Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Part 1
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - September - October 2014

“Look at this! My invitation’s arrived,” Eleanor chirped, tearing open the stylish lavender envelope addressed in elegant script. She reads, “Mlle. Leslie Stoppard requests the honor of your presence and a companion of your choice at 8:00 pm the Eighteenth of November at her residence on Olde Poste Road, Fairfield, Connecticut on the occasion of celebrating 2014’s ‘Great American Smokeout’.”

The Nicotine Hiatus
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - January - February 2015

Penny moaned. The red-haired business manager just calculated the time span of her enforced no-smoking for her spur-of-the-moment out-of-town conference. “Thursday I won’t be able to smoke for at least fourteen hours.” Depressed, she pondered, “That’s how long I’ll be in the air, in taxis and presenting our strategy to ‘corporate’ while conferring with our clients.”

The Stand-Off
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - May - June 2012

Diane looked forward all week to this girls-night-out, specifically the 'casino' that would assemble after the party swelled and got noisy. She had already made her fashionable entrance to the party, which was rocking, but expecting the players to gather and make up the 'casino' at any moment, she fled outside to wait in a patio lawn chair. She drew thoughtfully, maybe desperately on her Eve 120 and in the twilight of this summer's star-flecked evening, her soothing cigarette glared out for as many seconds as her lips coaxed inward the stream of smoky flavor.

Three on a Match
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - July - August 2013

Lillian, in her blue jean jacket and tight-fitting denim pants, brunette straight-brushed shoulder length hair and knit scarf sidles thru a maze of Student Union cafeteria chairs projecting variously from their central tables, some supporting students slouched over them, others hunched atop the table at odd angles. Penetrating into the smoky, dense interior, she unhooks her shoulder strap from her canvas book bag, lets them crash to the linoleum and settles her coffee onto the sticky, beverage-stained table. Seated a few rows from the floor-to-ceiling windows, she glances despondently thru the windows at the patches of ice on College Avenue that signal that the wintery climate was overstaying its tenure into the spring months.

Her purple-yellow hands, numbed cold from changing classes outdoors, made it difficult to snatch the three quarters full pack of Marlboro Reds, peers up and around to see if her companion had yet entered the cafeteria, while her hands sightlessly pull up a cork tipped nico-promise. Janice slips it between her expectant lips without shifting her focus, and edges a Bic flame expectantly to its tip.