Dinner with Helen

MOSCOW - At the Mu Mu Restaurant on the Old Arbat, dinner time means making new friends. When you're dining solo, it means sharing a table with someone else. I chose the a table right by the door, which had a nice draft every 30 seconds or so when another patron came inside.

Seated at the table was a middle-aged woman, who greeted me in quick Russian. Then she pointed to her coat and said something else. I looked at her blankly, then said, "O.K."

She replied in broken English. "You understand me. You speak no Russian but you understand me?" She seem perplexed. I tried explaining that I had used context clues: the table, the coat, her empty cup, but she remained amazed.

When she returned, I asked her about the contents of my plate, which I ordered by looks: a heaping pile of buckwheat, a roast beet pancake and a heap of crimson blobs on top of spongy tofu-looking stuff.

I handed her the receipt, and she looked at my items and laughed.

"It's good. It's fish."

She said she was a promoter, and she handed me three business cards in Russian for a tattoo removal business. Did she like being a promoter?

"Anything that give me money. Promoter give me money, I like."

She went on. " I like village. City expensive."

Why did she leave; no jobs?

"Yes, you understand. You understand," and she smiled again.

Then the conversation took a strange turn.

"We've met several times before today, right?"

"No, today is the first time we've met."

As she left, gathering her two coats after a very long sip of hot water and lemon, I said, "My name is Jon. Good to meet with you."

"My name--" "My name--" She reaches back to English back, many years before. "My name is Helen. How do you say?"

"Good to meet you."

"Good to meet you," she smiled, and then walked out the door.