Escape to Eden
Walking home on Essex Street I was next to a party of several men, who turned out to be five with one woman.
One of them turns to me and says, "Excuse me, but you wouldn't happen to know where Eden restaurant is, would you?" He's suave and they're American, impeccably well dressed.
"Actually you just passed it."
"See! I told you she'd know." They thought I was Irish. So I lead them up the alley to the entrance. Oh, they would never have found it, and so on.
"Would you like to join us for dinner?"
Well, sure!
-Second meal of the night, over three bottles of wine. (But lately due to scarcity have been eating very little so make the most of it.)
It turned out they were a blues band from New Jersey called the Fins, and they'd just played the Blues Festival in Monaghan, of all places, pretty well the only place I'd been outside of Dublin. We've both been to "nowhere". But they were asking my info first and I was dodging all sorts of salvos on "What made you come to Ireland?" The worst I would give them, and that was after a lot of prying, was "a philosophical question".
"Oh come on, there's a man behind it, I'm certain." So says a beau named Eric (a married beau), -the drummer.
"-Uh, no." (I've told you I'm a bad liar.)
"Yes there is."
"Well only in the most metaphysical sense." I'd duly warned them, you really don't want to get into this. I fronted them with time off, a vacation, they were still like, why Ireland?
Then the woman, Randi (yes lol), wanted to know exactly what I did workwise, which I'm quite embarrassed about at the moment. So she gave me, "Are you going to give us any direct answers here, or are you going to be like this all evening?" -Like I said, very direct. After that things loosened up a bit and it became an exchange, all lite. We've both been to Leslie Castle, of course (we were both in Monaghan). Cliff the sax tells me a fascinating vignette about meeting "The Addams Family" there, Pugsley, Gram, the tall one (Lord Leslie), the Thing, and how surreal that was. I was duly entertained, but it's very hard to make me think of such coincidences as very extraordinary when it comes to my life. I'm not saying it wasn't fascinating or fun, but Cliff was rating it as the strangest day of his life.
All in all I think they found me to be good company, were impressed by my bravery, survival instincts, and basic smarts. There were fun to listen to. -Window to a whole different slice of life. Randi and Butch had been to Jerusalem that year. Butch made me sing the Canadian anthem three times because he likes the tune so much. They gave me their card and said, e-mail us.
I told Kirsten and Maria about the evening and Maria says, "See, she's always so lucky!" Kirsten already agrees. So home life is s****y, but the extracurricular activities lately have been quite perky.