Lurking

Uncle Sam leaned back in his chair to light a new Cignals, the dead one smoldering in the ashtray, smoke settling over his shoulder before squiggling in ribbons to join the coiled clouds hanging from the ceiling. After another drink and another suck, he leaned his head back and rounded his mouth into an O and blew a smoke ring to hang like a giant Cheerio above his head in a yellow-fogged halo, like the one in that picture of the upside-down Jesus.

Leonard, a live-off-the-grid guy, decides t...