Enabling co-dependency

More about the pact mentioned In the beginning...

It was comical really, that years-ago mutual attempt by Donna and me, bound as it was by feeble promises to pay the other a five-spot each time one of our wills cracked like a peppercorn and we found ourselves rushing to elevators and down, through hallways and out automatic doors, dodging acid raindrops until finally slumping beaten but content, with a cigarette dangling from our respective lips, in some urine-soaked downtown building nook.

More comical even when each day's tally was taken and smoker's sins confessed and we realized that the difference between the amount of smokes I'd snuck and the number that she had so strived to avoid was no more than one or two. Can you picture it?

"I only had two smokes today," Donna says, somewhat proudly, wondering if I may have had less. "How about you?"

"I had four, I'm ashamed to say," say I, obviously ashamed.

"That's ten you owe me," she says, a shiny-white winner's grin widening on her face.

"Can you break a twenty?"

"No."

"I'll get some change at the store," I tell her. "I gotta buy smokes anyway."

"Can you get me some too?"