Greenville has this run-down/built-up vibe to it. It is one of those places that I love when I know I shouldn't - like a guilty habit. If the whole of North Carolina were a body, its dirty hands are here. Don't get me wrong, there are good people here who will someday hold jobs in medicine and education, but to me it's just a little slimy: A place I'd never want to live, but couldn't live without visiting.
It's a little past ten when JaySun and I walk out of a convenience store on Evans St. The air has finally gotten cold enough that the warmth and comfort of a pipe is agreeable, so we have decided to take advantage of it. With a new white lighter in hand, we are ready to look for the best place to smoke. Taking short, quick breaths we hurry back across Evans and onto campus. Thinking of our recent exchange with the clerk in the convenience store, I laugh.
"What? What's funny?" JaySun asks.
"It's just the way you said it," I answer, "It was like - I was asking him what made the Bic lighter 20 cents better and you were really listening hard. He said that the plastic was thicker and it had this guard on the striker and then when I looked at you."
I started laughing again. JaySun, still slightly bewildered, starts laughing with me.
"I think it's just how you came off like you couldn't believe we were discussing it in such detail," I say, "especially when you sheepishly said, 'Well - I guess we'll get the nicer one.'"
"Ok, whatever," he says.
As we walk past the library, I notice the little television screens are working on the face of the clock tower for the first time when I've been there. JaySun assures me that they only show random garbage and aren't worth stopping for. I keep watching them as we pass. He is probably right. A little further on, they have these columns that sound semi-muted chimes as you pass through them. We stop and do a brief dance on each side of a column setting them off especially well. Amused, we set our attention on the campus commons, (or "cupola plaza," if you prefer), in front of us, looking for the perfect place.
"How about over there," I say, motioning to the cupola in the middle of the commons. Apparently, it is a double size replica of the cupola which sat atop the university's first building, Austin, which burned. Now the replica squats disembodied on the lawn, a beautiful, if somewhat awkward addition to the campus decor.
"Nah man," he replies, "that thing gives me the creeps."
"Why?" I ask.
"I don't know man," he says, "one time I was out here and there was a group of people in a circle all dressed in black with a fire in the middle doing something. It was creepy as crap."
I pause for a minute and accept this with a shrug, "We can at least use its lights to pack our pipes by."
"Ok, whatever," he says.
I notice the eerie quality that the the lights at the cupola's base lend the structure as we make our approach. Reaching into my canvas bag like a Christmas stocking, I feel around for the familiar shape of my pipe. I hand JaySun a small one that I carry as a backup. The wind picks-up just as I drop in the first scrappy tobacco leaves. Luckily, I hear it coming and manage to keep it from claiming any. A short time passes and I ask for the lighter. With a couple of flicks it sparks to life and soon we are both producing white-grey puffs that rise and dissipate in the wind.
"You want to go over there?" he asks, indicating a lone bench a short distance from the cupola.
Noting his eagerness to escape the monument, I agree.
The night is cold but our bench is colder. Bars of metal are curved to form its seat and back and they must have been designed to win the battle against my body heat. I put the mild discomfort out of mind and refocus my attention on making smoke rings.
"Did you see that one?" I ask.
"No, hold on," he answers before tilting his head back to attempt a few of his own. He claims to have produced a couple. I am skeptical.
After a while I lean back and look to the small patch of sky that we're afforded through all the waving branches. Several twinkling stars are visible in spite to the city's best efforts to conceal them. From nowhere, I have one of those moments of deep contemplation. For instance, when I started smoking pipes, I did so to have insightful conversations with my friends. Instead, we always end up talking about tobacco or how the smoke tastes and I seldom feel wiser. I wonder why our conversations rarely go deep. Taking in the sky and its vastness I consider the paths that are before me and the choices I have to make, each with its own fast-approaching deadline for consideration, and I wonder what I'll be doing in a year. I look at the buildings and I think of all the visits I've made to friends at ECU. Some of them are good memories and some of them bad, but when I blend them all together they make a smoothy of sorts that I wouldn't mind drinking again from time-to-time. I wonder how long I have before I don't know anyone in Greenville anymore. Because I'm getting older. Because they have all grown up and moved-on. I wonder if Greenville's dark shadows and shifting leaves will ever be real again - or if will I pack them into a dusty, old cardboard box and store them in my mind. Just a memory. In time I'll push it further and further back, stack new boxes on it and cover it up.
"Can I have the lighter?" JaySun asks?
"Huh? What? Uh, I don't think I have it."
"Oh, do I have it?" he asks, fumbling through his hoodie pockets, "Yeah, here it is."
Our pipes are dying and we keep re-lighting them. I take one long final pull and tap the ash out on the sidewalk.
