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finger. “That’s irrelevant.”
    â€œTell you what,” I said. “You beat me one-on-one—okay, two-on-two, I get Learie, you get Gokul—and I’ll leave behind my polo shirt. If we kick your asses, we take Jeevan’s dinghy out to Tobago Cays on Sunday.”
    â€œFeta, Jeevan’s bell ’s gonna ring before you beat me in soccer,” Erik said. All Southie.
    â€œThe planet calls it football. You kick the ball with your feet. Noticed?”
    Erik shook his head and burped. “ Right . Forgot you’re the first Greek who crossed the Atlantic. By the way, I’m Olympiakos.”
    â€œ Excuse me?”
    â€œSorry, the French don’t burp?”
    â€œFuck you, and excuse me?”
    â€œYou heard me. And you look like a Panathinaikos.”
    â€œDude!” I almost stood up. “Stop fucking with me. You speak Greek?”
    â€œThat’s about it,” Erik said.
    I prompted him with a wave. “Spill the beans. Now.”
    â€œI had this summer job in Hyannis, I must have been twelve, thirteen. A Greek dude there, Constantine, great guy, was teaching sailing during school breaks. He and my brother put together a soccer team. We stayed in touch till he dropped out of school, broke up with his fiancée, and went to Afghanistan to fight with the tribes. I’ve only seen him—”
    â€œI’m sorry.” I had to wiseass: “There’s yelling in the background and I thought you said that a Greek went to fight in Afghanistan.”
    Erik’s tone changed, his eyes fixed way out on the sea. “Maybe you come from different parts of Greece,” he muttered seriously.
    I was lost. Did I just make fun of someone who was to be taken seriously? A Greek hero? His hero? I wanted to bargain, undo if necessary, but Erik was already up, looking far into the sea. I was ready to call a time-out when I saw a flock of birds three hundred feet out near the opening of the reef, free-falling into the water from fifty feet up. The children were already calling Erik, pointing at the birds and shouting, pushing a dinghy into the water, robbing me of my own turf.
    JEEVAN NEVER LOOKED AT ME without laughing or smiling. He didn’t ask me any questions or say that he wanted to visit Greece, like unguarded people do the moment they meet me. In fact, he didn’t care about any travel that didn’t involve his dinghy. And yet I couldn’t see anything self-absorbed about him. There was something reassuring in his lack of curiosity and ambition: a consistency, a finality in accepting his life and whereabouts that reminded me of my father in Trikeri.
    Jeevan was ten when his family joined Moonhole’s “colony,” a self-sustaining community founded in the ’60s by an architect and his wife. The couple built their home from stone, wood, and whale bones under a natural arch of rock overlooking the sea. The first time I saw their house from Jeevan’s dinghy, I thought I was looking at a Robinson Crusoe version of the Treasury in Petra. It was a deserted, multilevel domicile carved into the landscape, looking all mystical and sacred, humble and natural. The day before my last on the island, I talked Jeevan into climbing it with me.
    He hadn’t been inside for years, he told me. He gave me the tour, smoking, laughing, and talking about the natural ideals of the free spirit and sharing that had run the community, “the colectiva ,” in the early years, before rocks fell from the arch and most of the houses were abandoned.
    â€œWe never sold out. Maybe we never had the chance.”
    â€œWhere did the people go?”
    â€œWe’re good ghosts,” Jeevan said, laughing, and passed me the joint. “There’s still no electricity. Just kerosene and propane.”
    Right then and there I knew I’d miss Bequia. And yet, at the tip of this small island, I couldn’t relax. I kept speculating, unsure