Pregnant Girl Smoking — James Boice

A short story originally published in 2003 in McSweeney's 12, reissued here by the author. Goes a little something like this:

Excerpt:


Walking my dog through a strip mall after the rain, pregnant girl walks out of the baby clothes store, lights a cigarette. Girl, obviously pregnant, pretty far along, looks to be anywhere from seventeen to twenty-two, steps out of the baby clothes store, puts a cigarette in her mouth, asks me walking by for a light. Pregnant girl with some traces of acne stands in front of a baby clothes store with unlit cigarette in mouth, says to a guy walking by with his little black dog, Excuse me, do you have a light? The rain stops, the world is wet, she pops out of the store with a baby in her belly and a cigarette in her mouth, hair just there, unkempt, hanging in her face, she kind of brushes it aside as she asks a stranger for a light. Girl lays on her back on a basement floor with a big eager kid on top of her, grunting into her shoulder, a couple zits on his back, a promo for a new Fox show that she probably won't watch on TV, six months later she's looking for a light for her cigarette in front of the maternity store. Bong hits with a guy she went to or goes to high school with, in the basement of his parents' house, gets pregnant during the The Simpsons, stops eating, starts smoking, gets up to a pack a day, and, never owning a lighter, asks strangers to light her cigarettes, in public. What you do is you take it out of your mouth as a guy walks by, say to him, Excuse me, do you have a light? kind of waving it as if to clarify the question. I halt because I don't want to be disliked and it is enormous-looking, fills up my entire vision, like a size 100 or size 120 or something, but it's not, and I reach into my pocket and then am holding my green lighter in front of your face and you lean your face in and get the cigarette lit and lean back and say with smoke, Thanks. He puts the lighter back, this time in the pocket of his jacket, and his dog is trying to jump up on her, and says, Yep, and yanks his dog's leash and kind of laughs apologetically and says to it Kemmon, bud. Girl starts going in the other direction, guy looks back when he gets to the corner, seeing her waddling away in her ugly oversized T-shirt, kind of does a laugh that says, It takes all kinds. Shakes his head, wraps his dog's leash around his hand a couple of times to shorten it, waits for the light to change.