She sits across from me and I quickly catch the scent of her perfume, a blissful break from the stale odors of this place.

She stretches out long, silky legs and for a moment, appears to consider kicking off her pumps - then thinks better of it, since the floor probably hasn't been swept since Napoleon ruled France.

She sets her purse on her lap and withdraws a slender, silver and white pack of Virginia Slims. I perk up in surprise. The depot is plastered with no-smoking signs, including one that she cannot miss, fastened to the top of the bench beside me, directly in her line of sight.

She puts a cigarette to her lips. Maybe she intends to go outside and light it.

She strikes a match - a delightful, old-fashioned gesture. It hisses and flashes into flame and she holds it carefully to her cigarette, then throws the spent sliver onto the floor. I see the ticket guy look up from his half-nap and gaze appreciatively at her. He will not ask her to follow the rule, I know, and I have a feeling he won't be dozing off again anytime soon.

She inhales, longingly, a full, rich drag that lasts nearly three seconds. She exhales, a deep, succulent sigh that spills smoke thoroughly into the atmosphere between us. It smells like sweet heaven, bringing back ancient memories for me.

Then I feel it and desperately try to conceal it - a cough coming on. Not from her smoke, just a misplaced moment of damnable post-nasal drip.

She glances at me. Then inhales again. It's me she expects to leave if I am bothered, I realize.

Mercifully, the cough does not repeat itself.

I hear the clicking of boot heels. It is the security guard, making his rounds. He looks us both over. He says nothing about her smoking and goes on.

She exhales again, pursing her lips in concentration to shape three perfect rings. They wriggle and twist away from her and dissipate.

There are no ashtrays, of course, in this place. She ashes her cigarette onto the floor and inhales again.

I've read that redheads are more sensitive to sensation. I wonder if she wrings more pleasure from each puff than some other woman might. She certainly appears to. Each time she inhales, she holds the cigarette tightly in her lips and inhales for three, four seconds, until surely her body can hold no more smoke. She closes her eyes, completely, tenses, holding the tobacco vapor in her lungs as if determined to extract every milligram of nicotine -- then relaxes.

The smoke seems like a ghostly lover, longed for like a hero in the night, pulled hungrily into her depths -- stroking her with seductive smoky fingers, consummating passion with each puff.

And her voluptuous exhales betray the vast volume of smoke that she has lured into her lungs, streaming from her mouth like a factory smokestack, swirling before her like a skywriter's trail, saturating the air with her delectable pollution.

The cigarette is soon smoked down. She drops it to the floor, looks down, and steps firmly on it with the tip of her pump, pressing with all the power of those petite little toes, then twists to crush the cherry, and gives the butt the merest suggestion of a kick.

Of course I am hoping for a repeat. I am hoping, too, that her bus will never come. If mine does, it will roll on without me.

Then, outside, a car honks. She stands up, sweeping away imaginary dust from her shapely derriere and tossing her hair.

My heart sadly accepts the reality. She was too good for this place. She was only here to be out of the night for a moment, in this semblance of safety, awaiting a pre-arranged ride.

I watch her walk away - tall, confident, her body sashaying like a runway model -- some lucky dude's dream fulfilled.

Remaining only is the faint fragrance of her perfume, the lingering last wisps of her forbidden smoke and her lipstick-stained Virginia Slims cigarette-end peeking out from beneath her chair.