Fold the Right Shirt

The first time Paula met Miro, he was throwing breadcrumbs to pigeons like a pensioner auditioning for sainthood. He wasn't a saint, not even close. He was barefoot, sunburned, and had a face that looked like it had been both kissed and punched by life.

She had just sat on the stone bench outside the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik, where the sea wind smelled of rosemary and tourists, and a cat was trying to unzip her backpack.

"Careful," Miro said, pointing at the feline thief, "that one took my last sandwich yesterday. Prosciutto and all. No shame."

Paula looked up, eyes shaded by sunglasses that cost more than her rent. "Are you warning me or bonding with me?"

Miro grinned. "Is there a difference?"

There wasn't, really. She laughed, and the cat ran off, tail twitching like a disappointed waiter.

Paula was 39, recently divorced, and feeling not so much lost as between. Between the career she no longer loved and the one she hadn't invented yet. Between cities, lovers, decades. Croatia had not been her plan; it had been an accident disguised as a deal on a flight and a good photo of a terrace in Cavtat.

Miro was 62, lived on a boat he didn't own, and sometimes borrowed fish from other fishermen. ("They owe me fish karma," he explained.) No one knew exactly what he did for a living. He called himself a "philosopher without a license."

"You're not really homeless," Paula said one evening over burek and Karlovačko.

"I'm selectively roofless," Miro corrected. "There's a difference. One is tragic. The other is romantic."

"And you're clearly the romantic."

"Only when the moon is drunk."

They began meeting at the same bench every other morning. Paula, notebook in hand, pretending to write. Miro, arms behind his head, stared at the sea as if it owed him an apology.

"What are you writing?" he asked once.

"Nothing that will save the world."

"Good. The world is allergic to salvation anyway."

Sometimes, they talked about serious things—time, regret, death, memory. Other times, they debated which sea creature would win in a duel. (Paula backed the octopus; Miro was loyal to the sea urchin. "Stealth and spikes," he argued. "You don't see them coming, and then—ouch.")

But mostly, they sat in the kind of silence that only comes when two people agree, without ever saying so, that there's nothing to prove anymore.

One afternoon, the air heavy with pre-storm static, Paula found Miro sitting alone, not feeding pigeons, not smiling, just staring into the grey mirror of the Adriatic.

"I had a dream," he said without turning. "My brother was on the boat again. We were both 18. He laughed and said the sea was warmer in dreams. I told him to shut up and row."

Paula sat beside him.

"You ever think the dead aren't really gone?" he asked. "Just hiding in the folds of time, waiting for us to fold too?"

She paused. "Sometimes. But I don't trust time. It folds the wrong shirts."

He chuckled softly.

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of a stubborn gull trying to argue with the wind.

"They would be back," Miro said suddenly. "Our dead. Our youth. Our good intentions. They all would be back if we were foolish enough to open the door."

"And are you?"

"Only on Tuesdays."

Paula didn't know what to do with that kind of grief, wrapped in humor and sealed with a wink. She had tried therapy, wine, even yoga. But she found that sadness in Croatia tasted saltier and lighter, like olives marinated in memory.

She invited Miro to dinner.

He showed up late, wearing a shirt that may have once been white. He brought a jar of olives and an out-of-tune mandolin.

"What are we celebrating?" he asked.

"The absurdity of still being alive," Paula said.

They ate grilled vegetables and drank red wine that stained their lips purple. Miro played a song about a seagull falling in love with a mop. Paula swore it was a metaphor. He swore it wasn't.

Later that evening, leaning over the terrace rail, they watched lightning blink over the sea.

"Do you believe in fate?" Paula asked.

"I believe in lunch. Fate is just lunch arriving late."

"You don't believe things happen for a reason?"

"Oh, I believe things happen. But reason? That's a story we tell ourselves to sleep at night."

"What's your story?"

"That I died once," he said, lighting a cigarette. "Not literally. But after the war, I wasn't the same man. My brother—he stayed young. I got old. Fast. Like milk in the sun."

She reached for his hand. He let her take it.

"And you?" he asked. "What did you lose?"

"Myself. Somewhere between a conference in Berlin and an IKEA bookshelf I never finished assembling."

He nodded. "Tragic. But less messy than war."

The next morning, Paula showed up with coffee and two warm pastries from a tiny bakery Miro claimed was run by witches.

"They'll put a spell on you," he warned, mouth full. "Next thing you know, you'll fall in love with a man who can't remember where he put his pants."

"Let me guess—you've lived that spell?"

"Paula," he said, "I am that spell."

They laughed so hard a passing couple stopped to stare.

They began exploring more of the coast together—tiny coves, hidden gardens, places Miro called "cracks in the map." He knew people everywhere: a woman who sold fig jam from her window, a goat named Đuro who hated umbrellas, a man who carved wooden spoons and sang opera.

"You're like the mayor of a town that doesn't exist," Paula said.

Miro bowed. "Welcome to the Republic of Forgetting. Population: selectively roofless dreamers."

And then, one day, Miro didn't show up.

She waited on the bench. Two hours. No call. No note.

She walked to the harbor. His boat—more a floating closet than a vessel—was gone.

The old woman selling jam shrugged. "Sometimes he leaves," she said. "For fish. For peace. For women."

Paula wasn't sure which bothered her most: the mystery or the idea that she might never see him again.

She went home and kicked the mandolin he'd left behind. It made a sad "ping" and broke a string.

Three days passed. The sea felt colder. Her coffee tasted like regret.

On the fourth day, she sat on the bench again. The cat returned, now fatter and more arrogant.

"He's gone, you know," she said aloud. "Probably charmed some Italian widow with his philosophy and bad jokes."

The cat meowed, unimpressed.

And then, a voice behind her:

"Of course, I charmed her. But she only had instant coffee. I fled."

Paula spun around. Miro stood there, seaweed in his hair, holding a bag of mussels.

"Where were you?"

He blinked. "I told you. Tuesdays are for letting the past find me. I was in Vis. Thinking. Swimming. Pretending I didn't miss this place."

"This place or me?"

He looked at her. "Yes."

They sat in silence for a while. Then Paula said, "You scared me. I thought maybe you were a ghost. Or a dream I hallucinated on this bench."

"I've been called worse."

"You should've left a note."

"I did. In my head. You didn't get it?"

She swatted his arm.

That night, they had mussels with garlic and parsley. Miro played a song on the mandolin, even more out of tune now. Paula sang along badly.

After dinner, they sat on the dock.

"I don't know what we are," Paula said.

"We're a sentence that doesn't end in a full stop."

"Or a comma?"

"More like ellipses..."

She leaned her head on his shoulder.

"I'll be leaving soon," she said softly.

He nodded. "The world is round. They would be back, those who are meant to."

"Even if it takes a while?"

"Especially then."

In the morning, they said goodbye on the same bench where they had met.

He kissed her forehead.

She whispered, "Take care of the cat."

"I'll try. But she's a boss."

As the bus pulled away, Paula looked back.

Miro raised his hand, a small wave.

And for the first time in a long while, she believed in something like hope—not the naive kind, but the stubborn, sunburned kind that grows between sea stones and broken mandolins.

Two years later, Paula returned to Dubrovnik, on purpose this time.

Same bench. Same cat. Now fatter.

She waited.

And then—barefoot, carrying a loaf of bread, wearing a shirt that may have once been white—

"Malo si kasnila," Miro said with a grin. "You're a little late."

She laughed. "I was waiting for the world to fold the right shirt."

They sat down, shoulder to shoulder, and fed the pigeons.

Because they would be back.

And they were.