I go swimming every day at a municipal pool near my house. On the days I go early, the only other person there is an elderly Polish man with whom I exchange polite greetings and then ignore for the rest of my swim.
This morning when I arrived at the pool he was standing just outside the entrance and engaged me in conversation - was I married, had I ever been married, where do I work, the kinds of nosy questions that I would only let someone of his age get away with. He told me his wife died about a year ago, and how most of his friends are ill or dead or have moved out of the neighborhood and how hard it is to be old in the city. We walked into the pool area and both began swimming. I finished before he did and as I was leaving he swam to the edge of his lane and asked me if I wanted to meet him for a martini one afternoon. And I said yes.