🌙 The Last Table at Closing Time

A small tale of friendship, told beneath a newborn moon.

Last night, under the Waxing Crescent Moon … that thin new sliver of light hanging to the north like a quiet promise … Kathi and I sat with Lyn and Neil at the restaurant until closing time. After all the years swallowed by COVID and the slow drift of life, it felt like the moon itself had come to witness our reunion, a soft lantern in the sky watching over old friends finding their way back to one another.

We stayed there, the four of us, tucked into the last warm corner of the place. The staff gave us that gentle, teasing look … the kind that says, we adore y’all, but I’ve been slinging hash all day and my bones are tired… The thought made me laugh. There’s a sweetness in being the last table, the one they don’t quite want to chase out because the laughter is too warm to extinguish.

Neil sat across from me with that unmistakable Ringo Starr vibe … the London accent, the easy grin, the soft mischief in his eyes. He’s got that look, that energy, like someone who’s lived close to stardust but never let it turn him brittle.

He started walking down memory lane, telling stories from his early days in London salons. He talked about Liz Taylor and Brigitte Bardot … not like distant legends, but like real women whose hair he’d once held in his hands, whose laughter he’d heard echo off the mirrors. Bardot especially… he spoke her name with a softness, almost reverent. You could tell he adored her. Neil wasn’t just brushing shoulders with stars … he was right there at the moment when these young women were becoming icons.

And then he told the story about Joan Collins — back when she was still practically a teenager, not yet the force of nature she’d become. He didn’t recognize her when she sat down in his chair. He was shampooing her hair, chatting away, and when she asked if he knew who she was, he said no. She slumped down in the chair, gave this little pout … a tiny storm cloud forming. Listening to him tell it, I could see the beginnings of Alexis Carrington right there in that moment, years before Dynasty ever existed.

We all laughed, the kind of laughter that rises like warm smoke. It felt good … familiar, rooted, like something we’d been missing without knowing it.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I thought about how we met Lyn and Neil in the first place … back when Kendall, our youngest daughter, and their son, Ethan were little, running around the Red School’s riding stables with goats and dusty ponies and all those gentle critters that make childhood feel safe. A tiny private school with a big heart, the kind of place where kids who needed a smaller world could breathe. That’s where our families braided together, quietly, like roots under soft soil.

By the time we finally stepped out into the warm Houston night, the restaurant lights were dim, the chairs were stacked, and the staff was ready to lock the doors. And I carried something with me … a little piece of London, a little piece of Red School, a little piece of the past… tucked right there in my pocket… and Kathi’s leftovers in a cardboard box, because even a poetic night needs practical cargo.

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Be kind, much Luv, xo