Friday night in style is gin and tonics upstairs and outside when the rain’s done. Nai said, “That gin and tonic tasted like 7-Up,” but that’ll teach him to try to get a stiff drink at a student bar. I toasted to complicated histories, which made the boy draw his glass back and say: “Only if Andy Lau has the last word.” But then the last word was in Chinese, which means I had to say, “The what-what?” The translation is, essentially: “Doesn’t matter sky long earth long, as long as got,” which is why we LUV Chinese people.

The 243 came rumbling down the street and the best seats in the house were waiting for us, front row, top deck. London through foggy post-rain windows, and the romance of the urban chromatoblur. We traipsed about in Shoreditch, roundabout a roundabout, looking for a birthday party, and no one seemed to have heard of our destination. Nai tells me there is a roundabout somewhere in the city that is in the shape of the number eight, and I can’t decide if it’s so crazy he must be dreaming, or if it’s so crazy it must be true. I want to drive it, in any case, with Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” on volume up.

On Old Street, kitty-corner from the guy peeing against a brick wall, number three-thirty-six.

“There’s the Resilience!” Nai said, finally, pointing, triumphant.

“It says ‘The Reliance’,” I said.

“Same thing lah!”

Inside, the crush, and warm enough to peel off the layers—the vermilion jacket, the green cardigan—and stand by the giant French windows in a summer tank top and jeans. Kris and Ollie, Seung Yun and Andrea, Chrissy, and Emily, and Marc, whose birthday it wasn’t, not yet anyway, and it’s funny now to think that the only thing I was really concerned about before coming out here was that I wasn’t going to know anyone.

The thing is, life is fucking sweet. I have an invitation to Barcelona, a dinner date for Paris, a movie projector party—well, this one we can’t talk about, ’cause it might involve a little light-fingered action by a new employee. Sometime after midnight, I was perched on the banister, wordless against the wordless whirl, and it was as simple as a girl a little bit in love with a new city.