It would have been easy for me to have ignored him, then, to have pretended to be too absorbed in my run to have heard him. But we'd passed each other on this road before, me running back up from Kobuleti's one main street, heading home, him walking with his fishing pole and tackle box down to the beach. It wasn't simply that it would've been rude; better to be known and accepted in the community, to belong, and thus turn the community itself into another layer of security.

So I slowed, then stopped, then turned back to face him, maybe twenty feet between us. He was watching me, head cocked to the side, the edges of a smile visible beneath his thick mustache.

“You're always going so fast,” he said. “Every time I see you. Sprinting.”

“Tail end of the run,” I explained. “Last push.”

He nodded, then used the fishing pole to gesture up the road, at the woods. “You and your wife, you're in the little house, right?”

I crossed the road closer to where he stood, nodding. It was easier than using words, and I was somewhat breathless, and it gave me a few more seconds to think things through. Alena took her run in the afternoon, preferring to leave it before dinner, and it was as likely as not that he'd seen her taking the same route I did.

He used the pole again, this time to gesture in the direction of his home. “We're in the Party house, the old Russian's place. Fucking Russians, we had to tear out half of everything just to make it into a home.”

“Yeah, we're always working on our place,” I said.

He nodded, commiserating with a lifetime commitment to home improvement, then set down his pole so it leaned against his side and offered me his hand. “Bakhar. Bakhar Lagidze.”

“David,” I lied. “David Mercer.”

We shook hands.

“American?”

“Canadian,” I lied, again. “You're local?”

“Born in Tbilisi. You speak our language very well.”

“My wife taught me.”