Diamonds on the Soles of His Shoes

And now, for something completely different. (Or, just when you thought I was all binge all the time...)

So Monday night I had to meet a flaky friend for a drink at the Mandarin Oriental, a hotel I will forever associate with Britney Spears (it used to be where she stayed in London and could still be – luckily I'm no longer up to date on such things) and hours spent at the bar waiting for the little pop tart, trying to pick out who at the bar was a hooker. Good times, I tell you.

Anyway. Flaky friend is predictably late, and so I sit at the bar, reading a book on the wives of Henry VIII and generally minding my own business. Yes, the bar is look-at-me gorgeous (beige-silk lined walls and handmade cocktail glasses) and the clientele usually eye-catching, but frankly, I can't actually see. I have an eye infection, cannot wear my contacts, and can't find my glasses.

Someone sends me a drink but of course I can't see him even when the bartender points him out. I raise my glass in his direction in the universal language of cheers and thanks, and return to my book. He comes over and sits next to me. Sigh. Queen Katherine Parr will have to wait.

Up close he's definitely at least in his 60s. Russian. A bit sweaty. I wonder if he thinks I'm a hooker, since Russian men tend to assume any woman alone at a bar is. I try to decide if being thought of as a hooker can in any way be construed as a compliment, and then remember some of the hookers I saw in Russia. Um, no way. Plus I don't have dyed blonde hair with appalling dark roots and dirty white stiletto boots.

We have a perfectly nice if awfully dull conversation, English spiked with Russian. I tell him about the random dialogues I had to memorize in Russian class ("What gender is the word 'studientka' – masculine, feminine, or neuter?" – I kid you not, I still remember them all) and about singing Rent on the Moscow metro with a friend, laughing hysterically, while all the commuters stared at us. He seems to think I am the most hilarious person he's ever met, and then tells me more than I ever wanted to know about all the expensive places he likes to eat in London, dripping the names like diamonds. I nod thoughtfully, sipping a glass of the £300-per-bottle vintage rose champagne he's insisted on buying me.

After an hour and a half, flaky friend texts to say she suddenly can't make it after all, and I'm becoming too uncomfortable and uneasy in the presence of the oligarch, who with each drink (rare for me, I don't try to keep pace) is becoming less Russian grandpa and more Russian bear. Or Russian sweaty old dude who suggests ever more expensive champagnes and retiring elsewhere to drink them. So I say I have gotten my bars mixed up and that I actually was supposed to meet my friend elsewhere and that she's waiting.

He says he'll be in London for a month and can he call me? He offers me his car and driver, which I decline, but it seems rude to refuse to give him my number. I figure I can always decline to meet up with him again should it come to that. I grab my book, dash out of the bar, and figure that's the end.

Yesterday afternoon my phone rings. It's a private number: A courier, saying he has a delivery for me but can I confirm my address? A shiver runs down my spine – too much time in war zones, I guess -- and I ask for a number I can call to verify that he is, indeed, a courier.

Said courier arrives with – by my best fashionista guess – luxury goods valued at more than £5,000. In the Russian style it is all Versace and Dior, logo-tastic and seriously ugly. Handbags and scarves and belts so bright and blingy I need sunglasses. (Luckily there is a pair, also Swarovski crystal-encrusted.)

With it is a note saying he wasn't sure what I'd like, but that he'd like to see me again.

I spend last night wondering how, exactly, one returns this sort of thing, because obviously I can't accept it. (I also think, somewhat ungratefully, about why there couldn't be, say, a nice tasteful and understated Hermes belt? Or perhaps a nice Smythson bag?) I'd have to ransom at scarf to pay for the return courier (the haul is way too much to carry, especially in its rather grand boxes), and there is the problem of what to say.

This morning I wake up to a text message from him saying he's had to go away unexpectedly on business but will be back in the springtime, and perhaps we can meet up then?