A very special story

This is Katrina.

She's a piano player from Poland and really likes whiskey and Cokes.

The night started off innocently enough, with Bich just trying to find a place to grab a nightcap or two. We found an odd hotel bar/restaurant and popped in. Rich found an excellent beer, and I had my customary rose. (Eventually, he also drank the beer that I'd been carrying in my purse from the convenience store.) Rich takes a look around; there are only a few people in the bar, not many people on the streets. He says, "Hey, let's sit over here by them -- maybe we'll have an adventure."

That almost always means we will.

So we're conversing with each other and enjoying our beer and wine, everyone else is doing their own thing, the bartenders are chatting.

Rich catches Katrina's eye.

Rich turns that glint to Brooke.

She's sitting with an older man, and Rich comes up with all sorts of theories (sugar daddy, someone looking for a green card, whatever), and the man leaves. She stays and keeps drinking, and eventually says hello -- I can't even remember why we started talking, but we did -- and the three of us join tables, introduce ourselves and start having a grand old time chatting.

At the next table was a much older gentleman, drinking by himself. Katrina invited him over.

This is Tom, a very old local, with a penchant for Guinness.

This is the bar of the Bedford Hotel, a name Rich just looked up tonight. That's Rich buying Bill, who'd strangely returned, a beer.

As Katrina kept pounding her whiskey 'n' Cokes, she demanded we come hear her play at the restaurant where she performed, which was just across the street. Turns out, Bill was her fellow piano player there. So we ended up in this odd Italian restaurant, where the two played a few songs --

-- Bill played some Billy Joel for the silly Americans, and played Walking in Memphis --

and Katrina kept drinking. While she was a beautiful piano player, her skills, um, deteriorated the more she drank.

Eventually, Bill had to get home, but not before Katrina headed off to the restroom and disappeared long enough that the men sent me after her. Sure enough, she's getting to see everything she's had to drink so far for a second time in the evening, but she cleaned up and came back upstairs (with a little help from me). Bill eventually finished his beer and headed off. Katrina finished her drink (!!), and it was time for us to go. (I'd decided, without Rich's knowledge, that I was hungry and wanted to go here for an omelette. Or something. Plus, they were still serving alcohol.)

But Rich is the sort of soul who never lets a person find their way home when they can barely remember their name -- and that was the point Katrina had reached. Rich offered to let her crash in our hotel room (I gave him a dirty look), but she wanted to get home, so we tried to get a taxi. The first one drove off because we couldn't figure out where she lived. She couldn't figure out where she lived.

So we walked a block, found another one, and begged and pleaded with the driver -- "She's not going to vomit in my car, is she?" -- to let us in. I took her purse and tried to find something, anything that identified her, where she lived ...

Nothing. Cigarettes and receipts, lip gloss -- that's about it.

But she did have a cellphone, so the two of them somehow managed to get her boyfriend -- who was Iranian or Lebanese, couldn't really hear her too well -- on the phone and try to at least get us to their neighborhood.

And that's how we ended up in Clerkenwell, walking up and down the wrong streets, turning back, helping Katrina stand/walk/light her cigarette/call her boyfriend/find her boyfriend/make coherent sentences. Eventually we come across a rather large apartment complex -- Rich called them "projects"* but it's so hard to tell when it's past midnight and you have no idea where you are in a foreign country -- and a man who is clearly Katrina's boyfriend, and he bemusedly took hold of his girlfriend, who had been in the hands of strangers for the past hour, and said his thanks. We all say our goodbyes -- sort of; Katrina still couldn't really remember where she was -- and walked off.

To where, we do not know.

But we pull out our guidebook, grab yet another set of bikes, and Rich somehow figures out what we need to do to get back to Bloomsbury.

At this point, I am cranky and snacky and in the middle of some neighborhood I really don't want to be in, yelling things like "All I wanted was a damn omelette" and "How in the world do we get ourselves in these situations?" (sprinkled with expletives, obviously; we are from New Jersey).

For emphasis.

And that was Boxing Day in London.

*My friend David tells me: "Council flats is the term you're looking for. Buildings owned by the city and rented out cheaply to those with not enough money." Sounds about right, considering it was two young immigrants. And he tells me he knows of a greasy spoon near Clerkenwell ... darn.