Trouble in The Office

I notice that there is usually a scene in my short fiction where the character shares a smoke with a wiser one. Usually, this is a point in the character's life where she stumbles on an epiphany. The irony is, I have never been a smoker. I am just really bad at it.

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets,
reads his poem "The Best Cigarette" with animation by David Vaio of
FAD.

There are many that I miss having sent my last one out a car
window sparking along the road one night, years ago. The heralded one, of
course: after sex, the two glowing tips now the lights of a single ship; at the
end of a long dinner with more wine to come and a smoke ring coasting into the
chandelier; or on a white beach, holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.
How bittersweet these punctuations of flame and gesture; but the best were on
those mornings when I would have a little something going in the typewriter, the
sun bright in the windows, maybe some Berlioz on in the background. I would go
into the kitchen for coffee and on the way back to the page, curled in its
roller, I would light one up and feel its dry rush mix with the dark taste of
coffee. Then I would be my own locomotive, trailing behind me as I returned to
work little puffs of smoke, indicators of progress, signs of industry and
thought, the signal that told the nineteenth century it was moving forward. That
was the best cigarette, when I would steam into the study full of vaporous hope
and stand there, the big headlamp of my face pointed down at all the words in
parallel lines.