Some things every man knows. Like if she has highlights, she will be high-maintenance. Some things not every man knows. Like how Miss high-maintenance will rock your world.
I was sitting with the first of these facts as she walked by on the promenade below. The Elvis Bar's elevated porch gave me the angle, the afternoon light did the rest. I watched her until she didn't need watching anymore. Then arrived at the second fact on my own.
The bar was a tourist trap wearing sincerity like a costume. Elvis on every wall — young Elvis, fat Elvis, velvet Elvis, Elvis with a guitar he probably never played. The clientele was what it always was: Germans and Scandinavians who had found Sarandë on a list on the internet, a couple of Brits who'd found it before the list existed and couldn't decide whether to be smug or alarmed, two Albanian guys in the corner on their third coffee.
I hated it here. I'd agreed to meet Vitok here because Vitok had suggested it and I hadn't had a better idea and the cilantro situation was becoming untenable.
Vitok arrived at exactly the time he said he would, which I noted and filed. He was twenty-six or twenty-eight or thirty — hard to say, they all looked like this — slim and dark with the angular posture of a generation that grew up after the banks stole everything, and just as the phones arrived. Jacket despite the heat. Phone in hand, of course.
He sat. Ordered an espresso with the ease of someone who knew exactly what he wanted and expected to get it.
"The cilantro," I said.
"Rruga Centril, up the promenade," Vitok said. "My cousin's wife. She grows."
I nodded. "How much."
Vitok named a price that was either reasonable or a tourist premium and I decided it didn't matter.
"Good," I said.
Vitok drank his espresso in two sips, set the cup down, looked at me with the frank assessment of someone who had done this before and knew when the actual conversation was about to start.
"I can find," Vitok said, "anything that grows."
I looked at him.
"Anything," Vitok said again, quieter, setting his phone face down on the table.
"Wednesday's good," I said.
Vitok nodded, picked up his phone, stood. I paid for both coffees. We shook hands with the efficiency of men who understood each other without requiring confirmation of it.
Vitok left. Elvis watched him go.
I stayed a moment longer than necessary. The Germans were deciding about something. One of the Brits was explaining Sarandë to the other Brit in the way people explain places they arrived at first. The Albanian guys had moved on, replaced by an Aussie expat who just might order vegemite.
I sauntered into the afternoon light.
The promenade was palm and cedar, bricks and stones. The Ionian Sea wore that blue it reserves for the slant of the midafternoon sun. Corfu sat across the Saranda Bay. Being Corfu.
I was thinking about tacos. Specifically about whether the cilantro situation being resolved meant the avocado situation could be handled next, and whether Vitok's network extended to reliable stone fruit. And whether a man living in a village on the flip side of an Albanian mountain had any reason to make tacos at all.
When I walked directly into the highlights situation.
She was just there. Moving in the same direction at a slightly different speed. I had forgotten about her completely — Vitok and anything that grows and Wednesday and the espresso had pushed her entirely from my mind — and now here she was, same airspace, unhurried, the highlights catching the midafternoon light in the way highlights were engineered to do.
I reached for my phone. Opened the map. Looked at it. The map confirmed what I already knew, which was where I was, which was on the promenade in Sarandë, which I pretty well knew.
I put the phone away.
She continued at her own pace. I continued at mine. The promenade was wide enough that none of this required acknowledgment from either party and received none.
I turned into the market.
The market was small and knew its regulars. I was becoming a regular in the way foreigners become regulars — recognized, accommodated, lightly known. The girl behind the counter had highlights. Also a nose ring and a small silver thing through her left eyebrow and tattoos on her forearms that appeared to be botanical.
Highlights. Metal. Tatts.
The personal taxonomy came back empty.
I bought water and some strawberries. The girl said something in Albanian that was either thank you or come again or both and I said faleminderit with my approximate accent and she smiled at it the way Albanians smile at my approximate accent. Patiently. No mockery.
I felt marginally better than I had going in.
The professional beggar was in his spot near the end of the promenade where the tourists thinned and local life began. Older man. Noteworthy posture. The dignity of someone who had managed a difficult situation and maintained standards within it. He and I had an arrangement that had developed over several weeks without discussion — acknowledgment, a small denomination changes hands, no ceremony or sustained eye contact. Both parties found this satisfactory.
The cilantro exchange happened in a doorway near the edge of the market district. A woman who was not Vitok's cousin handed me a bag of cilantro in good condition and named a figure that matched what Vitok had said. I paid. She disappeared back inside. The whole thing took less time than ordering at the Elvis bar.
I stood in the street with my cilantro and my water and my berries and the afternoon behind me and the hill in front.
The walk up from Sarandë to my place in Gjashtë is twenty minutes on a good day. Today somewhere between. The hill didn't distinguish. The town thinned behind me. The streets narrowed and the stone walls rose on both sides and the mountain came forward the way mountains do when you stop moving away from them.
I came through the gate past the roses.
The garden was quiet. Ori had finished for the day. I went upstairs. Put the cilantro in the refrigerator. Made coffee. Stood at the window. The lemon tree said nothing. That was fine.