“What about you and your woman?” he asked me.
I sat across from him in the dark room and watched him light his pipe. For a second, the room flared in the frail light of the match; the drapes behind him glowed red. Then he waved out the match and tossed it somewhere. Now it was just the moonlight from the window and the tobacco in his pipe, smoldering in its hollow. His eyes, in the fading light, were dark chasms whose cores burned small embers. I could smell it almost as soon as he lit it. Reminded me of some good place I had been to as a child but now could not fully remember.
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