As I got out of my car in the early evening darkness in a prosaic non-descript shopping centre car park in an equally non-descript suburb (like every other such car park/parking lot in the entire world) and started walking to the entrance, a petite slim young lady, with black stocking-covered inviting legs and a beret-style hat, and a short, but modestly classy sexy pleated skirt, peeping beneath her warm winter jacket, was standing still, turned away from me and into herself lighting a cigarette. As she turned to start walking towards me, I saw that her face was intelligent and bespectacled and good-looking; she had the aspect of girl who wouldn’t smoke. The tip of her cigarette glowed orange as she drew on it, and as we instantaneously caught each other’s eye and passed quickly, not deliberately but just by chance with inches of distance to spare between us, I caught the most delicious whiff of her tobacco smoke and, suddenly, something precious that had been in her was now, ever so slightly, in me. It all took place in a matter of seconds and will remain in my memory (and my red pulsing blood in the nether regions) because, I think, of the magic dark romantic possibilities of the “encounter” and the way that my imagination can fill in all the details not fully observed.
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