"When are you going to quit, Sing Lee?"
Another shake of the thin head.
"You're not very gabby tonight, Sing."
A dignified answer to this: "I thinking."
"What about, Sing Lee?"
A faint smile. The smile seems to set Sing Lee in motion. It comes from behind the automaton. It is perhaps Sing Lee's first gesture of life in weeks.
"You don't mind my sitting here and smoking a pipe, eh?"
* * * * *
The minutes pass. Sing Lee stands up. He turns on a small electric light. This is a concession. This done, he opens a drawer behind the counter and removes a little bronze casket. The casket is placed on the counter. Slowly as if in a deep dream Sing Lee lights a match and holds it inside the casket. A thin spiral of lavender smoke unwinds from its mouth.
Sing Lee watches the spiral of smoke. It wavers and unwinds. A finger writing; an idiot flower. Then it opens up into a large smoke eye. Smoke eyes drift casually away. An odor crawls into the air. Sing Lee's eyes close gently and his thin body moves as he takes a deep breath.