The invitation arrives, as the best ones do, by hand. A single card. A time. An address that means nothing unless you already know it means everything.
The rooftop is a secret held by perhaps forty people in the city. The table is set for two. She arrives eleven minutes late — the correct interval — in a dark green silk that catches the candlelight the way still water catches a low moon.
Great companionship is the art of making an ordinary evening feel like the only evening.
We share a Sancerre, then a Barolo, then a small silence that neither of us feels compelled to fill. In the modern age, that silence is the rarest luxury of all.