“There’s no smoking in here,” I said to the stranger as he held his Zippo to the Camel Light that protruded from his lips.

“What? It’s a bar!”

“Sorry, man. City ordinance.”

Fresh beer in front of him, he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, distracted and clearly unsure what to do with himself without lighting up while he drank.

As he watched baseball highlights on the screen above my head, one of our regulars approached the bar and ordered a drink. She was clearly taken with the recent heatwave, dressed in a tank top and low-slung shorts that revealed the northern edge of perfect hipbones and a sapphire navel ring. Her long brown hair was up, off her neck, and probably had been most of the day. While she waited for me to mix her poison, I could see the stranger sizing her up and down. He seemed impressed.

Once she was gone, the stranger requested that I throw her out of the bar.

“Why?” I asked.

“She was smokin’.”

I laughed, putting that quip in the memory banks for later use.