3am In The Jazz Rock Cafe.

'You might think I'm stupid,' she said as she leapt from her chair to my lap. 'And I don't know how long you will be staying here... But do you have a girlfriend back in your country?'

My night started at 10pm in the square at the Jewish quarter, sitting with my Spanish hostel-mate while our Proust scholar friend was scouring the area for girls he had agreed to meet the night before. I turned to the Spaniard and innocently asked:

'See the girl over there with the red top and the red shoes? Is it just me, or has she been looking in my direction for a while?'

'I haven't been paying attention,' was his guarded response.

However, not two minutes later did she walk up to me and begin with Polish. 'I only speak English,' I humbly replied. She told me that she heard me speaking English to my friends, but swore she thought I had a Polish accent. She asked what I was doing - waiting for people I had never met. I asked what she and her friend were doing. They were going to the Jazz Rock Cafe, apparently, and would we all like to join them? My companions were not so keen, but then I didn't really know what they were doing. So what the hell, I thought. The Jazz Rock Cafe it is.

Her friend started chatting to the blonde Swede at the bar while we hit the dancefloor, first to Black Sabbath's Paranoid, then to Sepultura's Roots Bloody Roots and even Guano Apes' Open Your Eyes. Janis Joplin's Piece Of My Heart was her favourite song, and she was quite enthused to hear it. We sat and had another beer, and I talked to the Swede. Then we danced some more. She looked in my direction a few times, and I looked back innocently.

I know what you're thinking... was I really so naive? No, no, I wasn't. But I wanted to go to a real Polish place with real Polish people on a Sunday night, and didn't think there could be any harm in playing along. There were plenty of people there, after all.

Her dancing became closer; her conversation became more staggerred. Her friend wanted to leave, and after getting impatient walked up the stairs without us. I said nothing, but had previously offered to chaperone her to the bus stop, where I intended to leave her with perhaps only a slight taste of missed opportunity. Instead, she decided to take advantage of my empty lap.

'I didn't think it would get this far!' I exclaimed, 'but yes. I do have a girlfriend back home.'

Though I didn't, I could have added: And I'm really ecstatic about that, and though I was perhaps deceitful there is nothing I would do, here or anywhere, to jeapordise the ecstasy which awaits back at home.

Hurt, she jumped from my lap back into her chair. I said I was sorry if I had given her the wrong impression, but I was really just happy to be somewhere with real Polish people, and that until that moment it had been fine. She apologised as well, but added 'you should have told me about your girlfriend. At the beginning.'

Well, maybe I should have - but then would she have bothered taking me to the Jazz Rock Cafe? I rather think not.

She did forceably wrest my e-mail address from me, however. If anything comes of that, you'll all be the first to know.