The grilled fish arrived whole on the plate, one eye still facing the ceiling. Jonas tilted it with his fork, studying the bones, and did not look up when he started talking.
I have been in Vila Nova de Milfontes a week longer than I planned. He flew down for three days with one canvas bag and a sunburn across his forehead. We sat at a plastic table outside a place near the river and he ordered two beers without asking what I wanted.
The table wobbled. One leg was shorter than the others. He fixed it with a folded napkin and then the conversation went where he wanted it to go.
He asked if I had thought more about selling the flat.
He said it the way you set down something fragile on a surface that might not hold. Slow. Each word placed. He has his reasons. The market is decent. The building needs work the agent keeps mentioning. The flat I own but never lived in sits empty between tenants more often than he thinks is sensible. He used the word “sensible” twice. I noticed.
The restaurant had no menu. The waiter listed fish in one sentence that ran all together. I caught the word for sea bass and pointed. Jonas pointed at the same thing. The kitchen was through a doorway with a curtain and the smell that came through was garlic and oil and the burning edge of a grill.
His fish came with potatoes and torn leaves. He separated them on the plate. He ate the leaves first, then the potatoes, then the fish. He has always eaten in that order. I have watched him do it at every meal I can remember.
A couple at the next table were folding a paper map. One kept pointing at a blue line on the crease. The other kept folding it back. The map tore. They both stopped. They looked at each other and laughed. The sound carried across the terrace and the waiter glanced over with a cloth on his shoulder.
Jonas ate olives one at a time. He had a list in his head. I could see him working through it. A name of someone who handles sales. A figure he had been given, round and clean, written on a napkin and pushed across the table. The percentage the agency takes. The crack in the bathroom tile that a tenant reported last year and I never followed up on.
The napkin stayed on the table when we left. Neither of us took it.
His voice stayed low, the way it goes when he thinks a conversation matters. The bread came with a dish of oil. I ate bread. He chewed the last olive. We let the silence fill with the sound of other people eating and the river moving behind the wall.
I said I would think about it.
He nodded. He paid the bill before I could reach for my phone. We walked back along the road that follows the water. The light was going grey at the edges. The air smelled of salt and something sweet from the flowers on the climbing plant along the fence. A dog was asleep under a bench near the path. It kept its head down when we passed. He said the sand here felt different, more coarse. I said yes. I had not noticed.
Three days is long enough to start noticing someone’s patterns. His cup went upside down on the counter after rinsing. The window stayed open at night. No book in his bag. He stood in the doorway of my room and looked at the ceiling and said nothing.
He left the next morning. His flight was early. I was still in bed when his message came through. He had checked in. The queue was short. He would call later.
He did not call.
The next evening I went back to the same place. The table was occupied. I sat inside near the kitchen door. The waiter recognised me and pointed at the fish. I ordered it. The eye was facing the wall this time.
I have been thinking about it for nine years. Not the selling. The thinking. The flat exists in a part of my head I do not visit on purpose. It pays for things. There is a folder on my phone with statements I open less often than I should. Jonas thinks in decisions. Clean ones, with beginnings and ends. I think in postponements. The crack in the tile is still there. The roof repair I keep meaning to ask someone about. I never have. He sent the contact name in a message. I read it. I did not reply.
I’ll be here a while longer.
