Archive of Our Own ^beta

Peggy's quitting smoking next year… Well, that's the plan.

It almost goes without saying that New Year's resolutions are for suckers and rubes. How many campaigns has she worked on that kicked off on January 1st promising a "new you"? A slimmer waist, a more dazzling smile, a sharper pair of crampons to strap onto the soles of your boots as you scale that corporate Matterhorn… (They just signed the Colorado State Tourism Board, which means half the books in her office are about mountain climbing.)

Still, she's never been able to fully shake off the sentimental appeal that comes with turning over that final page in the calendar. A fresh start isn't something to be taken for granted — she knows that better than most.

(She spares a thought for Don, somewhere out there in California, across the vast breadth of the continent. She hasn't heard from him since that phone call last month, but according to Joan, of all people, he's doing well.)

Anyway, she's going to quit smoking in January, she's decided. 1971. A new decade. It fits.

In the meanwhile, however, she's going to suck the pleasure out of her last few days of sin: both the smoke itself, which warms her from the inside-out, a welcome counterpoint to the evening chill; and the implicit relief that smoking provides from holiday parties like this one.

McCann Erickson's rented out Fraunces Tavern for their Christmas party, and there's a hint of salt in the air coming up from the Seaport. Ten minutes ago, she'd been seated at a table with a group of other copywriters, picking at her broiled filet of sole and trying to feign interest in Jack Renwick's theories about who's going to be working on Coke.

(It's not that she doesn't care. She cares too much. And that's one thing that she'll never allow herself to do in this business again.)

They'd put her and Stan at the same table — or at least, they'd ended up sitting together, somehow. It's possible he had something to do with that. His upstairs neighbor's a single mom to a thirteen year-old kid who gets left on his own a lot, and the two of them have gotten into magic and sleight-of-hand tricks, of all things. (She shouldn't find it as endearing as she does.) It’s possible he swapped a few place cards around, but she doesn’t mind — the opposite, in fact.

As Renwick droned on, she met Stan's eyes across the table. She was afraid, for a moment, that he was about to say something — that he'd lean back and regale them all with a tale of Don's brilliance… or worse, that he'd feel the need to talk her up.

In the end, though, she shouldn't have worried — he'd just given her a quick, barely-there smile, a softening of his eyes more than anything else. A ripple of heat had passed through her, not unlike the first drag of a freshly lit cigarette… and just like that, she'd remembered her plan and made her escape.

"Cigarette run, my ass." She probably should be startled: he came up on her from behind, no warning besides the wafting scent of his cologne, the heavy footfall of his steps. This neighborhood has really gone downhill from George Washington's day. What does it say about her that she's not — that instead, she finds herself relaxing, almost as though she's been on alert for his presence without even knowing it?

She turns and finds Stan on the foot of the steps below her. One of the rare moments that she's taller than him, and she takes the opportunity to survey him in all his proportions: hair, eyes, smile. Those broad shoulders, now swathed in a gabardine coat his mother sent him for Christmas. His gloved hands, reaching up to her before settling back down at his sides, almost as if he can't help himself.

He gestures to her lit cigarette. "I knew you had a full pack in your purse."

She doesn't realize she's smiling and walking towards him until she's almost all the way there. That's been happening to her a lot, these past few weeks. Like the modern dance show he took her to last month that she gamely tried to appreciate: bodies frozen on stage until the lights cut off, the world pitched into darkness. Then, five seconds later, the lights turned back on and the dancers were standing still in completely different positions.

("If you never see them moving," she'd asked him afterwards, as they walked back to the subway, "does it really count as a dance recital?"

"I have no idea," he'd confessed, and pulled her bare hands between his own to warm them up.)

She stops herself, two steps above him. Now they're almost eye-to-eye, but she's still got a slight height advantage. She knows he likes it this way, though he's never said.

"I've come a long way, baby," she says, and they both make faces.

"You'd have done it better," he says.

"Probably."

"You'll get the next one." He's been doing that a lot, since they started this: complimenting her. Telling her how good she is.

("And you don't mind the…" her mother had whispered, quick and low, last week — they took her out to dinner and a show, one of Ethel Merman's closing performances in Hello Dolly. She waved her hand in a circle across the bottom half of her face, almost like she was unfogging a window.

Peggy had shifted in her seat, struck by the sense memory of Stan between her thighs — the beads of her own pleasure that had clung to his beard like tiny glass ornaments and glazed, blissful look on his face as he’d called her beautiful, stunning, perfect, and thanked her, over and over again, for letting him.

"It's not a big deal," she'd said, and hoped to God she wasn't blushing too hard.)

Here, now, his face is honest, open, lovely. She's so glad she took the time to notice — so glad that he took the time to make her notice.

A ferry on the East River blasts its horn, a single low note that lingers in the cold-clear air like a chanted verse. Tidings of great joy, indeed

"Let's go home," she says.

"Kind of early, don't you think?" but he's smiling at her again. She'd left her scarf inside; belatedly, she notices it looped around his own neck.

"It's Christmas Eve," she says. One last drag of her cigarette and then she tosses it on the pavement. (He stamps it out for her. She knew he would.)

Reaching forward, she grabs the loose end of her scarf, and reels him in.