Three on a Match
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - July - August 2013

Lillian, in her blue jean jacket and tight-fitting denim pants, brunette straight-brushed shoulder length hair and knit scarf sidles thru a maze of Student Union cafeteria chairs projecting variously from their central tables, some supporting students slouched over them, others hunched atop the table at odd angles. Penetrating into the smoky, dense interior, she unhooks her shoulder strap from her canvas book bag, lets them crash to the linoleum and settles her coffee onto the sticky, beverage-stained table. Seated a few rows from the floor-to-ceiling windows, she glances despondently thru the windows at the patches of ice on College Avenue that signal that the wintery climate was overstaying its tenure into the spring months.

Her purple-yellow hands, numbed cold from changing classes outdoors, made it difficult to snatch the three quarters full pack of Marlboro Reds, peers up and around to see if her companion had yet entered the cafeteria, while her hands sightlessly pull up a cork tipped nico-promise. Janice slips it between her expectant lips without shifting her focus, and edges a Bic flame expectantly to its tip.

20 Class A BFF’s
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - November - December 2013

“I carry twenty Class A BFF’s in my pack and each has its place in my routine. I could open the pack in the morning, pull ’em out and write labels on each; knowing that it would accurately schedule my day’s cigarette use,” Toni asserts, placing her slowly staining filter of this smoldering cigarette between her lips to punctuate her message with a glow-tipped pull.

When the Smoke Clears
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - July - August 2011

Armed with scissors, thread and pins, Marianne flitted about the tight-fitting midnight-violet dress, tailoring it stylishly around her mother Élise’s svelte curves. She was as fashion conscious as her mother was not, but then, being a working, single mom for the last fourteen years left little time or money for Élise to have a “life”. Between her former marriage and later, an ill-fated flirtation with a male coworker, Élise came to avoid and distrust entanglements.

The Nicotine Hiatus
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - January - February 2015

Penny moaned. The red-haired business manager just calculated the time span of her enforced no-smoking for her spur-of-the-moment out-of-town conference. “Thursday I won’t be able to smoke for at least fourteen hours.” Depressed, she pondered, “That’s how long I’ll be in the air, in taxis and presenting our strategy to ‘corporate’ while conferring with our clients.”