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By Ann Gaylia O'Barr

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1
July, 1997
Hannah unfolded Jane’s e-mail for a final read before the plane landed in Larnaca. She paused on the last paragraph from her former college roommate.
I should tell you: I don’t intend for you to leave Cyprus without persuading you to ditch that job of yours. It’s too dull for somebody like you. You’ve had a couple of years for grieving; now it’s time to get on with your life.
I’m forewarned, thought Hannah and wondered how Jane’s bluntness meshed with her career as a U.S. diplomat. She felt for her sunglasses in the jumble of her purse and slipped them on, mesmerized by light bouncing off waves below.
The Olympic Airways plane flew like a winged Pegasus, Athens behind her now, along with her Mediterranean cruise ship. The Greek islands glistened under the plane’s body, white and green bits of land floating on a sea of topaz. She yearned to paint the scene. The creative impulse leaped out without warning.
Jane’s right, maybe. Do I want to go back and face that job at Appalachian Life, waste years in one of those little office cubicles? She traced squares on the plane’s window, like the cubicles or tombstones in a graveyard or neat rows of teeth in a skull.
She drew her hand away as though it burned.
Fear bound her to the job. The mind-numbing routine was a tourniquet around a wound. Untie it and her emotions would hemorrhage.
* * *
Jane chatted as they dragged Hannah’s suitcase to Jane’s little English car through the dry sunshine. “I’m taking tomorrow off. Lloyd and I are going to show you around Paphos.”
“Lloyd?”
“The new poloff here. Single. He just came a few weeks ago. We’ve started seeing each other.”
“What’s a poloff?”
“Political officer. He does political reporting, meets with Cypriot government officials and things like that. He’s not that great for looks, but he’s got such dry wit.”
She pushed out a hand that stopped Hannah from walking to the right side of the car. “Other side. They drive on the left here, you know. British influence.”
The car’s interior smelled of hot vinyl as Hannah crammed herself into the left side.
She cringed when Jane swerved into traffic, all going the wrong way. Jane laughed at her. “You get used to it after a while. So tell me about the cruise.”
Still watching the traffic, Hannah said, “The meals are unbelievable. Huge buffets, plus a sit-down dining room and a couple of snack bars by the pools. I’ve never seen so much food in all my life. They have live entertainment all the time, too. There’s a library with a full-time librarian. They even had an art auction.”
“Meet any guys?”
“One.”
When she paused, Jane glanced at her. “So tell me about him.”
“I spent a day with him in Rome. Had a pretty good time, seeing the Coliseum. Then he let slip that he was married. He and his wife always take separate vacations, he said. No wedding ring. I assumed he was single.”
Jane shook her head. “Sorry. Wasn’t what I was hoping for.”
“When he asked me to tour Athens with him, I turned him down, and did he get snippy. I was happy to take off for the three days with you.”
Hannah braced herself when Jane accelerated to pass. Dry wind whipped her face.
“Tell me about Lloyd. Is he a global nomad, too?” She used Jane’s phrase for herself when they first roomed together.
Jane seemed pleased. “You remember that? Yes, he’s a missionary kid like me. Grew up in Jordan, where his parents are doctors in a hospital. He speaks Arabic as a second language, and he’s teaching it to me.”
“Sounds serious.”
“No, really, I want to learn Arabic. I’d like to bid on some of the consular spots in the Arab countries. Cyprus is great for a first tour, but I wouldn’t want to stay here more than my two years. Too boring—the work, I mean.”
“How can work be boring in an embassy?”
“You’re like a lot of people, with this glamorous view of diplomats. A lot of what I do is routine, like notarizing documents for Americans who live here and taking their passport applications. Retired people, a lot of them. Most of our problems come from the tourists. They have accidents and run out of money and get busted for doing drugs.”
“That’s boring?”
“Not that part, I guess, but I’d like to work in some of the Middle Eastern posts with American mothers who’ve lost children to foreign fathers and can’t get them back.”
Hannah shook her head. She’d entered the pages of somebody else’s story. Nashville—southern, interstate-clogged Nashville, home of country music, genteel accents, and computer programming at the Appalachian Life Insurance Company—faded.
She said, “You always did plan a different kind of life.”
“So did you at one time. You were prepared to follow Vance to the ends of the earth.”
“That was then. I’m learning to accept what I’ve got now. It’s not such a bad life. The pay is good. I may move into my own apartment after I get back.” She shot a glance at Jane. “And I do date a little.”
“Glad to hear it, but your e-mails tell me you’re bored stiff.”
Hannah allowed a brief smile. “Life can bring you worse things than being bored.”
They had reached the outskirts of Nicosia. Jane’s sudden left turn into a roundabout startled her. So did pulling out of intersections the “wrong” way. Hannah closed her eyes, while Jane ribbed her about her timidity.
“You can look. We’re here.” They climbed out of the car into the parking lot of a low-rise apartment building.
“The place is small,” Jane said after they hauled up her luggage in the elevator, “but I love to sit on the balcony in the evening. We’ll eat out there.”
Over juicy tacos and a crisp salad, Jane said, “We’ll stay up tonight and catch up. Sleep late tomorrow. Lloyd’s got a friend from another post—Tunis, I think he said—stopping by to see him tomorrow morning. The friend wants to see the Turkish side of the island, and Lloyd’s going in to the embassy to set up the visit with the U.N. After that, he can take off and come with us.”
“The Turkish side?”
“Cyprus is divided between Greeks and Turks. They had a war back in the seventies, and the United Nations administers the land between them.”
“It seems such a peaceful place.”
After Jane brought out fruit and cookies, Hannah ate two pieces of melon, as sweet as the cookies. “You know what? This beats the cruise food.”
“I love the ripe fruit over here. The pastries are good, too. Although I usually stay away from baklava. Too much and the figure goes.”
She stared over the balcony. “Hannah, do you draw now?”
“Trust you to ask that question. I brought along a few things to sketch with, but I just dabble. Nothing serious.”
“Are you really planning to work for that insurance company the rest of your life?”
“I suppose you think I should try for the Foreign Service, too.”
“I can get you a book about it at the embassy. You could take the exam next time it’s given.”
“Just teasing. Do you realize this is the first time I’ve been out of the U.S.? My first time to have a passport.”
Jane grabbed the plates. “Let’s curl up in the living room and talk. I’ll fix us some tea. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into over here. Relaxes you before bed.”
Over the tea, she asked. “Everything goes back to Vance for you, doesn’t it?”
Hannah rested her cup on the coffee table. “It’s never over. Something stays stuck forever. I wish I’d been with him. To know whether he was terrified or sad or thought of me before he died.”
She clenched her hands and ran from her thoughts, forcing herself to listen to the muffled traffic that grumbled from the street. Two years had passed since Vance had pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose and said he would kiss every freckle when he came back from Haiti.
Jane put her cup beside Hannah’s. “Remember my telling you about Margaret? The Liberian woman who helped Mom take care of me when I was growing up there?”
“Sure. You had to leave her behind when Liberia fell apart, and you were evacuated.”
“Dad found out about her a few weeks ago. I didn’t write you about it. I just couldn’t put down in words what I felt. She took her family to church to hide when things got really chaotic, but a mob broke in and killed all of them.”
Hannah reached across the table and touched Jane’s arm. “I’m sorry. I know she was like one of the family for you.”
“It was our church, where Daddy preached. Think about it. Not even one child of hers left to live.” Jane swiped her eyes and looked up. “I struggled for a while with what the Bible says about all things working together for good to those of us called by God, like you have too, I guess. I’ve decided we don’t always know what good the things are working toward. The answer doesn’t come in a Christmas package, all wrapped and ready for us to open after a few days of guessing.”
“No, I guess not.” Hannah rubbed the edge of the coffee table like rubbing a fogged window to see more clearly the dark shapes on the other side.
* * *
Hannah thought at first that her alarm clock was going off, but after a few minutes she realized the phone was ringing. It quit, and she heard Jane’s voice from the other bedroom. She sat up, thinking of another phone call, wondering if this time something had happened to her parents or her sister, Ruth. She punched her wrist watch light. Almost five in the morning.
Jane did not come in with dreadful news. She appeared to be dressing, opening a door, running water in the bathroom. Finally she knocked on Hannah’s door.
“Are you awake?” She poked her head in. “Hate to tell you this.”
Hannah froze.
“I can’t go with you today. Some American had a bad accident up in the Troodos, and I have to check it out.”
Hannah breathed again.
Jane stepped through the door. “I’m putting out breakfast. If you feel like it, join me, and we’ll talk about the change of plans.”
Later, she set a pot of coffee on the table between juice, milk, and cereal. Coffee aroma blended with bits of a morning fresh breeze shifting currents through the open window.
Hannah yawned and went for the juice and coffee but no cereal. “So what’s with this American? Why do you have to go?”
“Well, first off to check on the medical help he’s getting. Mainly, though, I need to see if he wants us to notify a relative in the States, if he’s regained consciousness.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“Shortly. I’ll call Lloyd about seven and tell him what happened. He can take you around today.” She stowed dirty cups and glasses in the dishwasher. “Sorry I have to miss it. Hopefully, this’ll be cleared up by tomorrow.”
“Want me to take a cab to the embassy?”
Jane shook her head. “Lloyd can come by here after he takes care of getting his buddy with the U.N.”
* * *
Hannah watched sunlight thrust aside the grayness. She lounged on the balcony and rested a book on her lap. Pedestrians appeared on the street below her, and a young woman on a motor scooter dodged around a car.
What threatened the cover of nothingness that had blanketed her like asphalt since Vance left her for that ill-timed trip to Haiti?
Blades of excitement poked holes through the cover, pushed upward by anticipation of this day in a new country, an extension of Greece in its aridity and shimmering brightness and an exuberance that sprang from the atmosphere. As the sun pushed higher, she flipped through Jane’s coffee table book about Byzantine art.
Maybe tomorrow she would ask Jane to bring her that book about the Foreign Service exam, just for fun.

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