_15. Untitled

Our protagonist, clicking through a short Nabokov novel on his Kindle, not half as sophisticated as one might hope this activity might make one, considers shaving, as it has been several weeks and his chin-growths have begun to itch. He considers the woman from the boat ride two days earlier — Swiss, not French as he originally surmised — who are now doubtless camped on one of the half-dozen beaches sugaring the Eastern coast of this insignificant Greek island. In fact, not doubtless at all, because he saw their encampment yesterday when strolling to the farther shore. Several even napped on sleeping pads beneath hastily erected shelter, tent nylon stretched between two much put-upon trees beside a low stone wall at the edge of the sand; the cover protection from the only real threat on this rock in summer, the ever-loving sun. Our protagonist takes another spoonful of thickened, honeyed yogurt the Greeks eat for every meal and tries to shake the thought of those women from his mind, and while he’s at it the obstreperous heat on the last day of June, and goes back to flipping through Transparent Things, click click click.