I smoked my first fag on the roof of the Gare du Nord. I said I wanted only to keep warm, but the marquise wasn’t fooled. I could not but laugh in her face, flicking ash like the tail of a comet. An ember landed on her comb and then with another puff was sent back into the sky, where it was lost amidst the Geminids’ flares. When the whole sky began to trail, I folded myself over the cornice, gripped its edge, and heaved onto a pensioner below, whose face, like hers, was shot through with stars and dust.