The hero of the piece . . .

... awakens to the gray, empty moment between night and dawn. He flexes his right hand and it's not any better; every joint on the right side of his body still aches.

He wonders if it's possible to get the flu on only one side of your body.

How long do I lie here? How long have I been awake without realizing it?

But the questions escape into the void as if they'd never been asked.

This is the moment he hates most in the day, when his neurons seem trapped in amber and he can't string together a coherent sentence no matter how hard he tries.

Gonna be a bad day.

He summons up the will to sit up on the side of the bed, grabs his T-shirt and slob shorts that he'd discarded the night before, and slips them on...

...and rests his elbows on his knees, looks straight ahead and blanks out for a few minutes, maybe ten, he doesn't know. Not the kind of blankout where you can't find the word you're looking for, but the kind of blankout where the lights are on but nobody's home.

The scary, empty blankout where there doesn't seem to be a thought to be found anywhere inside his cranium.

He sees the room around him, but none of it makes any sense to him.

He wonders out loud "What was I doing?"

No answer comes.

Finally, his eyes come to rest on the little light green box on the bedside table. Aha, something familiar! He focuses on it and realizes it is a box of Pall Mall Menthol Light 100s, with a green art-deco lighter sitting next to it.

He usually doesn't smoke lights, but Pall Mall doesn't make full-flavored menthols and he likes the long, sensual burn of a Pall Mall.

He grabs the pack, flips open the top, and gives it a shake. A single cigarette dislodges itself from the crowd and jumps up to greet him like an old friend.

He pulls it out of the pack with his lips and pushes down the striker button on the lighter. A small blue flame, yellow on top, appears.

He lifts the lighter to the end of the cigarette. It takes a few shallow puffs to light.

Come on, come on, he thinks. Don't fuck with me this morning.

Finally, he feels the minty smoke fill his mouth and sees the orange glow take shape.

He blows out the first puff so he can take a long, deep, slow drag. The orange glow grows bright enough to reflect off his chest, then dims back to its default setting. He then inhales another breath through his nose so the smoke can tickle his sinuses.

Yeah, there it comes -- that spark, that rush of excited brain cells bumping into his each other and radiating outward through his entire body. And bit by bit, his thoughts return and the world begins making sense again.

Will it kill him someday? Maybe. Maybe even probably.

But he sets that idea aside because he has some inside info.

It's the inside info that the Health Nazis never mention, because they can't argue against it.

And this great, universal secret is this: Everyone is going to die of something.

So why not cigarettes?

He takes another drag.

And for that one moment in time, probably the only moment like it he'll experience until this time tomorrow, he feels good. This is the moment he loves most.

It's gonna be one kickass day.