own there’s so much smoking going on. Ah, a nice pint of Tetley’s, a Dunhill and a shag in the toilet with a crooked-tooth English girl who limps....those were the days.
Ed wrote a few more lines, resting the burning cig on the edge of the table. He kept writing, letting the words come from nowhere, from somewhere, just come out, whatever happened to flash across his capacious mind sky. Ed was getting into it, enjoying the sound of the keys, the rhythm, and the strange spontaneous undirected scattered words forming sentences on the screen.
“What did you learn that in class or something?” Dorothy said, disdainfully, “Demosthenes. hmmf.”
Ed stopped typing but didn’t turn around.
“Oh, so now you’re interested.”
“Not really.”
Ed resumed typing:
“Young insolent college girl sits on mattress and smokes a cigarette. She has had a long day. One whole class of moron instructors telling her how to talk. She is a hothead. A crazy woman. She is sober this afternoon, but usually she is drunk and wild, drunk off cheap ass beer. Busch. Golden Anniversary. PBR. This girl would drink moonshine off a horse’s boot.” He changed ‘boot’ to ‘hoof’ and stopped. The butt had burned to the filter and a neat little mound of ash was on the card table.
“Where’s the ashtray?” Ed said, turning around in his chair.
“What ashtray?” Dorothy said, still looking at the piece of paper.
“Where are you ashing that?”
She had lit another cigarette and held in between her front teeth.
“What did you do with the butt?” he said.
“It’s under your pillow. It’s a gift for you, Ed.”
“C’mon,” he said, getting up and walking over to her. A few sprinkles of dark black ash were on the hard wood floor right next to the mattress. A crumpled butt flicked in the corner and lying there like a loser.
“What the hell’s this?” Ed said, standing over her, pointing at the ash and the butt.
Dorothy looked up at him, then leaned over the mattress looking at the ashes on the floor.
“Oh that? That’s just ash. It’s not hurting anything. Ashes to ashes, right?”
“Oh, really, that’s cool. Thanks for setting me straight.”
She smiled. Her smile was really awesome, and evil. Her smile was also what literary people call “disarming.”
Ed walked down the hall to Dorothy’s room, picked up the big green glass ashtray that was from the 50’s and emptied it in the bathroom trash. He went back into his room and put it on the pillow next to her.
“There you go. So you don’t have to stretch.”
She tapped the end of her cig over it and smiled again.
“Oh, thank you Ed, you’re really sweet.”
She stared intently at the papers in front of her, and Ed pulled another square from the pack and sat down at his desk. He turned around and saw that she was smiling.
“You are a piece of work.” he said, smiling, and lit up.
“I know,” she said. 
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