Karen walked back into the bank. Being the president of the largest bank in town certainly had its problems, but she loved her job. She’d started here thirty years ago as a teller. Now two college degrees and three children later, she was the President.
“I don’t know why you walk to the park to smoke, we have a bench out back,” a young black woman working the first teller booth said.
“I know Cecilia, it’s for the view I guess. And today I saw something odd.”
“What’s that?”
“The city has installed a new ashtray at the bench, and tiny men clean it.”
“Oh yeah, I read in the paper that tiny inmates were being used for a lot of random labor in the city, and it was going to save the taxpayers a lot of money. Had you never seen a shrunken person before?”
“Not up close like that,” Karen replied.
“I’m going to try to take a smoke break after I get this drawer settled, maybe I’ll go check it out,” Cecilia said.
“You should,” Karen replied, walking to her office.
Karen walked into her office and sat down at her desk. It was a slow day at the bank - Mondays often were - with not a lot to do. She looked out the window and could see the playground at the park. Kids running and laughing and playing. She remembered taking her kids to the same park, of course it wasn’t as fancy then.
They were grown now. Melodie was married with a baby of her own, Sasha lived in New York with her girlfriend, living the struggling artist life she’d always wanted. And Kelly was away at university, her senior year of pre-med.
She turned to the left and could see her favorite bench with the new ashtray. It faced away from the park, a few yards from the busy street that ran by the bank. She thought about going back just to smoke again, making sure to not make Frank and Billy’s job so hard.
She thought about what Billy said. Reckless driving condemned him to a life of being an inch tall. It didn’t seem fair, she thought, but it was also all she knew about him. Who knew what the real truth was. Maybe she’d ask him.
She pulled her phone out and noticed her video, the one with Billy and Frank, already had over 4,000 likes.
“Wow, that made its way around fast,” she murmured. “Twenty three comments,” she said, opening the comment section to read them.
“You’re a queen and you deserve men to tend to your ashtray,” the first reply said. It was from Angela, a woman she’d met on Instagram from Montana, they had similar backstories and enjoyed each other’s company.
“Wish we had ashtrays like that where I live,” another said.
“Blow smoke on them!” was commented five times.
“Ah, the fetish guys are at it again,” she laughed.
She thought about blowing smoke on them. They couldn’t stop her. She imagined them coughing and batting the smoke away. But she didn’t think she could do that. It wouldn’t be very nice.
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