some things just don't work if you aren't smoking

You need those dirty stucco-upon-styrofoam walls that catch the black dust of the parking lot on the grooves of their teeth. You need big, flat, even sidewalk squares, all of them perfect and none halved or quartered to fit, like Legos or squares on a grid. You need unseen crickets and lamps in the parking lot that have just begun to flicker, marching away across a flat and empty expanse of welcoming and uncaring commerce.

In your room, you need cable TV. Five channels of ESPN and obligatory HBO but none of the good stuff. You need the Weather Channel scrolling FLASH FLOOD WARNING across the bottom of the screen and the repeating graphic of the tentacles of a low pressure system moving down into the area from (name of scapegoat state here). You need ashtrays hidden like Easter eggs one every cheap laminate surface, your nearly nude reflection watching itself ash rebelliously into the bathroom sink, sitting on a counter wide enough to unload your entire suitcase on.

You need that motel smell that clings to you after just a few hours, the cloud of cleansers that will follow you home in your bags and will survive the recycled air of the pressurized cabin. You need the feeling of thin carpets in ugly patterns under your bare feet as you wander the empty hallways after midnight, mid-week.

Finally, you need the storm. You need the crash that hits the giant window you can't open, the sudden hesitation of the air conditioner as it gets cooler outside. You need the plastic card that opens all the doors and the softpack of not-your-brand you bought in an unfamiliar chain convenience store five parking lots away, and your flip-flops. You run down the back stairs that don't cross the spotlight of the lobby and stand outside with your back to the dirty wall. It takes you ninety seconds but you get one lit only to watch it turn brown with dampness as you try to smoke it. You need to feel the warm rain flowing down your bare legs and soaking your hoodie. That cigarette in that storm is what you came for.