“Fuck!” I cry.

I remove the glass, hobble the remaining distance, and flop down alongside Reggie. Bleeding into the sand, I can’t help but make note once again of Jørgen’s natural gifts: the hulking Nordic trunk and thighs, the golden coruscation of hairs on his chest and forearms. Even more impressive than his irrefutable physicality is the way he seems to move without thought. What a contrast he makes to Reginald, who can only watch sweating from the shore, unsure of what to do with his arms. I hate Reginald when I look at him, so I try not to look at him. I recognize myself even more than usual today as one of his ilk. Like me, I can tell, he has a voice in his head that questions every action, except that, unlike his regular voice, the voice in his head doesn’t have a stutter. He’s a pair of eyes without a body, except that he has a body. Are the Jørgens of the world made from such superior stock than us? Do they make sense of consciousness in sentences? Or is their existence always one of uncomplicated ease and purpose?

“Look at that proud torso!” I say. “You and I, Reg, we weren’t built for love.”

“The p-p-problem with being a man is that you’re not supposed to need anyone,” he says. “But we do.”

Maddy doesn’t appear entirely human as she stands up to her crotch in the Mediterranean. Jørgen catalyzes all the feminine glory of her into being. I could see a woman falling in love with him not only for himself, but for the woman she turns into when she’s with him. When she re-ties that godforsaken bikini top for the thousandth time, Jørgen sneaks up and bites her on the back of the neck. This is no longer merely play, this is foreplay. They might as well fornicate right in front of us. I join them in the water.

“I see why you didn’t want me to stay last night,” I say.

“Stop stalking me,” Maddy whispers in my ear. I feel the hot burst of each consonant break against my cheek. I’ll be feeling her breath on me for the rest of the day. Let no one say that language isn’t made of matter.

“Don’t forget that you’re the one who followed me to Çirali,” I say.

“You’re acting like a spoiled brat,” she says. “You need to learn how to share.”

“No, I don’t,” I say. “I have nothing to share.”

I storm off and kick the surf to my favorite café, past the kayaks and skiffs chained up for the winter. When I arrive, the owner’s two dogs run out of the sea and greet me with sopping muzzles. She knows what I like here and brings me Turkish coffees and small plates of cold mezes without my having to ask. My foot hurts. I fail at more novel sentences. I’m only capable of writing permutations of Maddy’s name. As the day goes on, the pen marks become pronounced and angry. I start ripping my handiwork to pieces. Paper curls up underneath my cup. It burrows into the sand like old cigarette butts. I imagine the masses of summer tourists turning over warm handfuls and finding discarded syllables of her: Mad, line, addy, del. The owner comes with my fifth coffee and sees the sad state of the journal.