Tonight four of us left the office and tried to grab a cab to take us down to a restaurant my wife and I recently found in Tribeca, which is a neighborhood most of us rarely if ever go to. We looked across the street, saw one of my business partners also trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab, and thought it was funny that we were going to a restaurant in his neighborhood, and maybe we should jump in a cab with him and mess with his routine. He didn’t see us, and after a while, the four of us gave up and got on the subway.

We got to the restaurant 20 minutes late, and my wife was waiting in the bar at the back with a bunch of free seats. She got up to greet us, and a blond girl and her friend took the seats, which drove me crazy. So we stood and waited for our table.

While we waited, we saw that same partner walk into the restaurant with his wife and two kids, and went over and said hi and laughed that we had both come all the way across town to the same small restaurant. We left them at their table, walked back to the bar, and then I realized that the blond girl who had taken our seats was someone I’ve known since I was about five years old, and have seen maybe three or four times in the last twenty years. She was there celebrating with a friend who was getting married in two weeks in the small town where one of our dinner companions and I went to high school.

Finally, the waitress came over and said she would take us to our table. I waved at my partner as we went by, saying, “we’re off, see you later,” while the waitress looked confused, as it turned out she was seating us at the table right next to his.

Of course, the next table that opened up was next to ours, and there they sat my old friend.