Why I Don't Stop Smoking

by ROBERT THOMAS ALLEN

SOMEDAY I intend to stop smoking, but I haven’t yet. Eve chewed gum, peppermints, arrowroots; counted my cigarettes, hidden them, rationed them, and cut them in half. I’ve done everything but stop smoking them.

Actually, not smoking right now wouldn’t bother me too much. What I can’t stand is not smoking in the future. That’s when everyt hing of interest happens to me, and it’s when I need a cigarette most.

For instance, I am constantly finding myself, at some vague distant date, leaning against the corner of a building in a British fog, tall, hawklike, lithe as whipcord, and able to see without glasses. I reach into my trench coal pocket, take out a package of cigarettes, twist one into my mouth, strike a match, cup my hands to my cigarette, and peer over the flame at a dim figure across the street. It’s a. signal that will start God-knows-what things happening around Number 10 Downing Street.

But as the new nonsmoking, nieotine-free Allen, there’s nothing to do but just stand there peering through the fog, feeling at loose ends. Unhappily, I unwrap a stick of gum, but all the fun in the thing is gone. Besides, the man on the corner is waiting for a signal. The only thing I can think of is to make my gum snap.

Or perhaps I’m sitting in a deck chair enigmatically studying my fellow passengers, when Hedy Lamarr comes along and takes the chair next to mine. In a moment we are talking. She takes out a solid-gold cigarette case, inlaid with ivory, withdraws a cigarette, taps it on her hand, then quickly holds the case out to me. I am just about to take one, then suddenly pull back my hand and say, “Thanks, I don’t smoke.”The picture is compleletely ruined.

Another horrible situation: I am coming down a gangplank at Algiers with a paper concealed in my shoe. I stroll through the narrow, tortuous streets of the native quarter. I knock at a door, mention a name, and I’m shown up a narrow staircase. I find myself face to face with Sydney Greenstreet. I sit down, wipe my forehead with my handkerchief, and wait.

“Have you got it?" Sydney asks, watching me from beneath heavy lids.

“Not so fast, my dear Mr. Greenstreet,”I say. “We have a little matter to discuss first.”

We watch one another. It’s clearly a wait mg game calling for steel nerves. Sydney lights a cigarette, fans out the match, and watches the smoke curl from his lips. I reach into my pocket and pop a peppermint into my mouth.

It’s no use. There’s no point in going out to meet adventure if you’re going to be silly about it.

Cutting down or quilling smoking while I’m around the house putting up screen windows or making kites for my children is something I can handle, alt hough I wail for each cigarette so long, and am so conscious of how long it will be until the next one, that I can’t enjoy the one I’m having. But monkeying with cigarettes in the future just doesn’t workout. I’ve seen myself chairman of a hoard of directors, putting my cards on the table in a deal involving billions, and sitting back coolly waiting for a decision while I take oul of my pocket half a cigarette left over from the morning’s allotment, gripping it in a bobby pin, and carefully holding it to my lips. I’ve found myself looking over my desk in the back of my night club at the boss of a rival gang and his two torpedoes who are trying to cut themselves in on my racket, while I frantically ransack my desk for a package of cigarettes I hid from myself that morning.

I can’t even die like a man. Occasionally I’m caught by Arabs, tied to a stake, and, just before I’m shot, offered a blindfold. All I can do is shove it aside with a contemptuous laugh and ask for an arrowroot.