Around eight this morning, Pedro tried to light his last cigarette after he sat down in his armchair. He turned on reruns of La Ruleta de la Suerte. He sank further into the armchair and fished around in his pocket for the cigarette lighter. 

And then he remembered the promise he had made to himself last week. 

Pedro smoked thousands of cigarettes over the years, enough that he hadn’t climbed the mountain to Plaza de San Nicolas since his kids were little. His lungs screamed for tendrils of breath they could not catch, leaving him gasping for breath. His blood vessels were constricted and congealed from years of tobacco abuse; he read that tobacco hardens your blood vessels in some magazine or tabloid, and swore for one second he could feel his solidify before relaxing. Pedro had assured himself it was his fruitful imagination by saying aloud, “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente.” After seventy-four years, he had always told himself that it was too late to stop, that it did not matter anymore; the time to better himself had passed. 

Yet last Saturday, five weeks and four days after his wife, Maria Jose, had left him, he had seen one of the many homeless people that lay on the asphalt and concrete all over Granada. They plagued families with small children entering El Corte Inglés, begging for cigarettes and money. He had tried to give a woman, half-asleep in front of Carmela’s, cold, leftover paella, and she had stirred under her blankets, which she had piled into a lumpy makeshift tent, and tried to focus her bloodshot eyes on him as he stood in front of her and asked for cigarettes instead, please. And Pedro said he did not smoke, he was sorry, but left her the paella anyway, and when he got home he realized that he had not given her any utensils. This conjured a disturbing image of her eating the paella with her hands like a hurried mouse, seafood under her nails.

He could not shake the uneasiness that he felt knowing he had something in common with the woman who ate paella with her hands. He had lied to her because he wished so many times it was true that he did not smoke. Too many times had Maria Jose chided him before she left him exactly six weeks and three days ago for smoking in the house, around the children, at the table, and too many times had he succumbed to his body’s incessant begging for nicotine during his children’s football games and flamenco competitions. His favorite cigarettes were the ones he smoked while walking the dog that had died years prior, a ratty Chihuahua named Taco that he should have disliked in every way but instead grew attached to. 

When Maria Jose left him six weeks and three days ago, Pedro sat down and did not move for several hours. He smoked two packs of cigarettes before he stood up to pour himself a shot of anis, and then three more. He developed a headache that festered inside his skull for weeks, chaining him to the couch. His son had called, then his daughter, and they took him out to lunch a handful of times, which did little to distract him. They worried. They worried that Maria Jose was senile and confused and that Pedro would die if they did not check on him, so they did four times a week. But Pedro spent much of that time drunk. He did not sleep in their bed for four weeks and two days and retired to the armchair at night. At least it was made for a single body, rather than a structure like a bed, which is meant to be shared between people in their most vulnerable state. That and the distance from their bedroom made the silence somewhat more bearable. 

The hilarity of the situation settled sometime in the second week; a 50-year marriage ended, for what seemed like no reason. He had heard stories of people’s marriages being broken apart by death or chiseled away by conflict or betrayal until they divorced at year 20 or 30. His wife left him after breakfast on a Tuesday, which sounded like an unfortunate parable, experienced by two faceless, figureless people. 

Five weeks and four days after the incident, the day he saw the woman, Pedro had convinced himself, in a nicotine-induced haze, that it was the cigarettes that drove his wife away. It must have been the rotting scent and browned smoke that clung to their clothes and squeezed their bodies that filled her with disgust. After 50 years of marriage, he could not find any other rational reason for her sudden decision to leave. He wondered if she was sick and if he had caused it. He spent many hours in confused pain, and many more drunk. 

He had promised himself then and there in the kitchen that he would stop smoking cigarettes once his lighter died. 

Pedro had prided himself in never having lost a lighter, although after seeing the woman who ate paella with her hands, he had realized it was the desperation that comes with having a cigarette but not a lighter that controlled him. You start to wonder if using a magnifying glass makes you dependent, if using the small blue flame in the stove makes you an addict, if you would really go to jail for breaking into the convenience store, the chino, for a lighter that you planned to pay for. It was for this reason he always had two lighters, at least, and purchased a new one from the chino down the street each time the first died. Preparation was perhaps one of the more ironic things about addiction. 

Last week, five weeks and five days after Maria Jose left, the first lighter of the two had faded and Pedro walked down to the chino to buy some milk for his morning coffee.

Pedro had limped in as was routine, but when the owner pointed to the cigarettes and asked, “Cual?” Pedro shook his head. 

“No. No more cigarettes for me. I came to tell you to never sell me another pack again. Not even a lighter.” Pedro felt his breath thinning and searched for the air that had not yet fled the store. His face was hot, and he felt the shame reverberating from his cheeks. “And to buy leche.” He crossed the dingy room to the refrigerator, where he took longer than necessary to grab the carton of milk, savoring the cool air from inside.

“What do you mean, ‘do not sell you another lighter’? Hombre, our son will not eat if you no smoke!” the owner of the chino joked while Pedro let the fridge door slap shut. He looked Asian, but Pedro did not know where he was from; only that his Spanish was choppy, but that it had improved vastly in recent years.

“De veras,” Pedro had said, dropping a two-euro coin on the counter. “I will probably forget, or, at the very least, convince myself I forgot. If I come in here again to buy a new lighter and more cigarettes, I’ll never quit.” 

The shop on the corner of Calle Gracia and Calle Puentezuelas boasted colorful fruits outside, and small opaque drawers of candy and sweets inside. He stared out the dusty window at people walking by, some American, some Spanish, some Chinese, some Italian, and some from places he had never heard of. 

The owner had looked at Pedro as he stared out the window for a very long time, not reaching for the euros until after he responded to Pedro. They each did not know the other’s name, but it had been far too many years at this point to ask. 

“How about instead of the leche costing two euros, I give it to you free,” the owner said, tentative, “but you come here and buy my cigarettes or lighter, I charge you ten euros instead. No smart man pays ten euros for milk.” 

Pedro had walked home with the milk, no lighter, and feeling very full. Of what, he was unsure.

Despite his promise to the chino owner, it still felt peculiar that this morning, he was experiencing the last time he would light a cigarette. La Ruleta de la Suerte felt like an especially ironic choice, considering that he had not felt lucky in a long while. 

Pedro had smoked his last cigarette at some point the night before in bed, but one instant it was there and the next there was only a desperate filter clinging onto the stick of ash. La Ruleta de la Suerte blared through the television speakers, and he regretted not deciding to quit years prior, wondering if he would still be married. He had no idea how many lighters he had used dry, how many cigarette butts made their way between the couch cushions once Maria Jose had left six weeks and three days ago and he became too hopeless to even take care of the apartment, or how many he had littered on the street since the first time he smoked when he was twenty, fifty-four years ago. He had married Maria Jose when they were twenty-three.

Guilt squeezed his chest with its cold hands as the thought crossed his mind, and he flicked the lighter for the last time. The spark fizzled and gasped for butane as one might gasp for air before dying. In the background, Pedro watched as the show’s host, Jorge Fernandez, flashed a smile at him through the screen. The music floated in the living room as if it were displaced by the crushing silence of the apartment. 

Pedro stood up, the armchair creaking as he lifted his weight from it. He switched the lighter into his other hand as he made his way over to the windowblinds and realized upon arrival that he must have done so even though he could not remember it. His left hand clutched the lighter and cigarette, and his right hand jerked the windowblinds away from the glass, filling the room with natural light. 

His apartment was hazy, and smoke particles floated in front of the window as they collided with streams of light breaking through the trees outside. He opened the window and let the darkness and the smokestains of the walls and furniture escape. He decided he would leave the windows open until it was too cold come wintertime. 

Still clutching the cigarette and lighter, he turned and padded into the kitchen, where he paused in front of the garbage can and studied the lighter before tossing it in. He stared at it for a moment over his protruding belly, finding it strange that he had replaced the bag that day and it was therefore the only object in there. The lighter lay there, the white garbage bag stark against the dark purple plastic. He again recalled his promise to the owner of the chino. 

He looked down at the cigarette between his thick fingers, seeing his faded linen pants and his many years’ stained slippers in the background. 

“Mi amor, you know that we don’t wear just calcetines in this house,” his wife, Maria Jose, would chide him. 

“And you, Mari, you know that I stand on these feet all day at the dealership and that if I don’t feel like wearing slippers for right now, I should be allowed to do that.” Pedro would stare at her through the cigarette smoke, his socked feet out of sight under the coffee table. He swore sometimes she could read minds. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes would stare right back, boring into him through the veil of smoke and football commentary. It was true his feet hurt after work. As a car salesman, he was used to both standing around and making jokes all day, but he always ran out of both stamina and jokes once he got home.

“If only your mother knew. You’re hardly even Spanish, coming around my house and walking in rooms with only socks. Maybe we should go ahead and move north and start speaking Catalan, then maybe you could forget about the slippers!” Maria Jose shook her head.

“If only your mother knew you would rather live in Catalonia and speak Catalan than let your husband take off his slippers to watch some football.” Pedro turned his attention back to the television. 

“How can you smoke so much with me suffocating two rooms away?” Maria Jose said as she stepped into the room and pinched her nose. “You’ve broken the smoke detectors somehow. I have no idea how they don’t go off every time you light one of those things,” she said as she clambered onto the coffee table. 

“Let me do it, Mari.” Pedro sighed and stood up. He grabbed her hips and lifted her off the table to inspect it himself. It was not intimate; they felt like roommates, coexisting in the same space, although even that was a stretch. In reality, it was more like a Venn diagram; some space was shared, most was not. 

Pedro opened and peered into the smoke detector and saw black ash covering the batteries. His stomach churned, and he shut the compartment too fast.

“Everything is fine,” he wheezed as he climbed down the table, careful not to let his socks slip off the wood. “They are working fine, as I told you they would be.”

Maria Jose stood next to him and watched the television. Barcelona scored, and cheers erupted from the commentators and spectators. 

“Eres vago,” Maria Jose spat. She turned and walked out of the room.

The few-month-old memory faded and Pedro found himself back in the kitchen, somehow standing in front of the stove. He reached over to open the drawer of the counter to the right of the trash can, grabbed his pocket knife, and put it in his pocket. He kept the cigarette in his left hand and padded down the hallway to the front door. He opened it, walked out, and descended the stairs to the street. 

Instead of the small tapas restaurant across the street, the first thing Pedro saw when he walked outside was the sunlight. It seemed to refract off everything outside, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Joder, it’s bright out,” he mumbled to himself. Or maybe his eyes didn’t work anymore and the sunlight had sizzled them to a crisp and now when he opened his eyes he would be blind. He slowly blinked his eyes open, still standing in the doorframe of the front door, trying to recall what he had come outside to do. 

“I should get outside more is what I should do. Maybe go for walks,” he mumbled to himself. He smoothed his hair back with his left hand, his wedding ring cold against his growing bald spot. Why he still wore the ring, he did not know. No one wore their wedding rings.

Last Friday, five weeks and three days after Maria Jose left, his friend Paco had asked him over tapas why he bothered to wear it anymore. “Why? She is gone. You’re better off without the constant nagging and asking and poking and prodding,” Paco had said, tilting his head back as he drank the remainder of his Estrella Galicia. “Why would you want to be reminded of that?”

“In fact, I am no better off,” Pedro sighed as he smoked. The restaurant was brimming with people, and Pedro became acutely aware of the waiters bending and twisting around people as they slipped through the dining room. 

“Listen, hombre, I used to live right next to you and the amount of parloteo I used to hear every fucking day, basta this and haz that.” Paco flicked his glass and a thin layer of condensation jumped off and landed on the wooden table. “I felt thankful to not be married like you,” he continued as the beer glass shuddered from the force of his finger. 

A waiter hovered behind Paco as he spoke, and he turned to order more jamon serrano, his words stretching through the noise of the restaurant. 

“I keep my ring on out of respect for our marriage that lasted 50 years. I know you’re not familiar with the concept,” Pedro had said. He watched behind Paco as the waiter glided through the sea of people towards the kitchen, his black hair slick with oil or maybe gel that shone. Pedro had smoothed his own hair back, feeling the wedding band in question brush his bald spot.

“The concept of respect? Coño. I’m the most fucking respectful viejo verde in Granada!” Paco had said as he took the plate from the waiter.

“Just sounds like a shitty oxymoron, cabrón.” Pedro wrapped a slice of cheese in the ham and ate it. 

“Yet my girlfriend is 53, and here you are wearing your old wedding ring, fucker,” Paco said. “I mean, what kind of woman decides after 50 years that she doesn’t want to be married anymore? I’ve never heard of something as bullshit as that.” 

“Los cojones,” Pedro said, twisting the ring around his finger.

“Hombre, Pedro, you can be insufferable sometimes,” Paco had laughed. “I’m just glad you’re out of the apartment for once.” 

Pedro looked around again at the street he lived on. Calle Gracia was empty since it was still early, so all the wooden, pastel windows were snapped shut, and it was quiet. He realized he had forgotten to turn the television off.

Directly in front of his apartment was the tapas restaurant, La Cueva, and next to that was Los Italianos, widely considered the best gelato in Granada. Next to that were several other restaurants; first La Buena Vida, then Rosario Varela, which used to be called something else that Pedro could not remember, then Laseda, which had glasses of rioja for only three euros, then El Nopal, where they had had one of their two childrens’ graduation dinner, he could not remember which, then Om-Kalsum, where they spoke Arabic and used Moroccan spices Pedro did not know.

Further still, there was a sushi restaurant called Kurama, of which he did not approve. 

Pedro stood to the left of the door to his apartment, looking again at the cigarette in his hand. He became anxious that he could not recall the old name of Rosario Varelas. His heart rate increased, and he pulled the knife out of his pocket. He mimed lighting the cigarette with the knife; never again would he make that motion. That thought echoed against his skull; it felt like someone had died. But if it showed Maria Jose he could change, that he could better himself after all these years of static bad habits, he’d never touch one again.

He took the knife and began to shred the single cigarette, as one might skin an apple. He watched as the tobacco fell, in slow motion, onto the concrete of the sidewalk. The knife glinted in the nine o’clock sun, refracting light down Calle Gracia as the sun poked over the restaurants in its lazy, stubborn fashion. 

Pedro slowly shredded the cigarette until the tobacco rested in a delicate pile on the ground. He debated this for a moment and then walked across the empty sidewalk to throw the filter away. He did not stay to watch it fall to the bottom of the garbage can, and turned back towards the small pile of tobacco on the sidewalk. 

A small group of pigeons had descended upon it. They ate it in frantic bites, shoving each other’s heads out of the way and squawking what Pedro could only imagine were curse words. They pecked at each other belligerently between outbursts, and drops of blood flecked on the sidewalk and their grey feathers. They sounded angry, Pedro thought, and in a brief lapse of focus found himself wishing he learned Italian. He stared at them for a moment, his stomach sinking. 

“No! No! Get away from that!” he yelled, loping toward them. “No! Don’t eat that! Not for you!” He felt as though he was yelling at a child or a dog, which he had done countless times, even though his kids had grown and his dogs had all passed. It was as if he was watching his children teeter at the edge of the bed with their chubby baby legs, the kind that couldn’t walk or catch themselves if they fell, or maybe watching his dog try to eat a fallen square of milk chocolate. The memory of Maria Jose dragging her suitcases down the stairs towards her sister’s car six weeks and three days ago came back to him, and dazzling pain spread through his chest. The pigeons turned their heads towards him all at once in an uncanny, robotic collectivism, and launched off the sidewalk, cutting through the trees that lined the streets with their beaks half-full of tobacco. 

At last, Pedro reached the pile, out of breath, and saw that they had eaten perhaps three-quarters of it. In the same fashion, as he had for so many years, he reached for his empty pants pocket and stared at the pile of tobacco. The futility of the situation dawned on him; he imagined Maria Jose walking towards him down the street and seeing him the same as the woman outside of El Corte Ingles, alone and riddled with nicotine. It did not matter if he had quit smoking, or if he did not have cigarettes with him. She would always see him as a man controlled by something that stained his lips, defiled his clothes, and injected sallowness into his face, something that made it impossible for her not to be disgusted when they kissed or when he reached for her hand. She would, for years after, feel a twinge of disgust pluck at her throat whenever she smelled tobacco. She would watch someone position the cigarette between their lips and reach for their pocket before averting her gaze to the ground, the sky, her hands, anywhere but at that person. Pedro pulled a lone cigarette from his shirtpocket that he could not or would not remember putting there, recalled the dead lighter alone in the garbage can upstairs, and turned in the direction of the chino. They should be open by now; he could get milk while he was there. He began walking, the unlit cigarette hanging from his lip.