The moments that mark a lifetime – you never see them coming, you never realize it until you’ve walked right through them.

He was seven years old. He was in a restaurant with his mom and dad. He suddenly had to pee, and he excused himself and threaded his way through the crowded dining area towards the restrooms.

The place was a maze, a noisy, slightly scary mishmash of strange voices, clinking silverware, and the smells of food mingling together.

He sucked in his breath and strode as manfully as his little frame could pretend to be, through the crowds, trying to keep on track with the way his father had pointed towards the restrooms sign. He was old enough to go on his own and he wanted to prove it.

He was passing through a section of the restaurant now that smelled a little different, a little musty. It was not quite as crowded as the other part, for some reason.

Two ladies were sitting at a table. They were tall and beautiful, he thought, like his teacher, Ms. Parker, from school. One had brown hair and the other had blonde hair. They wore sparkly dresses and pretty high heels and were talking quietly. The one with brown hair had a long white cigarette in her hand.

He knew of cigarettes. He was wise for a seven year old. He knew that lots of people lit them with a lighter and breathed in the smoke, and that it was a bad thing to do but it was hard to stop, though no one had ever been able to explain to him exactly why. He knew that bad kids smoked and bad people on tv, too.

But these did not look like bad ladies. Looking at them made him feel funny but good inside.

He had to pass right by them to get to the restroom.

The brown-haired one was closest to him. He saw her hold the cigarette in her mouth and then turn her head and blow out the smoke. Maybe she didn’t want to blow it at her friend. She looked magical and mysterious. The smoke poured out of her mouth like your breath did on a cold day, only thicker. It spread out in the air and gradually disappeared.

He remembered his best friend, Jenny, who was his age, how one winter day they were building a snow fort and she was pushing a snow ball and breathing hard and her breath steamed and swirled around her and he had moved in beside her and helped push and her breath blew around his face, warm and kind of moist and fragrant like the watermelon gum she was chewing.

He loved Jenny. She was beautiful. They shared everything and played together all the time. They had even kissed, just once, to see what it was like. Sometimes other kids teased him about it but he didn’t care.

Plates rattled beside him as a waiter cleaned up and he realized he was standing still and he should keep walking.

The brown-haired lady put the cigarette into her mouth again and he watched as it glowed and jerked up from the pressure of her inhale. He wondered how it felt to breathe in smoke like that.

He reached her table just as she turned her head. She was as tall seated as he was standing. He could see that she had eyes that were brown as chocolate and smooth, pretty skin. She had on dark red lipstick, too, and gold earrings.

She hadn’t been paying any attention to him. And he hadn’t expected his body to react as it did.

Sometimes fate just shows up and reshuffles the cards.

She exhaled.

Simultaneously, his legs refused to move him forward.

She was being polite to her friend, exhaling away from the table. She hadn’t expected a small boy to be standing there at that moment.

He was just a kid on the way to the bathroom. He didn’t realize that certain things in the world could cause a boy, even a small boy, to react in deep and powerful ways.

She exhaled. Because you can’t stop an exhale and her startled reflexes had locked up between the boy and the friend.

He stood frozen, forgetting his full bladder and remembering, vaguely, that he ought to keep breathing.

Her warm and spicy smoke billowed up from deep within her lungs. This was meant to be her last puff before crushing out the cigarette and saying goodbye to her friend. So she had wanted it to be a good one, as much smoke as she could force into her lungs, enough nicotine to last through the long, stressful, smoke-free subway ride home, enough pleasure to warm her body and soul and give her strength for the lonely night ahead.

He had been around smokers before, casually, like the guys who had moved them into their new house, and he hadn’t liked it. The aroma was always harsh, the sight a little scary.

But this smoke was completely different. It was as sweet as the scent of cotton candy at the fair. It was warm like sunshine on his face. It was streaming from the lips of this beautiful, magical woman who looked like Jenny all grown up. He breathed in, hard, tasting it in his mouth. He should have coughed or choked or something, but the burning in his lungs felt good in a strange way, like when Daddy rubbed his back extra extra hard.

He could hear the soft sigh as she propelled it forward, and feel the pressure of her breath.

Time, he remembered later, seemed to stop as he inhaled to match her exhale, as his tiny, boy’s lungs took in the full and potent contents of a grown woman’s. His head spun and his eyes watered but he did not cough, not once.

The spell should have lasted forever but it didn’t. He saw the last tendril of smoke slide through her sharp, white teeth, and her open lips seal shut as she expelled it into his eager face. He saw her brown eyes blink. And they both seemed to wake up.

Her friend was half-giggling, half-chastising her.

“What the hell did you do? You just smoked that kid!”

He felt his knees wobbling and his hands shaking and his whole body seemed to be on fire. He stumbled forward, his mind reeling with the image of her, so beautiful, spewing that sweet smoke in his face, and his senses burning with the smell of it and the feel of it and the taste of it.

He forgot about the bathroom and walked back to his family’s table, dazed like a punch-drunk prize fighter. He would remember he still had to go, twenty minutes later as they drove home, meaning an embarrassing stop by the side of the road while the cars whizzed past him.

And for the rest of his life, he would remember that night, that woman, that smoke. He would crave it. He would try smoking himself but give that up in disgust as a poor and pale substitute, like a boy putting on a dress. He would play-smoke with Jenny, with candy cigarettes or their breath in the winter, longing for the real thing, wondering if she would ever start. He would watch the older girls in his neighborhood as they puffed cigarettes, and then sneak home their crushed out cigarettes, marked with their lip-gloss and dream of them at night.

He had been marked in a moment. And it would last a lifetime.