Object #7

Olive Elwill Canada ashtray, model number 117, from 1967 with centenial mark on bottom.

Agnes

When she was little, she liked to hold the dish and rub the centennial mark on the bottom, thinking of a hundred years of history, spilling the contents on the carpet. It had been an ashtray, her mother’s long thin cigarettes resting in the perfect grooves along what Agnes had thought of as the belly of a fish. She kept her brushes there now. Three long, thin sable ones, a gift from her father.

Object #6

Turquoise ashtray, unmarked. Similar to a McMaster glaze, so it might be theirs.

James

He hated the ashtray, but it was a gift from his sister, so he had to leave it on the coffee table in case she stopped by.

Object #5

Brown and Green Ashtray, McMaster Canada, model 93.

Edward

At least they let him keep the ashtray. He’d worked at the firm for the last fourteen years, hacking away at endless contract disputes and minor clerical. He’d taking up smoking the third year in, the year of his promotion from clerk to real office. That’s when they’d given him the ashtray. He liked the way the cigars filled the room with haze, let him play at hardboiled detective, digging through files. They stopped letting people smoke in offices shortly after he was laid off. He suspected this was why he was allowed to keep it.