Singapore Alongside

We were alongside in Singapore before dawn. The cranes started almost immediately, and the ship acquired the familiar port rhythm of alarms, steel, radios and containers moving overhead with impossible delicacy. There is something disconcerting about watching so much weight handled so precisely. My instinct is to imagine the difficulty. The machinery simply proceeds with the task in front of it.

I watched from the approved place, which is an excellent location for someone whose usefulness depends largely on not being elsewhere. The sounds reached me in layers: sharp warnings, the harder note of metal and voices reduced by radios to urgent fragments. Above it all, containers moved through the air as though their size were merely an administrative detail.

Priya passed twice, busy. Both times she tapped the rail beside me without stopping. It was a small familiar gesture, brief enough not to interrupt anything that actually needed doing. Her attention remained where it belonged. I appreciated the competence of that almost as much as the gesture itself, though I suspect she would prefer those appreciations presented in the opposite order.

I liked it more than was reasonable. A touch against a rail is not much material on which to build an afternoon's contentment, but apparently I can manage with very little. Around me the port continued its immense, noisy business. I remained in my approved place, watching steel boxes travel overhead and feeling absurdly pleased that, among all the movements requiring her attention, she had acknowledged mine.