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towns huddled like grazing goats around red stone churches. Twice they took wrong turns and had to double back to their junction. By late afternoon they reached the windswept coast town of Áyios Nikólaos, built around one of Crete’s two freshwater lakes and linked by canal to the Aegean.
    On a small public beach, Andrew dove into the brackish water. But his limbs felt too heavy to swim, so he got back out and lay on a long chair next to Karina, whose purple bathing suit set off thepale contours of her flesh and kept Andrew from concentrating on the scenery or sleeping. After only twenty-four hours, they had reached that stage of a relationship where talk is unnecessary. While she dozed under a shade umbrella, Andrew stared at her full lips and at the gentle dip and curve of her belly. He realized then that he wanted to make love to her and had wanted to all along.
    â€œLoneliness is an adventure,” he said, lying there with his eyes closed, the world a vermilion blur behind his eyelids. “Possibly the greatest adventure of all.”
    It was nearly dark. The sky had turned violet; the waves curled iridescently on the shore. They had driven another fifty kilometers, across the narrowest part of Crete to its opposite coast, to Ierápetra, with its greenhouses and pickling factories, then east along the coast road to Makrigialos, where, as the sun set, they found two rooms in a green wooden house set back from the beach. As the last drop of molten sun dissolved into the sea, they lay dripping like a pair of spent lovers, but (Andrew reflected) instead of making love to each other, they’d been making love to Crete and to the sea.
    Andrew asked, “Do you know who Ambrose Bierce was?”
    Karina shook her head.
    â€œAmbrose Bierce was an American journalist, a contemporary of Mark Twain, but even more cynical. One day he went to Mexico and was never heard from again. Some say he was kidnapped by Pancho Villa’s troops, but no one really knows. Anyway, Bierce wrote a book called
The Devil’s Dictionary
, in which he defines ‘alone’ as meaning ‘in bad company.’ That’s what loneliness is. Nolonger being able to enjoy being alone with yourself. When you’re lonely, the person you really want to be with is yourself.”
    â€œThat is an interesting theory. And how does one learn to do that?”
    Andrew shrugged. “Go for a walk, eat a nice meal by candlelight; romance yourself. Ask yourself, ‘What do I feel like doing today?’ It sounds strange, but why should it? Why should it be so strange to do with ourselves what we think nothing of doing with others? Why — for example — should I be more courteous to you, whom I barely know, than to myself, whom I’ll know for the rest of my life? It doesn’t make sense.”
    â€œYou’re right,” said Karina. “It doesn’t.”
    â€œThe fact is, most of us are our own worst enemies. Instead of being kind to ourselves, we go out of our way to be cruel, and that leads some to think of suicide.”
    Karina asked, “Do you ever think of suicide?”
    Surprised, Andrew nodded. “Sometimes I think it’s why I took this trip.” The surf hissed. “I guess I’ve thought about it at times in my life. Maybe a little too many times, lately.” He was going to leave it at that, but then he remembered their vow. “But for no reason in particular, which is the worst of all reasons, since you can’t get around it.” Now he’d said both too little and too much, and regretted it.
    â€œI, too, have thought of suicide,” said Karina. “I don’t know why. When I was four, my father was run out of town by the Mafia. They made him take his pants off and run through the village. Respectability is everything in Brazil. That is why we moved to Niterói.” She leaned up, drank her water. “Why do you think of