Summer nights belong to people in the streets. Everyone is outdoors, massed against the stonescape. We reconceive the city as a collection of unit spaces that people occupy in a fixed order of succession. Park benches, café tables, the swinging seats on ferris wheels in the carnival lots. Pleasure is not diversion but urgent life, a social order perceived as temporary. People go to movies set up in vacant lots and eat in tavernas that are improvised according to topography. Chairs and tables appear on sidewalks, rooftops and patios, on stepped streets and in alleys, and amplified music comes gusting across the soft night. The cars are out, the motorcycles and scooters and jeeps, and there are arguments, radios playing, the sound of auto horns. Horns that chime, that beep, that squeal, that blast a fanfare, horns that play popular tunes. Young men on the summer hunt. Horns, tires, crackling exhausts. This noise is annunciatory, we feel. They are saying they are on the way, they are close, they are here.Only the men in their local cafes keep indoors, where the light is good and they can play pinochle and backgammon and read newspapers with enormous headlines, a noise of its own. They are always there behind the floor-to-ceiling windows, skeptics before the cadences of life, and in winter they will still be there, in place, wearing hats and coats indoors on the coldest nights, tossing cards through the dense smoke.People everywhere are absorbed in conversation. Seated under trees, under striped canopies in the squares, they bend together over food and drink, their voices darkly raveled in Oriental laments that flow from radios in basements and back kitchens. Conversation is life, language is the deepest being. We see the patterns repeat, the gestures drive the words. It is the sound and picture of humans communicating. It is talk as a definition of itself. Talk. Voices out of doorways and open windows, voices on the stuccoed-brick balconies, a driver taking both hands off the wheel to gesture as he speaks. Every conversation is a shared narrative, a thing that surges forward, too dense to allow space for the unspoken, the sterile. The talk is unconditional, the participants drawn in completely.This is a way of speaking that takes such pure joy in its own openness and ardor that we begin to feel these people are discussing language itself. What pleasure in the simplest greeting. It's as though one friend says to another, "How good it is to say 'How are you?' " The other replying, "When I answer 'I am well and how are you,' what I really mean is that I'm delighted to have a chance to say these familiar things-they bridge the lonely distances.”The seller of lottery tickets comes dragging along, his curious stave all blazoned with flapping papers, and he calls a word or two into the dimness, then walks some more.The motion is toward the sea, the roads lead to the sea, the cars come down as though to spawn among the warships and trawlers. In a taverna along the coast we were nine for dinner, lingering well past midnight over wine and fruit. The Kellers, David and Lindsay. The Bordens, Richard and Dorothy (Dick and Dot). Axton, James. A Greek named Eliades, black-bearded, deeply attentive. The Maitlands, Ann and Charles. A German doing business.For most of its duration the dinner progressed like any other.The Bordens told a story in alternating voices about having car trouble on a mountain road. They walked to a village and drew a picture of a car for a man sitting under a tree. Dick traveled a lot and drew pictures wherever he went. He was friendly, cheerful, prematurely bald and told the same stories repeatedly, using identical gestures and intonations. He was an engineer who spent most of his time in the Gulf. Dot was a mother of twin girls, talkative, cheerful, weight-conscious (they both were), an energetic shopper, ready to lead expeditions to American brand names. Dick and Dot were our comic book couple. Once their stories were told, they were content to make background noises, to laugh easily and pleasantly, rewarding us for the allowances we made."I'm good at faces, bad at names," she said to the Greek.I watched Lindsay talk with Charles Maitland. Other voices at my ear, an old man strumming a guitar near the wine casks. She was the youngest of us by a wide margin. Light hair worn long, light blue eyes, hands crossed on the table. A mood of calm, a sun-bather's marginal apartness. She had a broad face, conspicuously American, and of a type, the still hopeful outer suburbs, the face in the train window, unadorned, flushed by some outdoor task.Charles said something that made her laugh.This clear sound in the music and dense talk called up the voices of women passing below my terrace at night. How is it possible that one syllable of laughter, a spray in the dark, could tell me a woman was American? This sound is exact, minutely clear and telling, and I'd hear it rise through the cypresses across the street, Americans, walking, single file along the high wall, lost tourists, students, expatriates."Travel is a kind of fatalism," Charles was telling her. "At my age, I'm beginning to sense the menace ahead. I'm going to die soon, goes the refrain, so I'd better see the bloody sights. This is why I don't travel except on business.”"You've lived everywhere.”"Living is different. One doesn't gather up sights in quite the same way. There's no compiling of sights. I think it's when people get old they begin to compile. They not only visit pyramids, they try to build a pyramid out of the sights of the world.”"Travel as tomb-building," I said."He listens in. The worst kind of dinner companion. Chooses his moments." He made a fist around his cigarette. "Living is different, you see. We were saving the sights for our old age. But now the whole idea of travel begins to reek of death. I have nightmares about busloads of rotting corpses.”"Stop," she said."Guidebooks and sturdy shoes. I don't want to give in.”"But you're not old.”"My lungs are shot. More wine," he said."I wish I could see a merry twinkle in your eyes. Then I'd know you were kidding.”"My eyes are shot too.”Lindsay was in some ways the stabilizing center of our lives together, our lives as dinner companions, people forced by circumstance to get along. In a way, despite her age, it was logical.She was the one most recently removed from a fixed life. It said something about the world of corporate transients that we saw her as a force for equilibrium. No doubt she gave David the latitude he needed. She would enjoy his moments of dangerous fun and be uncritical of the corollary broodings.Second wives. I wondered if there was a sense in which they felt they'd been preparing for this all along. Waiting to put the gift to use, the knack for solving difficult men. And I wondered if some men tore through first marriages believing this was the only way to arrive at the settled peace that a younger woman held in her flawless hands, knowing he'd appear one day, a slurry of blood and axle grease. To women, these men must have the glamour of a wrecked Ferrari. I could see how David would be one of these. I envied him this reassuring woman, at the same time not forgetting how much I valued the depth of Kathryn's resolve, her rigorous choices and fixed beliefs. This is the natural state.The German, named Stahl, was talking to me about refrigeration systems. Below us a slack tide washed against the narrow beach. A waiter brought melon, whitish green with spotted yellow rind. These mass dinners had shifting patterns, directional changes of conversation, and I found myself involved in an intricate cross-cut talk with the German, to my right, on air cooling, and with David Keller and Dick Borden, at the other end and other side of the table, on famous movie cowboys and the names of their horses. David was going to Beirut the next day. Charles was going to Ankara. Ann was going to Nairobi to visit her sister. Stahl was going to Frankfurt. Dick was going to Muscat, Dubai and Riyadh.Two children ran through the room, the guitarist started singing. At the far edge of auditory range, through all the cross-talk, I heard Ann Maitland, in conversation with this man Eliades, switch briefly from English to Greek. A phrase or short sentence, that was all, and she probably had no motive except to clarify or emphasize a point. But it seemed an intimacy, the way her voice softly closed around this fragment, it seemed a contact of some private kind. How strange, that a few words in a foreign language (the local language, spoken at surrounding tables) could float through to me, suggesting the nature of a confidence, making the other dialogue seem so much random noise. Ann was probably a dozen years older than he was. Attractive, bantering, sometimes unsure of things, drawn taut, with a self-mocking imperial way about her and beautiful sorry eyes. Did I begrudge her a sentence in Greek? About Eliades I knew nothing, not even which one of us he was connected to, or in what way. He'd arrived late, making the customary remark about normal time and Greek time."Topper," Dick Borden said. "That was Hopalong Cassidy's horse.”David said, "Hopalong Cassidy? I'm talking about cowboys, man. Guys who got down there in the shit and the muck. Guys with broken-down rummy sidekicks.”"Hoppy had a sidekick. He chewed tobacky.”David got up to find the toilet, taking a handful of black grapes with him. I drew Charles into the colloquy with the German, deftly, and then went around the table to David's chair, sitting across from Ann and Eliades. He had bitten into a peach and was smelling the pit-streaked flesh. I think I smiled, recognizing my own mannerism. These peaches were a baffling delight, certain ones, producing the kind of sense pleasure that's so unexpectedly deep it seems to need another context. Ordinary things aren't supposed to be this gratifying. Nothing about the exterior of the peach tells you it will be so lush, moist and aromatic, juices running along your gums, or so subtly colored inside, a pink-veined golden bloom. I tried to discuss this with the faces across the table."But I think pleasure is not easy to repeat," Eliades said. "Tomorrow you will eat a peach from the same basket and be disappointed. Then you will wonder if you were mistaken. A peach, a cigarette. I enjoy one cigarette out of a thousand. Still I keep smoking. I think pleasure is in the moment more than in the thing. I keep smoking to find this moment. Maybe I will die trying.”Possibly it was his appearance that gave these remarks the importance of a world view. His wild beard covered most of his face. It started just below the eyes. He seemed to be bleeding this coarse black hair. His shoulders curved forward as he spoke and he rocked slightly at the front edge of the chair. He wore a tan suit and pastel tie, an outfit at odds with the large fierce head, the rough surface he carried.I tried to pursue the notion that some pleasures overflow the conditions attending them. Maybe I was a little drunk.Ann said, "Let's not have metaphysics this evening. I'm a plain girl from a mill town.”"There is always politics," Eliades said.He was looking at me with a humorous expression. I thought I read a tactful challenge there. If the subject was too delicate, he seemed to be saying, I might honorably go back to cowboys."A Greek word, of course. Politics.”"Do you know Greek?" he said."I'm having a hard time learning. I've felt at a constant disadvantage since my first day in this part of the world. I've felt stupid in fact. How is it so many people know three, four, five languages?”"That is politics too," he said, and his teeth showed yellowish in the mass of hair. "The politics of occupation, the politics of dispersal, the politics of resettlement, the politics of military bases.”Wind shook the bamboo canopy and blew paper napkins across the floor. Dick Borden, at the head of the table, to my left, talked across me to his wife, who was on my immediate right, about getting on home to relieve the sitter. Lindsay brushed past my chair. Someone joined the old guitarist in his song, a man, dark and serious, turning in his chair to face the musician."For a long time," Dot said to the German, "we didn't know our exact address. Postal code, district, we didn't know these things." She turned to Eliades. "And our telephone number wasn't the number on our telephone. We didn't know how to find out our real number. But I told you this, didn't I, at that thing at the Hilton?”The peach pit sat on Eliades' plate. He leaned forward to extend a cigarette from his pack of Old Navy. When I smiled no, he offered the pack down one side of the table, up the other. Ann was talking to Charles. Was this the point in the evening at which husbands and wives find each other again, suppressing yawns, making eye contact through the smoke? Time to go, time to resume our murky shapes. The public self is weary of its gleam."It is very interesting," Eliades was telling me, "how Americans learn geography and world history as their interests are damaged in one country after another. This is interesting.”Would I leap to my country's defense?"They learn comparative religion, economics of the Third World, the politics of oil, the politics of race and hunger.”"Politics again.”"Yes, always politics. There is no place to hide.”He was smiling politely.Ann said, "Do you need a ride, Andreas? We're about to leave, I think.”"I have my car, thank you.”Charles was trying to signal the waiter."I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. I will tell you. The whole world takes an interest in this curious way Americans educate themselves. TV. Look, this is Iran, this is Iraq. Let us pronounce the word correctly. E-ron. E-ronians. This is a Sunni, this is a Shi'ite. Very good. Next year we do the Philippine Islands, okay?”"You know American TV?”"Three years," he said. "All countries where the U.S. has strong interests stand in line to undergo a terrible crisis so that at last the Americans will see them. This is very touching.”"Beware," Ann said. "He is leading up to something.”"I know what he's leading up to. When he says two countries fight, I understand him to mean the Greeks and the Turks. He is leading up to poor little Greece and how we've abused her. Turkey, Cyprus, the CIA, U.S. military bases. He slipped in military bases a while back. I've been wary ever since.”His smile broadened, a little wolfish now."This is interesting, how a U.S. bank based in Athens can lend money to Turkey. I like this very much. Okay, they are the southeast flank and there are U.S. bases there and the Americans want to spy on the Russians, okay. Lift the embargo, give them enormous foreign aid. This is Washington. Then you also lend them enormous sums privately, if it is possible to call a bank the size of yours a private institution. You approve loans from your headquarters in the middle of Athens. But the documentation is done in New York and London. Why is this, because of sensitivity to the feelings of Greeks? No, it is because the Turks will be insulted if the agreements are signed on Greek soil. How much face could a Turk bring to such a meeting? This is considerate, I think. This is very understanding." His shoulders curved forward, head hanging over the table. "You structure the loan and when they can't pay the money, what happens? I will tell you. You have a meeting in Switzerland and you restructure. Athens gives to Ankara. I like this. This is interesting to me.”"Oh dear," Ann said. "I think you have the wrong man, Andreas. This is not David Keller. You want David. He's the banker.”"I am James. The risk analyst.”Eliades sat back in his chair, arms spread wide in a request for pardon. It wasn't much of an offense, the facts being what they were, but the small error had robbed his moral force of its effectiveness. A boy was clearing the table. Charles leaned my way to collect some money."Need a ride?" he said."Came with David.”"That doesn't answer my question.”"Where is the cowboy?”Eliades poured the last of the wine into my glass. His fingers were coppery with nicotine. For the first time all night he stopped his determined observing. Names, faces, strands of conversation. The old man sang alone, a cat walked the rail above the beach."What is a risk analyst?”"Politics," I said. "Very definitely.”"I am glad.”Dick and Dot offered to take the German to his hotel. Charles moved next to me while he waited for the change to come. The man who made change, the most important job in the country judging by the look of such men, sat at a desk full of papers, with a hand calculator and a metal box for money in front of him, and he wore a tie and jacket and knitted V-neck sweater, and had graying hair cropped close and shadowy jowls, and was wide, thick and despotic, the only stationary presence in that part of the room, where waiters and other family members moved back and forth.Eliades walked as far as the parking area with the departing people. I heard the Bordens laughing out there. The waiters wore tight white shirts with the edges of their short sleeves folded back. There were three of us at the table now."Not a bad evening," Ann said. "As these things go.”"What do you mean?”"Not a bad evening.”"How do these things go?" Charles said."They simply go.”"What, they shoot out toward infinity?”"I suppose they do in a sense. James would know.”"No French tonight to tell us how shifty the Lebanese are," he said. "No Lebanese to tell us how the Saudis pick their feet in business meetings. No one to say about Syrians from Aleppo, 'Count your fingers after you shake hands with them.'‘"No one from the Midlands selling smoke alarms.”"Yes, remember Ruddle.”"His name was Wood.”"The fellow with the bad eye. The eye that drifted.”"His name was Wood," she said."Why would I think Ruddle?”"You're tired, I suppose.”"What does fatigue have to do with the name Ruddle?”Charles coughed into the hand that was curled around his cigarette."What about you?" he asked her. "Tired?”"Not very. A little.”"When are you off?”"A seven o'clock flight actually.”"That's mad.”"Isn't it insane? I'll have to be out the door at five.”"But that's mad," he said without conviction."No matter. I sleep on planes.”"Yes, you do, don't you?”"What do you mean?" she said."By what?”"James heard. A note of accusation. Are people who sleep on planes less mentally alert? More in touch with our primitive nature perhaps? How easily we descend. Is this what you're saying?”"Christ, what energy.”There was a long moment in which we seemed to be listening to ourselves breathe. Ann toyed absently with the remaining utensils, a knife and spoon. Then she stopped."Does anyone know why we're sitting here?" she said."That gangster is counting out change.”As Eliades headed back, there was a stir at a far table, people talking in loud voices, laughing, someone getting up to point. Others looked over the rail. I watched Andreas walk over there and look down to the beach. He motioned us over.A woman came out of the sea, tawny hair clinging to her shoulders and face. It was Lindsay in her sea-jade summer dress, twisted slightly at the hips, sticking wet. Her laughter rang among our voices, clear as bell metal, precisely shaped. Using both hands she scooped hair from the sides of her face, head tilted back. Ten yards behind was David, bent over, retching in knee-deep water.Happy babble from the taverna.He emerged now, still in his blazer and Italian pants, his sleek black slip-ons, and Lindsay laughed again, watching him walk sopping in small circles, making those coarse noises. He moved heavily, like a plaster-cast man, arms held out from his body, legs well apart. A waiter aimed a light nearly straight down, helping Lindsay find her shoes, and she stopped laughing long enough to call efbaristó, merci, thank you, and the sound of her voice set her laughing again. She stepped into the shoes, her body glistening a little, beginning to tremble. David was standing nearly upright now, limbs still spread wide. Only his head was lowered, as though he'd decided to study the sandy-wet shoes for an explanation. He was coughing hoarsely and Lindsay turned to point him toward a stone path. People started returning to their tables.David called up, "The water's no good to drink.”"Oceans ordinarily aren't," Charles said."Well I'm just advising people.”"Did you swim or wade?" Ann said."We swam out to the float but there is no float.”"That's a different beach. You want the one just south of here.”"That's what Lindsay said.”We went back to the table as they started climbing the path through the trees. Charles got his change, he and Ann said goodnight. Eliades disappeared into the kitchen, coming back a moment later with four glasses of brandy clustered in his hands."The owner," he said. "Private stock.”I thought of Kathryn, who liked a fingerbreadth of Metaxa on raw nights, sitting up in bed to read and sip, her mouth warm with it, later, in the dark. Prophetic significance. All those northern nights lapped in snow, the world shocked white under Polaris, our hushed love smelling of Greek booze."Tell me, Andreas, what were you doing in the States?”"Refrigeration systems.”"Cheers," I said."Cheers.”Swallowing slowly."You're connected with the German fellow then.”"Yes, Stahl.”"And Stahl is here to do business with Dick Borden?”"No, with Hardeman.”"Who is Hardeman?”"He is the banker's friend. I thought your friend.”"David's friend.”"But he didn't come. We think his flight was delayed. A sandstorm in Cairo.”Lindsay stood ten feet away, shyly, as though we might send her from the room. She'd been wringing out the hem of her dress and the fabric was full of spiral twists. Andreas extended a glass and she came forward, followed by a boy with a mop."This is so nice. Thank you. Cheers.”"Where's David?" I said."He's in the men's room, freshening up.”This set her off again, laughing. She barely got the sentence out before her face went tight with glee. I put my jacket around her shoulders. She sat there rigid with laughter, her face looking synthetic, an object under measured stress."Freshening up," she said again, and sat there shivering, crying with laughter.In time she began to settle down, whispering her thanks for the brandy, drawing the jacket more closely around her, whispering her thanks for the jacket. A mood of soft withdrawal. She was too self-conscious to return the pampering smiles of people at other tables."I don't have to ask if you like to swim," Andreas said."I don't think what we did was really a swim. I don't know what to call it.”"A David Keller," I said."Right, it was a Keller. But I went willingly.”"Have you been to the islands?" he said."Only the one-day tour," she whispered. "I'm waiting for my curtains.”"That's a line she uses," I told Andreas. "No one knows what it means.”"We're still moving in really. This is all new to me. I'm only learning to count. The numbers are fun. Do you know the alphabet, James?”"Yes, and I can tie my own shoes.”"Andreas, is it absolutely necessary to know verbs? Must we know verbs?”"I think it will help," he said. "You seem to be very active.”Both men were singing again. The customer, a man with dark hair and a full mustache, was looking directly at the guitarist, who stood against the wine casks, one foot up on a chair, head slightly tilted toward his bent left hand. The song gathered force, a spirited lament. Its tone evoked inevitable things. Time was passing, love was fading, grief was deep and total. As with people in conversation, these men appeared to go beyond the soulful routine woe of the lyrics. Their subjects were memory and tragic narrative and men who put their voices to song. The dark man was intense, his eyes still fixed on the old musician, never wavering. He was charged with feeling. His eyes were bright with it. The song called up a luminous fervor and he seemed to rise slightly in the chair. The men were twenty feet apart, voices shading into each other. The guitarist looked up then, a spare figure with gray stubble, someone's second cousin, the man we see asleep at corner tables all through the islands. For the rest of the song they looked at each other, strangers, to something beyond. A blood recollection, a shared past. I didn't know.