NS. What was NS? Nordic skiing? Native American Shamanism? Natural sex? No sex? And here was NSO. No sexual orgasms? I flipped back to the translation guide. Of course. Nonsmoker only.

The buxom, handsome, caring people who place these things seem frequently to have confused the personals with the L. L. Bean catalog: I’d like Item D2481 in passion red. Size, small. And they frequently specify color, shape, and no pets. But the number of nonsmokings seemed to have radically increased since the last time I’d done a count. I got a red pen out of my purse and started to circle them.

By the time my sandwich and complex latte had arrived, the page was covered in red. I ate my sandwich and sipped my latte and circled. The nonsmoking trend started way back in the late seventies, and so far it had followed the typical pattern for aversion trends, but I wondered if it was starting to reach another, more volatile level. “Any race, religion, political party, sexual preference okay,” one of the ads read. “NO SMOKERS.” In caps.

And “Must be adventurous, daring, nonsmoking risk-taker” and “Me: Successful but tired of being alone. You: Compassionate, caring, nonsmoking, childless.” And my favorite: “Desperately seeking someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer, flouts convention, doesn’t care what’s in or out. Smokers need not apply.”

Someone was standing over me. The waiter, probably, wanting to give me a nicotine patch. I looked up.

“I didn’t know you came here,” Flip said, rolling her eyes.

“I didn’t know you came here either,” I said. And now that I do I never will again, I thought. Especially since they don’t serve iced tea anymore.

“The personals, huh?” she said, craning around to look at what I’d marked. “They’re okay, I guess, if you’re desperate.”

I am, I thought, wondering wildly if she’d stopped on the way in to empty the trash and had I locked the car?