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I am eighteen, riding on a train through Hungary. My travelling companion, Michael, is also eighteen. We both wear jean jackets with the cuffs soiled and rolled up; our faces are stubbled and dirty. Michael's face is round, like a pumpkin; mine's triangular. But that's neither here nor there.

We don't usually take trains. Michael prefers to spend his money, what little he's got, on Toblerones and nougat candy, forcing us to hitchhike, to stand on the side of the autostrasse in nowhere places with cars ripping by at a hundred and five.

But this time, at my insistence, we've taken the train. Don't ask me why we're going to Yugoslavia. People with backpacks do strange things. Before boarding, Michael bought a tin of sardines. Now he's trying to open it, prying away with his Swiss Army knife, the oil from inside oozing, squirting, dripping. He keeps licking his fingers.

That's when I see her.

She's headed up the aisle, a girl of no more than twenty-one, twenty-two, her hair long and blonde, but that's all right since she's obviously not American. Being eighteen and scruffy, I fall instantly in love with her, wherever she's from. I say to Mike, who's still struggling with his can and hasn't noticed the girl, "I'm going to the bathroom." Then I get up and follow in her direction.

She's in the space between cars, having a cigarette. The scenery goes by. Fields of cows and grass, mostly, a sky full of gray clouds. The wind tousles her hair. It's not exactly blonde. It's more the color of the goldenrods that grew at the end of our driveway where I caught the school bus, which was itself the color of goldenrod. I watch her smoke. She does it the European way, very pensively, seeming not to care that there is any other soul in the world. I watch her.

She watches me watching her. Not a dead-on stare, but a glance now and then that's part curiosity, part reprimand -- for what I'm not sure. Each glance lasts a bit longer than the last. Until finally, with a great exhalation, she's looking straight at me, a look so unambiguous I can scarcely keep myself from blushing. She takes a final, suggestive draw of her cigarette, sucking it down to the filter, then crushes it on the textured iron platform. She's looking impatient now. Whatever she wants from me, she's unwilling to wait much longer for it.

So I step into that space between the cars. And then I kiss her. The taste of cigarettes, normally a turn off, has the opposite effect. It tastes like experience, like worlds I'll never know. Her tongue wriggles like a trapped otter. She grabs my hand and directs it to her thigh. The train whistle blows; the wind pulls tears from our eyes, saliva from our mouths. I'm struggling with the material of her dress; there seem to be layers and layers of it, iron curtains of fabric. At last I feel her moisture; she gives a sigh. I've got my free hand on her jaw, the thumb and forefinger holding it as our tongues run circles around each other. I'm inside her then. It has taken no time, and lasts less. Within seconds I'm coming and she's pushing me off, commanding in her thick Germanic accent, "Oud! Oud!"

The whistle blows again. The train starts slowing down. I watch her shoulders tense as she readjusts her dress. She lights another cigarette. Her suitcase is on the floor. She looks down at it. I say to her, "Is this your stop?"

She looks at me. "Yah," she says. She might be Swiss, or Austrian. She is certainly unflustered. Her eyes are a faint, watery blue.

I lean forward and kiss her, a soft, fraternal kiss with my stubble grating the softness of her chin, a gesture she barely tolerates, a bored look spreading across her pale features. The train comes to an icy, squealing halt. She reaches for her bag and flounces down and away without looking back. I return to my seat, where Michael has succeeded in prying the lid halfway off the sardine can. He appears not to know anything, only sardines. The whole car stinks of sardines. I sit down across from him, sighing. There's no point telling him.

He wouldn't believe me, anyway.