The marina was not much. A handful of fishing boats, a couple of small pleasure craft that had seen better times, a concrete jetty with rust stains at the waterline. The Ionian beyond it that particular blue, that particular light, Corfu across the water being Greek. I had developed a habit of coming here in the late morning when the fish market had finished and the tourists hadn't yet arrived in numbers and the marina was mostly itself.
I was watching a pelican consider a rope when the couple arrived.
They were young — early twenties, Albanian, the boy with the confidence of a young man who knew that confidence is expected. The girl - good-looking in the way that good-looking girls in Sarandë are good-looking — dark hair, easy movement, aware of being looked at the way you're aware of the weather. They were affectionate. The boy's arm around her shoulders in the way that was also a placement. His hand at the small of her back. Her adjustments to him framed as tenderness.
I watched them, filed it. The tenderness was real. So was the other thing.
The pelican had made its decision about the rope and moved on.
I sat with it. The boy's hand on her backside— the placement, the ease of it. The girl leaning in the way that had been learned rather than chosen. Not unusual. The current running the way it always ran, the way it will run long after this particular couple moves down this particular promenade and becomes their particular life.
I thought about the women who had gotten close to me. Not one of them had waited for placement. They had moved first, every one of them, against whatever current was running. They had read something in me that I hadn't advertised. And yet decided, without consulting the current, that it was worth the forward motion.
I thought about Chartreuse, which led me further back than I intended.
Chartreuse is an extension of every woman who has ever gotten close to me.
I turned it over. Not a complaint. Not entirely a compliment. Just what it was. A fact about the architecture of my life. One that I had not looked at directly until a French expat said I am coming in a foreign market before I invited her.
They had always moved first. The ones who mattered.
Back past Chartreuse. Kelly reading the potential of a dude with a camera at a street show and walking toward it. Past the women in the burning years who had seen something in me that I couldn't quite see in myself. Who decided, without consulting me, that I was worth the trouble. Past Aimee the actress who told me something true about myself that I hadn't asked to hear. Past Miss Simmerly, my second grade teacher, who noticed me before I knew there was anything to notice.
Church women who showered attention on a small boy. Who said things and gave things that settled into me before I had language for what was being given.
Back to my mother. Who had no choice in the choosing and yet had chosen. Had decided, in whatever way mothers decide, that this little person was worth everything.
I had been chosen that far back.
I sat with it by the marina.
It was real. I had been worth choosing. Something in me — the observer, the man on the elevated porch, the burning man, whatever I was — had been legible to certain women across my entire life as worth the forward motion. Worth the first move. Worth committing before introductions.
That was the given. The careless part was harder to sit with.
When I had chosen — when I had exercised my own agency — I had chosen badly. Not wrong people. Wrong attention. The choosing had gone toward the next thing rather than toward the person already there. Toward the startup, the pitch, the next version of the dream. Away from what had already been given.
The women who chose me had swum against the current to get to me. I had repaid them by going with the current.
Being chosen without choosing back with the same quality of attention — that was its own kind of damage. Less cruelty or indifference than the carelessness of a man who received what was given and kept looking for the next thing.
Who wore the crown without knowing it was a crown. Who let Kelly calibrate herself to a smaller life than she deserved and called it stability. Who kept building the next thing while she held the now together.
The young couple moved down the promenade. I watched them go. Just watched. The Ionian kept its own counsel. Eventually I stood, put my hands in my pockets, and walked back up toward Gjashtë.
I came through the gate past the roses.
Ori was in the garden, crouched at the far end near the onion rows, doing something slow and precise with his hands. The lemon tree stood in the afternoon light.
At the base of it, a single lemon on the ground. Just dropped. I stopped. Picked it up.
Something arrived in me — not a voice, not words exactly, more the way understanding arrives when the body receives it before the mind catches up. Three words settling into my chest with the quiet authority of something that had been waiting for the right moment.
They chose well.
Not that I had deserved it. Not that I had honored it. Just that the women who had chosen me had seen correctly. What they chose was real.
I examined the lemon. Warm from the sunlight. Heavy the way real things are heavy.
From below, the lower door opened. Ori's wife of 50 plus years, Mon, appeared in the doorway, speaking to Ori in Greek. Her tone carried complete information, no translation needed— a woman making a point that should not have needed making. Ori answered without standing, his voice the timbre of a man who knows there is no victory here. Mon looked at him a moment longer than necessary. Went back inside.
The door closed. Ori remained crouched at the onion rows.
After a moment he looked up at me. He shrugged. Not elaborate or comical. The universal shrug — the one that crosses every language barrier and every culture, that has been exchanged between men since before anyone thought to write anything down.
The shrug that contains multitudes and requires not a word. I nodded. Ori went back to his onions. I went upstairs, lemon in hand.