Efficient

The ceiling traps the wisps that yearns for sky and open air. A cigarette, yet burning, bid the lips seek, the lungs take, the throat sigh. Humming, whether from the computer or the lights or the writer, drowns the chatter of the night, the endless noise outside the un et demi. Contract forbid his smoking, and so what? Not like the landlord ever came to check, nor had the will to stop the way he chose to live. Gale Jones was without duty, and vice versa; neither had stock in the other in the time and place that trapped them in their places.