It was dark. You lit a cigarette and turned away from me to blow curling dragons into the December sky with the coolness of a Chinese hipster. I coughed at the stench, but you continued smoking anyway. 

“You don’t have to be here,” you said and closed your eyes to inhale the sharp mixture of cinnamon and ginger.

“No, I can wait, Paul. It won’t take you much longer. You’re almost done, right?"

You nodded with your eyes still closed like you were listening to music so good that you couldn’t be disturbed. You never wanted to be bothered when the right music was on. I knew that by then.  

We were sixteen and in high school, best friends Paul and Rich. Our lives were screaming to be lived and we knew just what we wanted to do. Well, sort of, anyway. You wanted to be a mad sax player for a chill jazz club in Adams Morgan where all the girls crop their hair and wear too much perfume. I wanted to write a book about death and dying, publish it in my basement using my own D.I.Y. methods, and then sell it to all the best underground stores and cafes in town. We had our plans---we just didn’t have the power to realize them. 

Because obtaining power meant having money and we were just two kids from Southeast.