Via Carota

"What brings you out tonight?” The young stranger struck up a conversation with me as she moved her plate, heaped with a tantalizing mix of fresh lettuces, across the marble bar to make room for my glass of champagne. I usually avoid conversation with strangers in restaurants, on airplanes, and anywhere else where I might unwittingly and mistakenly be seen as a captive audience.

I prefer solitude, or perhaps I just can't stand the risk of getting stuck talking to an idiot for an hour or eight. But this was 8:30 pm on a Thursday, in the third restaurant I'd tried, and I was miraculously and immediately seated - no, perched - on this corner of the bar, practically in the lap of this poor woman. It was this or a dollar slice.

I looked up, nervously. She smiled, nervously. “It's my birthday,” I said, and her big blue eyes lit up as I explained that everyone I know, including my partner, was out of town and I thought I deserved to celebrate myself anyway. She moved the salad plate back toward me. “Want some?"

And so began a most unexpected and lovely birthday dinner with Ashley, crisis PR specialist from Jersey City, who transformed a potentially sad evening into a remarkable one.

Later, after a postprandial glass of champagne, and filled to the brim with pasta and sardines and the kind spirit of this stranger, the time was right to depart. As I turned to leave she reached out and gave me a hug. I'd only just met this woman two hours earlier, and this sort of openness from strangers always sets me aback. But this I accepted, to my surprise, as the gift she clearly meant it to be.

She asked where I was headed. Marlton, I said. Martini. “Want company?” She flashed those blue eyes at me again. They were hopeful, but nervous, just like they were when she first said hello and turned two solo dinners into one. I smiled. This time I had to let her down. And I did, as gently as I could, thanking her for her generous company.

I knew I had to end this evening on my own. Or, rather, that I needed to end it with me. Meeting this stranger for a two-hour friendship was a reminder of the enormous richness of my life, the vast fortune of good will that I have inherited, as unearned as any family wealth passed through generations. And that richness includes me, my greatest companion, whose presence is and must always be enough.

With gratitude, and with a smile, I walked away from her and headed toward the Marlton.