Finding Luck in London

“So, you’re a writer?” asks the tie-and-shirt from Connecticut. I’m surprised by his American accent and I look up from my journal. He sits across the long wooden table at Wagamama. I smile: “Amateur.”

There’s a little conversation as we eat our bowls of ramen noodle soup. He has a house in Connecticut, another in Massachusetts, and a mother in Boca Raton. With such extensive time spent in the “London office,” he must be in finance. I skim over what I do, why I’m in London.

He finishes his soup and pays his bill, slipping on his suit jacket and picking up his umbrella (a good, sturdy one with a curved wooden handle). He wishes me good luck. It’s funny – For the first time in a long time, I feel like I don’t need it.

I’m still a little woozy from jet lag and a week spent in bed with the flu, so maybe I’m not thinking clearly. But, as the restaurant closes up around me, I continue to write, sitting at this long, wooden table by myself, in Wagamama, in the basement of Harvey Nichols, in Knightsbridge choked with tourists at all hours, in the midst of a ridiculously fantastic and buzzing metropolis – and it’s peaceful.