"Do you need matches with that?" the round-bottomed young blonde asked him from the relative safety of her eight-hour stance behind the gas station cash register. Her make-up, as usual, was far too thick, especially around the eyes. A gold nameplate swung from a fourteen-karat necklace, bookended on each side by huge hoop earrings that she could probably touch with ease using her tattooed ankles. The currently incarcerated father of her second child always loved that trick.
"No thanks. I'm good," he replied, taking into careful account that what took man so long to discover and was once so precious was now given away for free. Fire, his mind clarified with the mental equivalent of a cynical chuckle. Not that other, sloppier commodity-- though both had been known to burn greater men.
"Don't forget your smokes on the counter this time," she said, letting on that she remembered his previous distracted blunder. There was a sharp glimmer in her pale blue eyes that proved she saw right through him as well as most of the others had. He cupped his hand to accept his change as easily as he'd accepted his fate.
Greater men, indeed, old chap. Greater, scorn-singed men.
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