BOSTON - It’s the last refuge in Boston: the tobacconist.

L.J. Peretti Co., at the corner of Charles and Boylston, and other stores like it are the only places anyone is allowed to smoke indoors in Massachusetts anymore. Not that anyone gives smokers much sympathy.

Four men sit inside and smoke cigars -- two employees, two customers. These men are not stately aristocrats with Cubans and brandy snifters, they’re regular guys -- one of them even wears a t-shirt and jeans, they’re not solemn (though they are a bit surly) and they’re here because it’s not anywhere else.

They talk about sports, or politics or whatever’s on their mind. But what they really talk about is what fills in the gaps between work and home -- between obligations. They talk about life.

It’s like a bar: an institution where people can go, enjoy a vice and forget about what’s important for the sake of what they really care about.


Michael Rund