A Sketch by Jean-Pierre Martinez
A rooftop terrace. Two characters, either men or women, arrive. They light up cigarettes, possibly electronic. An uncomfortable silence ensues.
Casey – Did you know him?
Jordan – Yes, well… just by sight… I saw him around here occasionally during his smoke breaks… And you?
Casey – He worked in the office right next to mine.
Jordan – Mmm…
Casey – If we had suspected anything…
Jordan – Suspected what?
Casey – Well, what was going to happen to him.
Jordan – Mmm… And what could we have done?
Casey – I don’t know… We could have tried something…
Jordan – Oh yeah? Like what, for example?
Casey – You’re right, we couldn’t have done anything.
Jordan – Exactly.
Casey – It’s fate.
Jordan – So we have nothing to regret.
A moment passes as they smoke.
Casey – His wife decided to cremate him. That’s what he wanted, it seems.
Jordan – Yes, of course…
Casey – Why? Did he mention it to you?
Jordan – He set himself on fire… One could deduce he had a certain preference for cremation.
Casey – Mmm…
Jordan – And besides, for cremation, the hardest part is already done.
Casey – Well, he didn’t set himself on fire deliberately. It was an accident.
Jordan – An accident… You’d agree that with that level of clumsiness, we could still call it a failed act, right?
Casey – It’s true that lighting a cigarette while filling the gas tank with a jerrycan… It’s suicidal.
Jordan – Especially when it happens on the side of a highway. (A moment passes) Dit it happen before or after the truck hit him?
Casey – Before what?
Jordan – Before he went up in flames like a torch.
Casey – I think it was after. He started running as if he wanted to cross the highway. The truck driver tried to swerve, but couldn’t.
Jordan – Good thing the truck didn’t catch fire too.
Casey – It was a fire truck. You could say he had some luck in his misfortune. He got first aid immediately.
Jordan – Unfortunately, it was already too late.
Casey – What an idea to cross like that, without looking. Like a madman.
Jordan – Though, he was already engulfed in flames.
Casey – Who knows what he was trying to find on the other side of the highway.
Jordan – That… we’ll never know…
Casey – Mmm… He’ll take his secret to the grave…
Jordan – But you were right earlier. If we had suspected anything, we could have done something.
Casey – Like what?
Jordan – We could have tried to convince him to quit smoking.
Casey – Cigarettes… should be banned! Do you know how many people die every year because of tobacco?
Jordan – Well, he didn’t die directly from the harmful effects of tobacco on his health…
Casey – If he hadn’t lit a match over his jerrycan after running out of gas on the highway while going to pick up his mother-in-law, he’d be here smoking a cigarette with us today.
Jordan – It’s fate, I tell you. Well, shall we go?
They are about to leave.
Casey – They found a black cat on the median of the highway. I wonder if that brought him bad luck.
Jordan – And the cat, did it survive?
Casey – The cat? We don’t know if it’s alive or dead.
Jordan – Maybe he tried to cross the lanes to save the cat…
They leave.
Black.
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A sketch from the collection Nicotine
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