“Oh, Jason,” she said, “that’s too far away. Who wants to think about that right now?”

“All right, don’t think about it now—keep it in your mind for later. But remember, I mean it.”

Just like her father, she thought, who also made his demands on her.

Their days in Agostini’s house took on a rhythm. They found the fisherman, they found the wine man, and they found the open-air market of the upper town. They bought heaps of fresh tomatoes and peeled them raw, sprinkled leaves of fresh basil over them, and then had them over fresh pasta that they bought from Zia Mariuccia. Or they went to Biagio’s, which was a combination deli-grocery-eating place with a sign that said A piedi o seduto, può mangiare in un minuto, and bought mountain prosciutto to have with fresh figs.

They went to the beach; they walked through the old streets; they hitched up to the mountain sanctuary of San Biagio, where an immense figure of Christ stretched his arms to encompass all the land and sea before him. Tina found the local hardware store and bought the clenched-hand knocker they had seen on all the doors in town.

“What are you going to do with that?” Jason asked.

“Save it for some future door,” she said.

“Who do you expect to knock at that door?”

“The highwayman!”

They were very close, by day and by night, in companionship and in love. When she was sulky or querulous, she was gloomy old Eeyore; when he was affable and charming, he was good old Bear.

“What shall we do today?” Tina might ask.

“Oh, nothing. It’s a nothing sort of day—let’s just go along, listening to all the things, and not bothering.”

“Well, that’s all right for you, Bear of little brain, but what I’d like right now is a book.”

“And you call me the reality-junkie! What you are is a book-addict,” Jason said. “Jacques Cousteau says that men who live most of their lives on the sea think more clearly, since they always have before them the clear cut of the horizon, one horizontal line of sea and sky. This is a good time for you to think, not read.”

“Oh, Bear, I read like I breathe. In college I used to go around quoting Logan Pearsall Smith: ‘They say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.’ This place is beautiful but it’s a backwater—I can’t find a book around and I’m sick of Italian gossip magazines.”

“The only place to live is a backwater. This reminds me in a lusher way of Cape Cod. That’s really home to me . . . and that’s a backwater, these days, despite the summer people and tourists. The great days of whaling and shipping are gone.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit here and think about that!”

“Think about us.”