In Mostar every third man is called Toni, Matea used to say, so they were not very surprised when, in the same spring, each of them started seeing one. Alisa's Toni drove a tour bus on the Dubrovnik route and climbed Mount Velež on weekends. Matea's Antonio, as she stubbornly called him by his full name, was a guide on those same buses, listened to jazz and said he could not stand mountains. Both men worked shifts, which was why the four of them never managed to go out together, and the friends were left with evenings for just the two of them. They laughed about it over coffee. When the two of them meet, Alisa used to say, they can start an association.
They had been friends since the first day of high school, in that yellow gymnasium building on Spanish Square, where they shared a desk for four years, minus one and a half. In their junior year they did not speak for a year and a half because of Dario from the basketball team, who in the end went out with neither of them. They never talked about it. But every time a man appeared, both remembered those eighteen months, and each was a little more careful than she needed to be. Now they were thirty-two, Alisa worked as an architect at a firm near the Rondo, Matea taught piano at the music school, and they lived two streets from each other.
Alisa met Toni in March, at a café by the Crooked Bridge, when he spilled coffee on her sleeve and paid for a new one. In April he took her up Velež at five in the morning to watch the sun rise over Mostar. He had brand new hiking boots and blisters on both heels, but Alisa thought he had bought them just for her, and she was pleased. He had no Facebook, did not like having his picture taken, and never had time for her friends. He said he was shy. Alisa liked that, because her ex had been anything but shy.
Matea met Antonio in Blagaj, by the Buna, when he caught the keys that had fallen from the restaurant terrace at her feet. He told her about Chet Baker, lent her CDs in cases that still had the price stickers on them, and once, in the car, played her a whole album from beginning to end without saying a word. He did not like pictures either. Matea once took one of him anyway, secretly, by the Buna, as he laughed with a coffee in his hand, and she kept that photo as if she had stolen something valuable. She talked to Alisa about him for hours, and Alisa listened and thought that the two of them, for once, had been lucky at the same time.
At the end of July, after four months, they decided it was enough. They booked dinner for four, Saturday at eight, at the Two Mills restaurant, on the terrace above the Neretva. Each told her man. Alisa's Toni said he couldn't wait to meet the famous Matea. Matea's Antonio said he couldn't wait to meet the famous Alisa. They reserved a table by the railing, with a view of the Old Bridge, and Matea spent two days choosing a dress. Alisa made a list of topics not to be discussed at a first dinner together: politics, exes and Dario.
On Saturday both arrived early, as always, because neither wanted the other to wait. They ordered mineral water and watched the divers on the bridge. One of them stood on the parapet collecting money from tourists, and every five minutes Matea glanced at the door. The waiter brought four menus and left two empty chairs. At five past eight both phones buzzed at the same moment, briefly, like a single phone.
Matea read her message aloud, laughing, because she thought Antonio was running late and apologizing. "Babe, a shift to Dubrovnik came up, sorry, I'll make it up to you, I promis." Alisa was looking at her own phone and not laughing. Then she read hers. It was the same. The same word at the start, the same shift, the same winking smiley and the same mistake in the last word, a letter missing at the end. They laid the phones side by side on the white tablecloth, and for a long time neither said anything.
"Show me the picture," said Alisa. Matea opened the photo from the Buna. Alisa looked only once. She recognized the scar in the left eyebrow, which, he had told her, he got on Velež as a boy, and the blue jacket he wore even when it was not cold. "That's my Toni," she said. Matea stared at the screen as if the picture would change if she looked at it long enough. "That's my Antonio."
For a while they looked at each other across the table. Alisa felt the old feeling from junior year, like the smell of a classroom. "Did you know?" she asked, and regretted it at once. "How would I know?" said Matea, in a shaking voice. "You saw him on Velež. I only saw him by the Buna. I'm not that girl from junior year anymore. Neither are you." The waiter came over and asked whether they were still waiting for the gentlemen. "The gentleman," said Alisa. "Just one." The waiter apologized and left, without understanding why neither of them was laughing.
Matea was the first to laugh. "He doesn't even like jazz," she said. "His CDs were all new, with the price on." "Or Velež," said Alisa. "His boots were new. He had blisters as if his feet belonged to someone else." Then, on a napkin, they put together his week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Alisa. Tuesday and Thursday, Matea. Weekends, Dubrovnik. They sat over that napkin until they were worn out from laughing and from anger, and it became clear that he had invented two men, one for each of them, and that neither of them was him. "Junior year," Alisa said quietly. "I know," said Matea. "I'm not doing a year and a half again." "Neither am I."
They wrote the answer together, bent over Matea's phone, and then Alisa copied it onto hers, letter by letter. "No problem, babe. I'm out with my best friend tonight anyway." They counted aloud, three, two, one, and sent it in the same second, the way he had sent his. Then they blocked him, each watching the other's screen, to be sure.
They told the waiter to bring all four dinners. He brought two trout, japrak, stuffed peppers and, at the end, four tufahije, and watched two women in their best dresses eat for four and offer each other bites from their forks. Matea said it was the best dinner a man had ever canceled on her. They split the bill in half, as they always had since high school, when they used to split one burek between the two of them. They left a big tip, because, as Matea said, he had seen what happened too and had said nothing.
They walked home across the Old Bridge after midnight, when the divers had gone and the stone was still warm from the day. On Kujundžiluk the waiters were stacking chairs. Matea took off her sandals and carried them in her hand. Alisa hummed something that might have been jazz, if either of them had known how jazz goes. In the middle of the bridge Matea took Alisa by the arm, as in junior year, before Dario, and that is how they crossed to the other side.