She inhaled.

The world around her faded away as she clasped her lips around her fresh cigarette and concentrated, filling her mouth with sweet, thick smoke, drawing it in through the filter with just the slightest of effort.

She savored its taste upon her tongue and the indescribable joy of swallowing it down into her lungs, the almost infantile pleasure of filling her body with its warm, creamy richness.

She relished the slight naughtiness of her habit - the annoyed glares from goody-goodies and the occasional furtive glances from people who she could tell found it intriguing.

She loved the almost childish freedom she had to flick away her cigarettes when she finished them, virtually anywhere she pleased, or to step on them and squish them like a bug and leave them as rude reminders of her presence. Nobody ever said a thing.

She loved playing teenager again and blowing smoke rings or occasionally exhaling through her nose. Especially when there were teenagers around.

She loved playing the smoky femme fatale, the Lauren Bacall, the Audrey Hepburn - vamp, vixen or debutante, struggling saint or defiant streetwalker - her long, all-white cigarette held high in feminine glamour or a stubby cork smoldering in her fist like an archetypical Gen-X slacker.

But most of all, she simply loved smoking. Her lungs could take it. Black as coal they probably were by now, dusted daily ever since she'd first sucked in cigarette smoke as a skinny kid on a Girl Scout campout - a guyish Winston, of all things, harsh and pungent, stolen by some other girl from a counselor, and damp from the nervous lips of six other girls before it finally reached hers, as they hid away just beyond the tents, trying not to giggle or to cough.

Peer pressure? B.S. She wanted that first puff like a kid wants Christmas, and bounced up and down eagerly until her turn came to finally take a drag.

She inhaled.

She was far from that camp now, and she'd never touched a Winston again. Misty Lights were her cigarette of choice these days, or Marlboro Menthols when she was in that sort of mood.

Was this Lifetime Puff Number 10,000 or 100,000? How many times had she indulged in this comforting little ritual, left her lipstick behind on a white filter, poured her exhales into the air around her?

She smoked. She was a smoker. The world could deal with it. The world was hers, to sprinkle with her cigarettes and to sanctify with her smoke.

She intended to smoke forever - smoke on each and every date; smoke through every pregnancy from start to finish; smoke on her way into church; smoke at the PTA meeting and Parent Teacher Conferences, or at least at the doorway; smoke at her daughter's wedding.

Her exhale spread out before her, diffusing into the cold air, warmed oh-so-briefly deep within her lungs.

Sometimes, she hated to let the smoke out, to waste any of that damnably delicious nicotine that might still be lurking in its billowy clouds. A woman's life was hard - a daily obstacle course of boors and oglers, runs in your hose, hormone swings and long lines for the lady's room. A woman's cigarette was a delectable little pleasure break, a lover who could be kissed, caressed, used, abused, then satisfyingly crushed out underfoot and left behind in the dust.

She was being watched. Some stupid boy who had escaped his parents for a moment and stood blinking in the cold sunshine outside the mall.

The demoness in her took over. She took a passionate drag. She tossed her pretty blonde hair and then breathed out in her best, tight, corkscrew, man-killer of an exhale. He squinted and she knew it was from the flash of her golden earrings catching the sunlight just perfectly and reflecting it into his tender eyes.

But even without smoke, or earrings, she knew a smile or a bit of sway or a flirty glance could melt any man - or boy -- against whom she chose to wield it.

She knew she was beautiful, damn beautiful, had known it for years, savored the knowledge, took secret pride in the heads that turned as she walked, in her smooth, still girlish complexion and her firm breasts, tight hips and long legs, that regular exercise and a lot of lunchtime salads kept in check.

"Dont cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" Her theme song, absolutely. She could have any man she wanted, and so, generally, they bored her.

Smoking was the sole vice in her regimen - that, and the pleasure of spending her money on spas, pedicures and other pleasures while people went hungry in the world.

She saw the boy shiver out of the corner of her eye. She looked at him and smiled, a devil's smile. He looked away, trembling.

She dropped her cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, twisting her sandaled foot sensuously like a ballet dancer. She knew exactly what he would do: wait until she left and then scoop the wicked thing up and take it home - too young to know what to do with it, just adoring the crushed-out, pungent bit of trash and not knowing why until years had passed.

Socrates wasn't the only person who could corrupt the young and her methods were much more fun. Forever burned into the boy's young mind now was the association of smoking with a gorgeous woman.

The fresh nicotine was buzzing in her brain, the itch of her cigarette addiction soothed for the moment. She snapped her fingers, wiggled her hips and sashayed back into the mall, feeling good, feeling wicked, feeling like a diva, saving her last, long-held drag for a nice exhale halfway inside - the sort of thing that drove the antis berserk.