I've been to Ambrosia on Westfield twice, both times on Butler University's tab.

The food? Excellent. They make a mean Ravioli della Mamma. But I don't do food reviews. No, the reasons for my sporadic Ambrosia visits have more to do with Butler's Visiting Writers Series. I've had the opportunity to dine with two fantastic British writers that Butler brought to its campus: Nick Hornby and, most recently, Zadie Smith.

If you don't know Nick Hornby, you should, and when I tell you the movies High Fidelity and About A Boy were based on books he's written, a light bulb should click (and I'd tell you the books were better, which they were, but that would just be cliché for me to say, wouldn't it?).

The best part about having dinner at Ambrosia with some Butler English department people and Mr. Hornby? I got to smoke a cigarette with him! I brag about this to everyone, and think everyone should be jealous of my little smoking interlude with the writer. You should start smoking just so that you can have the opportunity to possibly share a smoke break with someone you admire on the off chance that you may run into them. We talked about books (inevitably). I tried hard to not let the conversation spill in that direction, but it couldn't be helped, and he told me to not let anyone - anyone - tell me what to read. And I beamed. Like an idiot. Like I'd climbed the mountain to find the all-knowing guru and was promptly given bits of wisdom I'd remember word for word.

All I could say was "Yeah, man." And then all I could think as I exhaled smoke, Mr. Hornby dragging on his Winston, was, 'Did I seriously say just.. Just "Yeah"? Not just "Yeah." But "Yeah. . . Man."? I'm a moron.'

So when I had the opportunity to meet Zadie Smith (she wrote White Teeth at the age of 24, and most recently came out with On Beauty) at Ambrosia and introduce her at Butler a week or so ago, I found that I could hardly speak to her at all, let alone feel like I was making myself out to be a moron in front of her. The woman is absolutely breath-taking - tall and slender with smooth, lightly-browned skin, gorgeous big brown eyes, wearing a head wrap and a fantastic black dress that I would've looked horrid in. She oozed sophistication and European intellectualism in an incredibly intimidating way. It isn't fair for people like her to exist: I felt like a kid, frumpy and fumbling and too American in all the wrong and bad ways. North Londoners do that to me, with their chic accents.

I hardly talked to Zadie at dinner, asking her about a book I thought she'd written, only for her to inform me it was going to be published but wasn't yet and, technically, it was a book that didn't exist. Well! Again. Aren't I the one looking like an idiot? I kept my mouth shut more up until I had her sign two books for me after her reading at Butler, and even then it was just giddy little fan chat about the introduction I'd done for her. She wrote little notes in my book about feeling old. I told her she wasn't that old.

Not that old?

As in "old," but not too much so?

Still a moron.

It's difficult to meet people you admire. Honestly. You worry so much about not sounding like an idiot that you unavoidably sound like one anyway. But I like to find the silver lining. At least I got to spend the evening with people I wish I could write like, right? At least I got to smoke that cigarette with Nick Hornby and have Zadie Smith write nice little personal things in my books. And I had some tasty bruschetta at Ambrosia with them, too! What more could one ask for out of an evening?