Laylah's eyes were questioning, just the slightest lift of her dark brows. Yet Annie knew the meaning. If only she could read Eyal with such sureness. It was meant to be her night. Would she take her proper place? She had spent the intervening time thinking it all through, again and again, angry at her own indecisiveness, at her inability to break it all into something intelligible. Some spy she was turning out to be. It felt as if all her abilities were in abeyance, tamed by the desert, her essential captivity, maybe even the hormones sweeping through her body. That word sent an anxiety through her. She'd been a fool; every other female agent worth her salt chose a more permanent method of birth control, implants or IUDs but no, she'd kept on with the pills. Was there some part of her that was conflicted over her family vs career choices?

Easy, Annie. This is not the inner argument you need to be having right now. It's much too late, in any case, she told herself.

Laylah was still looking at her with a frozen look of pleasant inquiry. She'd made her point – he was apparently remorseful, she had not rushed back to his arms, but she was no closer to believing the "Amsterdam Explanation" as she was framing it in her mind than when he had first started chatting about tulips. If she pushed it into strict spycraft terms, and asked herself what she would do to another for the "greater good" or to protect them from themselves, she was pretty flexible on that subject. She had shot the blanks at Eyal; she could imagine herself taking him down with a shot to the leg to keep him from doing something deadly dangerous; she had to admit that she had nearly gotten him killed by tying him to a headboard. It had seemed a good idea at the time. But that was not a good mental image to help her coolly analyze whether or not she should go to him tonight; she still remembered those moments even though they seemed to belong to another life, as if that Eyal and that Annie were still waiting to consummate that moment somehow, somewhere, along with the couple they had been in Santa Margarita, nearly uniting. In Israel they had finally joined as lovers; here they had joined as a married pair of a kind.

She entered the tent. It was dim; he had gone to bed early, perhaps doubting that she would come to him, which of course had her immediately doubting her decision. She heard him moving in the bedding and saw the bright glint of his eyes in the light of the sole small glass lantern. Well, she was here now. With what she hoped was some grace she removed her outer covering and slid in beside him, keeping her eyes averted, hoping he would see it as being coy, not being confused and doubtful. It was only by a careful censoring of every other thought that she could do this; she hoped he would say or do nothing that might derail her. The only clear thing was that she did miss him, physically certainly, but something more, the energy of their skin together, even if just lying side by side. But could that work again? Should she even want it to?

He shifted to make room for her – no, to make enough room for her that she could be beside him and yet not be touching him, not yet, not if she didn't want to. She settled down gingerly on the pillow. He turned on his side toward her but still kept his distance, and she wasn't sure if she liked that or not. Neither of them spoke. She could, if she wanted, also turn on her side, away from him, and let all the initiative be on him; she had merely shown up. That didn't seem right or fair, and while she was annoyed at herself for considering "right" or "fair" in regard to this man, who had had no considerations of right or fair for her, she couldn't escape it. This could go very badly, she thought, wishing she had waited, or been strong enough to simply rule out ever returning willingly to his side.

Finally he spoke, softly, but with perfect clarity. "Are you here out of any fear of me, or some sense that you'd best placate me? Then go, though I don't want you to, but please, I will never trouble you about it or ask this of you again. Any tie that we've made here – that I've imposed on you – that's broken, since... You are not compelled to do – anything." She laughed, surprising herself, but it was ridiculous.

"It's not so simple as that. I am alone in the desert with you carrying our child. "

"Or course not," he amended. "But this, you returning to me - is more than anything I have any right to ask, or enjoy." Since she wasn't jumping up and running away, he moved to put his hands on her shoulders, kneading gently. He was gentle, but though nearly healed, that area was still slightly tender to her. She ciouldn't stop the instinctive recoil; with a look of horror he pulled back and scrambled up and out of the bedding, one hand to his head. "I forgot," he said, spinning around to face her. "I do that to you and then I forget." She got up herself. She was at a loss for what to say. She certainly couldn't go "Oh, it's okay, honey, don't worry about it." But what she did come up with wasn't much better.

"Let's have tea." Laylah, of course, perfect Laylah, had laid out such things for him; the brass carafe was still warm. Annie kneeled and poured it out into two metal-bound glasses and held one up to him. He took it and sipped it and sat down on his haunches beside her.

"Mm, sage," she said.

"Very healthy, supposedly."

"It tastes different than it smells," she said. That could be a metaphor for life, she thought. Things don't always match across the senses.

"That's true," he agreed. Annie drank some more. It brought back a memory.

"The first time I had sage tea, I was eighteen and on my gap year between high school and college traveling on my own in Turkey."

"Bold of you."

"It was in the back of a rug shop. They always serve you something."

"The eighteen year old blonde American girl? You are lucky it wasn't something much stronger than sage tea."

"I did have to leave that shop a little quickly without buying anything. What about you? Where were you when you were eighteen?"

"Me? Well of course, I was doing forced labor on the kibbutz, picking fruit, playing guitar, my hair was down to here on my back. Actually, I was not really playing guitar. I found it was quite sufficient for my purposes to just carry it around and maybe tighten a string now and again."

"And the girls would flock around just the same?"

"Something like that." His smile at that memory was very genuine. Long hair, a young, scar-free body, his prop guitar and the sensual atmosphere of dozens of young men and women working together in the orchards.

"Imagine if we'd met then. What would that have been like? I could have as easily come to Israel as Turkey."

"There would have been no need for you to go there," he said, quickly dismissing Israel from the picture. "We were all young and eager to get away to someplace more exotic to us – Cyprus and Greece were very popular. One summer I did go to Greece and earned enough in the fields to keep me in the islands all summer. You could certainly have been in Greece. But not picking vegetables. The American girls always had enough money from Daddy back home to avoid messing up their nails in the dirt."

"But I'm not your typical American. So there I am, working in the sun, picking …. "- she needed a fruit with a slightly erotic quality to it - "Picking melons. And I've noticed this bare-chested Greek-looking guy with long hair and a guitar working nearby…."

"And your hair is loose, and even blonder than usual, bleached by the hot Greek sun … and you have been very diligent, a very good worker, at least for an American, and you are carrying a big box of the melons you have picked and I see you struggling with it and come up behind you and take the weight of the box from you." She put down her tea and moved to put her back to him. He shifted slightly to be more behind her. His arms slid around her. "And I say, here that is much too heavy for you, and you thank me and let me take the box, which I immediately put aside, and say, it's hot, let's take a break and gp to the taverna for some stuffed grape leaves …."

"And I have no work ethic so I say, ooh, yes, will they have creamy tzatziki sauce?"

"Oh yes, cool and minty tzatziki and some ouzo…. And conveniently, the path to the taverna goes just past where I am staying…"

"With a hammock strung between two olive trees…"

"Exactly…."

Annie lay awake in the dark. She was certain he was awake as well. She wasn't sure if this counted as a reunion exactly – Grown-up Eyal and Grown-up Annie would have to carve out their own ground later. But the fantasy had done its work. It almost felt as if she had been truly away, retreating into a mythical landscape where neither of them had any complications, just sun, sea, and plenty of lust. She heard him move, pour himself more tea, now gone cool, and lift the covered lid where it was Laylah's habit to leave a bit of food for them, presumably to bolster their strength. He chuckled and she felt him nudge her side.

"Look."

She laughed. Maybe it was a sign – of what, she didn't know but she'd take it as positive for the moment. Because on the tray was a row of stuffed grape leaves, and yes, the local variant of tzatziki.