Page 97 of Two Marlboros

He straightened his back and assumed an expression far too serious for him, and with a flick of his cough he cleared his throat.

“Plastics, also called polymeric materials or plastic resins, are substances formed from macromolecules, resulting from the union of smaller molecules, called monomers.”

As he repeated, I read in his eyes the only bit of commitment he was capable of, but that was not what made him repeat that trite definition; rather, he seemed driven by motivations I could not understand, and I realized once again how little I knew him.

“Alright, let’s jump around a little bit here and there, I just want to see where you stand. Oh, interesting this: what do you get from the styrene monomer?”

“Polystyrene, also improperly called Styrofoam.”

“I wonder why it has two names.”

I tried to look for the answer in the handouts, but there was no need.

“The first designation is preferred because it’s not foam, it’s more solid.”

I checked the handouts again, but I was sure it didn’t say, at least not near that definition. I looked up at him, but he brought his gaze to the pages.

“You’re good.”

He did not respond and merely gave a shrug, followed by a shy smile.

I still tried his preparation, which faltered only at the chemical bonds - which, I had to admit, were a little more than five or six.

We spent some time repeating them, and I decided to give in the moment his exasperation began to become mine.

“Come on, tell me all the gums again.”

“I’ve done them twice already!”

“Last one, come on.”

I looked at my watch and realized that an hour had already passed, but Nathan had not yet complained and, in fact, had already taken his pen in hand to redo all the bonds that didn’t seem to want to fit in his head.

When he was concentrating, a series of frown lines popped up that made him look more mature than he was. He would run a hand through his hair to seek concentration and not to impress anyone; his eyes would fix on those letters in the hope that they would tell him the secret they concealed and that the chemical bond would form itself; then, without saying a word,his eyes would light up and he would take to writing the whole bond down to the end, until a smile broke across his face at the accomplishment of his feat.

When he had finished, he let go in his chair triumphantly, along with a soft cry of victory.

“Tell me you don’t want to see them again.”

He would have needed to write them at least one more time, but I let him think that was enough for him and me.

“Now you can have your prize.”

“Which one? Oh, yes! Right.”

I handed him his entire kit and he pounced on the filters.

“Now I’ll show you how to do it so you can help me.”

Me helping him make cigarettes was just the ticket. He put a filter in his mouth, and I thought about the fact that those lips… I had felt them. And that smell that was always lingering didn’t help me forget that dry touch that was too hot for the mugginess. If I had also licked my lips, as he had done, it would have been a softer kiss and perhaps even more worthy of being called such. Things, however, had turned out differently.

I went back to watch him already spreading the tobacco on the wrapper, then squeezed it a little to give it an elongated shape. He slipped the filter from his lips and stuck it in at one end, then rolled his creation to give it the appearance of a cigarette. He stuck out the tip of his tongue and began to lick the entire length of the wrapper as with a postage stamp. He slid it back and forth repeatedly, and I wondered how on earth he could be provocative even in closing a cigarette.

My thoughts strayed beyond decency, but at that moment my brain was not in charge; so, when he proposed to help me fill the empty pack, I pretended I didn’t fully understand and asked him if he could show me how to do it again.

I waited for him to finish crushing the tobacco and to get to the point of closing it with his tongue as quickly as possible; but, when he did, he looked up at me and caught my eye.

I could not look away, so I remained fixed on him, and he did likewise; another second and we would have watched each other too long not to want to say something to each other, and the second passed, and another, without either of us being able to look away from each other, without either of us apologizing for that too prolonged look. Too many seconds had passed for it to be called unintentional, they became too many to continue pretending nothing had happened. Nothing could have saved me from that embarrassment but the admission that I was looking at him and not at that stupid do-it-yourself cigarette, and nothing would have prevented either of us from remembering that contact between our lips, which, I was now certain, had changed something between us.

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