Chances, changes

I met a lady the other day named Susan Wolff. She was well-dressed and lonely. I only noticed that because she was sitting alone at my bar and seemed to ask me plenty of questions, even as I was attempting to walk away. We eventually started talking about things off the menu: a book she was writing, the fact she was 47 and the mother of twins, her constant travel (she recently moved to Colorado from Spain), and that her sister is married to Jeff Bridges (Big Lebowski; the bald, bad guy in Iron Man). She spoke very softly, elegantly even, but something about her was off. She would pause in the middle of a sentence, while elaborating on a family story, or one of her travels, taking a moment to reconnect her mind with the path her mouth started on. All the while her eyes seemed to be vacant, staring past me into something I could not see.

We briefly talked about how she was married to a billionaire who divorced her and left her barely anything. Apparently she wrote a book who she gave to Jeff Bridges to review. It is called "All I Wanted Was a Haircut." I don't know if any of this is true. I don't know who this woman is, other than what she told me on that brief encounter. I sort of chuckle at myself thinking back on how I felt knowing someone had a connection to a movie star. How could I verify the truth of her story? I had no reason not to believe her. She left me a $20 tip on $44, even after debating with herself on how much money she wanted to spend on dinner that night. I smirked when she complained that she had no man to buy her a meal.

For a moment, when this woman was telling me about her life, I felt like I had stepped into a new world of possibilities. I have been entering work lately feeling very confined behind the rails of my bar. Her stories of travel and of writing made me feel warm. It made me feel lost.