Life Left

Life Left
by
Lisa Maraventano

“Greece will Change You. You will Never Be the Same.”—Aunt Chris

Prologue
On Mount Olympus, a quarrel was heating up. “Is love required?” Zeus thundered in response to Hera.
Zeus sat once again accused by his wife of millennia of being in love with another woman. He claimed it was preposterous. He had never loved another woman. Love didn’t enter into it. He was outside of love. He was the god of heaven and she was his queen. Love had little to do with it.
Hera sat on her throne beside Zeus. “Love has everything to do with it. If it were not for love, I would have declared war against you eons ago. The love I bear you and the love I bear the world stays my hand.”
“You would declare war on me?” Zeus shouted, reaching toward the lightning bolt.
“I would. If I did not love you, husband.” Hera was unflappable.
“And do you?” Zeus roared.
Hera, who in her current manifestation was identical to a young Lana Turner, rose and went to sit on Zeus’ lap. He looked like Ernest Hemingway. Hera draped her delicate white arms around his bullish neck. “I’ve always loved you and well you know it.”
Zeus grunted and grabbed her to his chest. Instantly they were alone in their bedchamber.
The Pantheon shrugged as Hera and Zeus disappeared. But their conversation still echoed in the immense hall. “Is love required?” Athena repeated her father.
“Of course not, idiot!” Ares shouted. “Strength is all that matters.”
Aphrodite darted him a glance.
“Really?” Athena laughed as she watched her brother melt before the goddess of beauty and love. “What do you think, dear Aphrodite?” Athena used the tried and true tactic of being overly nice to the ones she couldn’t stand.
“It would be the death of me to say love was not required, wouldn’t it? I exist because of love, and am beautiful because love is beautiful. I believe love is required. Without it, the world would be a very hard place indeed.” Aphrodite timed her slow walk across the white marble floor in her gossamer gown, her perfect body’s undulations alternately shadowed and revealed by the fabric. She walked behind Ares, dragging her fingers across the back of his shoulders on the words “very hard.”
 While Athena didn’t like Aphrodite, she could respect her for her loyalty to working tactics. This century the Pantheon was honoring twentieth century writers and film stars. Aphrodite embodied Rita Hayworth, Athena looked like Greta Garbo. At the moment Ares looked like a disgruntled, disarmed Richard Wright.
“Love is not required!” yelled Artemis as she strode across the room. She’d just come in from hunting when she’d heard via her brother what was going on in here this evening. “I tell you, man and woman can have perfect contentment in solitude!”
“Ah, but for how long?” Demeter asked. “They must have children. And love, making love—these are parts of the process of keeping humanity alive.”
“There’s plenty of opportunity for reproduction with a good bottle of wine and an enjoyable evening. It doesn’t have to be about love,” Dionysus declared. “But if we are to wager on this debate, I will join the side of love. I think love is required.”
“Required for what?” Athena asked for clarification.
“For true happiness,” Dionysus answered. “Care to bet?” He glanced around the room at the mighty gods and goddesses. They loved this kind of thing. It made their eternal lives more interesting.
“To the casting board!” cried Artemis in her guise of Katharine Hepburn. All the gods and goddesses gathered around something like a white marble billiard table. Each held a stone which represented them. On the table, those who said that love was required built a mound of pearl, emerald, obsidian, amethyst, topaz, gold. Those who said love was not required for happiness piled moonstone, opal, ruby, peridot, jasper and garnet. Hera and Zeus arrived and cast their stones, Hera for and Zeus opposed. This was a good debate, Hermes thought as he scooped the stones into two different bags which he would keep for one year. At the end of one year, it would be decided who was right. Often it was more lopsided. In this case, the gods were split evenly. Only Poseidon had abstained for the time being. He would act as arbiter.
“Is love required?” Hera asked the casting board. “This is our question. Is love required?” Hera waved long, delicate fingers over the tabletop. The table’s hard surface dissolved in mist and then resolved into a framed picture of earth below. “Who shall show us if love is required?”
Apollo pointed to a sailor out in the water near his birthplace. “That man. His name is Alex. I propose him as one of our players. I have watched him since he was a youth.”
“He’s very handsome,” Aphrodite murmured.
Ares bristled. “Why him?”
“He has been solitary his whole life,” Apollo continued as if he had not been interrupted. “Although he has some family, he spends most of his time alone. I think he will be a very good candidate for this wager.”
Assent was given.
“And now to the other player,” Zeus commanded. “Who shall it be?”
The whole of Greece was now within the scope of the frame. Athena waved her hand across it and the focus narrowed to the deck of a cruise ship near the island of Kapsáli. “There.”
“Who is that?” the other deities asked.
“A New Yorker.”
Nodding their agreement, the bet was placed. Is love required? This was the time to find out.

One
On the pool deck of Royal Caribbean’s Jewel of the Seas, one of the innumerable dance parties was going on. They were playing the “Cupid Shuffle” and Hope Sanders found herself forced by her friends into line. She held her drink in her right hand as she kicked and shuffled to the right, to the right, to the right, to the left, to the left. Her friends Julia, Stephanie, Kenneth and Felipe were on all sides of her. She took another sip of her margarita and just had fun. That was why she was here, after all.
The song ended and the group of friends returned to their poolside lounge chairs. It was the end of the afternoon on their sea day which meant they had done very little except eat, lie in the sun, read, hop in the overcrowded pool and dance once. But tomorrow, they would finally get to their first Greek island. And it would be Hope’s fortieth birthday.
Julia was a couple of years younger than Hope, of Japanese ancestry and had been married for a year and a half. Stephanie was a perpetually dieting, slightly overweight half-Italian mother of three. Stephanie was five years older than Hope and had been one of Hope’s first friends when Hope had arrived in New York nearly twenty years ago. Kenneth and Felipe had been married for seven years and were dedicated cruisers. Kenneth was the one who had insisted they take this trip for Hope’s birthday this summer and had done most of the planning. He claimed it was what got him through winter, his trip planning. Hope had known Kenneth since they worked together on location scouting for a Brad Pitt movie a decade ago.
Hope was reading a book her boss Charles had given her called The Art of Living by Epictetus as she sat on the chaise and tried not to stick to the plastic. Charles was really her partner at the location scouting company but he’d started out as her boss and she still tended to think of him as quite bossy. Take this book he had given her and how presumptuous the title was. According to the subtitle, the sage wisdom contained within the hundred pages would refine her virtue, happiness and effectiveness. She had her doubts.
However, Hope was very grateful for the people who cared for her enough to take her on cruises and give her philosophy books. She didn’t have much family. She had been the only child of divorced alcoholic parents. Her mother had died ten years ago and her dad spent his days gambling in Reno. She hadn’t known her one aunt and cousins on her dad’s side and her mother had run away at fifteen and never reconnected with her family. Hope had met her dad’s parents from Nebraska once before they died. So when Hope had first moved to New York City after college, she had thrown herself into her work. Thankfully, her job then had been as executive assistant to a record company president. She had met thousands of people in the seven years she worked for him. When he moved back to Los Angeles, Hope had decided to stay in New York and started working for Charles in his location scouting company. Two years ago she was officially made his partner in the company.
It was formal night on the cruise. This was a way of killing another hour while people dressed after a long, idle day. But Hope was ready quickly since she kept things simple. She wore a long black evening gown that traveled well. It had a high neckline and a daring-to-there back. With nude lipstick and black eyeliner, her dark brown hair in a twisted knot and high-heeled strappy sandals, she had plenty of time for a glass of the good rosé she’d discovered they had last night at the wine bar. The wine bar was located off the central atrium that ran up through the ship’s passenger decks, one floor up from where the band played.
Soon Kenneth in a red and black Chinese silk tuxedo jacket joined her. He ordered a glass of albariño and sat back in the blue velvet wingback chair next to the large window. The sea slipped by below them as the sun began to set. “God, this is beautiful. Am I a genius or what?”
“You are a genius,” Hope agreed, toasting him with her glass.
“You know the most you’d have done in New York is a dinner in a noisy restaurant and three-quarters of our friends missing because they are out of town for the summer. This is the way to celebrate forty.”
“I have already recognized your genius. I am eternally grateful for your foresight and wisdom. You know that, Kenneth.”
 “I do. Speaking of wisdom, how’s old Epic Tits treating you?”
 Hope spluttered her wine, laughing. “What?”
“Epic Tits. The Art of Living. What do you think?”
“It’s fine. Some good stuff in there.”
“Well, what have you learned about yourself so far?”
 “From the book? Or from thirty-nine years and three-hundred and sixty-four days?”
“Either. How would you describe yourself at this stage of your life?” Kenneth asked.
“Me?” Hope answered quickly, “Oh, I am fun, relatively shallow. I am frequently sarcastic, bitter, moody, mean and self-centered. But I really enjoy myself,” she laughed. “I also have a core of sadness I rarely face because I cover it with superficial crap.”
“Oh, that’s very self-aware. Why the core of sadness?”
“Probably from childhood, child of alcoholics and all that. It was a lonely life. The fact that I’m here at all is a minor miracle. But I made it.”
 “Yes, you did, darling. Very good. Now enough maudlin reflection. We are here to party!”
“Aren’t we getting too old to party? You’re chin-deep to fifty, for gods’ sake.”
“I’ll show you, ‘too old to party.’ My arse. Look at those adorable geezers,” Kenneth pointed. And it was true. Below them in the atrium geriatrics were dancing to the disco sounds of the seventies with style.
After dinner was karaoke in the Safari Lounge. This was Hope’s first cruise so she was constantly amused by the names of venues and the amount of activities on the schedule. After securing seats in the crowded room, Hope belatedly realized there was nowhere near enough alcohol in her system to really handle karaoke. Shots were ordered. Kenneth and Felipe took the stage and alternated verses on “Arthur’s Theme.” And suddenly that was hilarious.
“Glad to see I finally got you laughing,” Kenneth grinned, mopping his brow as he and Felipe returned to the table.
“That’s what you have to do, Hope,” Felipe joined in. “When you get caught between the moon and New York City.”
“I’ll remember, Fefe.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Julia demanded and they trooped to the highest deck where the dance club was located. A few minutes of that was all Hope could handle. Regardless of what Kenneth said, she felt too old to dance with the twenty-two year olds.
She wandered out to the pool deck where she could see the shadow of an island sliding slowly by the boat as it entered the Aegean. The moon was nearly full. Hope smiled as she looked up at Selene’s gentle silver face.
Greece. Hope remembered the first time she’d heard Kenneth mention this wild idea. It had seemed preposterous. And yet it had been simple. They had flown from JFK to Rome two days ago, taken a cab to Civitavecchia, sailed for half a day. This morning they had passed through the Straits of Messina and spent the whole day going farther and farther in, back in time through nautical miles to the land of the ancient gods and myths and heroes. Greece.
The excitement the next morning was palpable. Hope, along with twenty-five hundred others on this ship, was finally arriving on her first Greek isle. Home of the famous blue-domed churches hugging the cliffs above the azure sea, Santorini was the first port. Hope and her friends rode by tender to the dock, climbed aboard a bus and took the death-defying road up switchbacks and across the island to the town of Oia. Maybe because it was her birthday but something in Hope—usually strong and resistant—snapped up there on top of the island. She bought a lot of stuff. Living in New York, she had long ago become very selective in her purchases but the shopping on Santorini surprised her with its artistry and quality. Several hundred dollars later, they returned to the town of Thira where they found a charming open-air restaurant with stunning views. Hope took the waiter’s recommendation on which cocktail to choose and began some serious birthday drinking. After a few mojitos to start, she didn’t clearly remember much more of the day. Somehow, they all made it back to the cruise ship and through dinner and then did dance for hours in the club on the very highest deck. Hope danced with plenty of twenty-two year olds—yesterday’s contestants in the ship’s Sexiest Man contest—and didn’t mind being forty one bit.
The next morning, the ship docked at Mykonos. Hungover, happy, joints aching, Kenneth, Felipe, Julia, Stephanie and Hope headed on a shore excursion to the beach. With nothing to do but lie in the sun all day, they were all feeling confident that they could handle it. “We’ve got to rest,” Julia whined.
“No more alcohol,” Hope agreed.
Upon arrival, Stephanie zoomed in on which chairs she wanted of the hundreds that were set up in rows along the beach. She made a beeline from the shuttle and quickly claimed five in the row nearest the sea.
Kenneth, probably still drunk, sang, “Just take a seat, they always free, no surprise, no mystery…”
Hope smiled under her wide-brimmed white and black sunhat. She took the chair saved for her in the middle, the guys on her left, the women on her right. Over her bathing suit, she wore a full black skirt and a loose fitting black tank top with the black sandals she’d bought in Santorini yesterday. She also wore a large striped scarf with all the colors of blue in it. And of course very dark Versace sunglasses.
As all the tourists settled into their chairs, the beach attendants went to each party and took their orders and gathered their day use fees. Within a few moments, their waiter arrived. He didn’t acknowledge or glance at Hope. He simply sat at the foot of her chaise inches from her for three minutes while he negotiated with Stephanie and Julia who were already ordering lunch and cokes. Hope said nothing, watching the interaction with amusement. Their waiter was taciturn and impatient. But he was fucking hot. Tan, trim, aviator sunglasses, short haircut, white T-shirt, navy shorts, no shoes. He radiated a magnetism that immediately affected Hope violently. Hungover, it took hours for Hope to become aware of this consciously. But from the first moments of her seeing him, she never stopped thinking of him at some subliminal level.
She spent time swimming in the sea which was perfect in temperature and viscosity. She floated on her back under the sun in her dark green bikini and suntanned skin, her brown hair trailing behind her. She felt like a mermaid or a sea nymph or a fish. She was in a state of perfect bliss.
“Oh my God. This is the best hamburger I’ve ever eaten,” Stephanie said to Hope as she came out of the water. “You should get one.”
Hope spread her towel on her chair and lay face down on it. “Thanks, I’m not hungry yet.”
“This salad is good, too,” Julia raved. “You sure you don’t want anything?”
“No, thanks.”
 “Look, he’s right there. Waiting for you to order,” Stephanie nodded at the waiter. The man was standing thirty feet from them with his back to the sea, his arms crossed and feet planted in the sand surveying his patrons.
“He’s gorgeous,” Julia salivated, dabbing with her napkin.
“Stop,” Stephanie admonished the newlywed.
“I can still look. I haven’t gone blind.”
Hope propped her head on her arms and watched the waiter through her glasses. He was worth watching.
“What do you think his name is?” Stephanie asked.
“Nick. After how many Nicks in my life…” Julia predicted. She had dated a lot of Nicks through the years, one of which had broken her heart badly before she married Robert.
Stephanie waved the man over. “Hot waiter, what’s your name?” she asked bluntly.
“Alex.” He glanced at Hope who was looking at him over the rim of her sunglasses.
Julia said, “Too bad. I thought it was Nick,” Then she literally cackled.
Hope looked at her friend doubtfully and decided to say something innocuous to cover the awkward moment. “Alex is a great name. Very historic.”
Alex smirked a little and beat a hasty retreat from the boisterous group.
Kenneth and Felipe had walked up to the restrooms and then ended up at the restaurant bar for an hour. They had hired a private cab to take them back to port instead of the shore excursion bus so they could stay four extra hours. They came back well lit and merry. Felipe dug his excellent beach reading material from his bag: Ellen DeGeneres’ The Funny Thing is… and had them all in stitches as he read aloud from it.
Hope had turned over and leaned back in her chair. The sun was moving and suddenly she felt she needed shade. Felipe finished a chapter and her friends took off for the water. Hope got up to try to move her chair back. It was made of solid wood and much heavier than she’d thought it would be. Instantly Alex was by her side, hauling the chair back into the shade of the umbrella. His expression never changed. It wasn’t dour exactly but in that neighborhood. Stern? No, Hope decided. Stoic.
“Anything else?” he asked. He emanated warmth; she could feel it inches from him.
“Do you have San Pellegrino?”
“Of course. Is that all?”
Hope nodded. “Thank you,” she murmured. He turned and walked briskly away, his calf muscles working in the sand.
Hope felt quite hot and decided to join her friends in the water.
This was the life. Sun, sea, sand and when she went back to the cabana a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of San Pellegrino.
Later, Hope walked to the restaurant to use their facilities. The whole world seemed centered in this small stretch of beach. There was nowhere else one would possibly rather be. Everyone there felt extremely fortunate to be the lucky chosen few in all the earth. Today, this day in summer, was the most important day in the history of the world because she was at the beach in Mykonos. Maybe. Hope realized she was drunk on sunshine and possibly still a little drunk from last night. Her musings might not actually be true but they felt true in the moment and that was all that mattered to her. The restaurant was beautiful, made of ancient stone with the patio canopied from the strong light, miniature olive trees on every table.
Delighted, delirious and happy, Hope left the flagstone path and stepped back on the sand as Alex came carrying a whole carved watermelon in one upraised hand. “Hey,” he said as he passed her. “Hey,” she replied. She followed him back across the golden sand to her cabana. The party next to them had ordered the watermelon salad. It looked delicious. Hope watched as Alex balanced the salad on the table near the people next to her. They had the cutest little girl who had been charming everyone with her innocent, joyous reactions to the water and the beach. Her mother speared a piece of the fruit salad from the watermelon and Hope watched as the little girl sucked on a piece of pineapple, more expressions of glee animating her adorable face.
Hope looked up and saw Alex watching the little girl too, a hint of amusement on his handsome features. As if he felt her watching him, Alex turned and was quickly by Hope’s side. “Can I get you anything?” he asked politely.
“What is that?” Hope asked, indicating what he’d delivered to the neighbors.
He showed her the item on the menu. It was a forty-euro fruit salad in a carved watermelon doused with three different kinds of liquor. “Can I get it without alcohol?” she asked.
“Of course,” he responded, a corner of his mouth lifting as if he had guessed hours ago that she was recovering from a hangover. As he moved to take the menu back, he accidentally brushed her fingers with his. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
Hope shrugged and smiled. “No worries.” She couldn't see his eyes through his sunglasses. He looked at her for a split second and then was gone.
Hope shrugged again and leaned back against her cushioned chair shaded by the umbrella. Felipe and Kenneth had fallen asleep to her left and Julia and Stephanie had taken a walk down the beach. Hope thought about the forty years that had gone by. And here she was. She wished she could pause life and stay here indefinitely. She was glad that time had slowed for this day and she could enjoy each expanded second. She knew a part of her would remain forever here in Apollo’s golden land. After forty years, she knew herself well. And there were moments in time and space where her spirit still existed. She could instantly transport to those moments. In bed on a rainy Sunday afternoon with her first love, on a dark California beach New Year’s Eve with her second, her first time seeing New York City as the airplane descended to LaGuardia, the sun streaming in her apartment on a winter’s day as she looked out at the San Remo. There were moments in life, some painfully beautiful, that she would never forget. And this was one of them.
The water seduced her from the chair. She walked into the sea, deeper foot by foot. A gentle wave lifted her and she rested on her back on the surface of the blue-green water. Floating was her favorite thing in life. She had learned to swim at a very young age and it still made her feel like the lovely, innocent child at the neighbor’s cabana. Free of weight, free of thought, at peace and one with all, Hope floated under the sun and sky for timeless moments.
As she stood back up, she saw Alex several feet away to the left facing the water, feet planted apart in the sand, strong, bronzed arms with glinting golden hair crossed in front of his white T-shirt. He looked like he was made of solid muscle, she thought, as hard as flint and as perfectly proportioned as a classical statue. Hope walked out of the water and over to the cabana where Kenneth and Felipe had roused at the delivery of the fruit salad. “Thank you,” they said around mouthfuls of fresh fruit. Hope speared a piece of watermelon on a long toothpick. It tasted like heaven. The three of them sat on the edges of the lounge chairs eating their fill. Julia and Stephanie returned and joined in on the sweet fruit. They were so happy, relaxed, rejuvenated, they didn’t talk. No words were needed.
“He’s watching you.” Felipe broke the silence.
“Who is?” Hope asked.
“Hot waiter.”
“Alex?” Julia inserted.
“Is that his name?” Felipe raised an eyebrow.
“Yep.”
“Definitely watching you, Hope,” Kenneth agreed. Kenneth waved his arm and Alex walked over to them. He stopped right behind Hope.
Kenneth ordered some more drinks, all the while trying to joke with Alex. And Kenneth was really funny. Julia tried flirting and she was very coy and pretty. But Alex never broke the barrier into familiarity. The friends spent the next couple of hours running up their bill with their orders, very pleased with themselves and the beach day. After trying to annoy Alex for the afternoon, to get him to crack, they came to admire his patient endurance. They settled their bills with cash and added generous tips.
As the afternoon waned, Hope sat under the umbrella watching her friends enjoy themselves and felt philosophical as she read a few more pages of The Art of Living. She tried not to look around for Alex, telling herself it was only the magic and perfection of the location that was playing havoc with her emotions. The sun and the sound of the water and the other beach goers drifted absently through her mind. Part of her was still in the waves floating under the sun. Part of her would always be there. She had given herself up to the moment and the place and left something of herself there. And in that way this place would always go with her.
She purposefully discounted the effect of Alex. How many men had she thought she had a connection with only to be disappointed? She had forgone dating a year ago. And had no regrets with that decision. She glanced over at him. Something clenched in her gut. No, it was Mykonos itself and the tranquil waters of this beach that was worth remembering. Not the good-looking, laconic waiter.
But, still, there was something about him.
The sexual tension he created in her was undeniable. She felt her body become alive and aware around him. Did he feel it too? Was this what they meant by chemistry? Or was she a fanciful, affluent middle-aged woman who could easily embarrass herself if she didn’t keep it together?
Kenneth had paid for the watermelon salad and San Pellegrino Hope had ordered but she still felt she should chip in something to counterbalance some of their obnoxious behavior over the course of the day. She asked Julia to change a fifty for her because that amount would be ridiculous, as if she was paying for the thrill of his presence—and she certainly didn’t want to seem to do that. Hope walked up to where Alex stood several feet away and held out a twenty which he took with good grace. They both said thank you. Hope turned and quite unconsciously brushed her hands together in a wiping away motion, as if she could dispel whatever he’d cast on her with the simple transaction of a tip.
Alex watched her walk away before he turned his attention to a group of needy college-age Spanish girls in front of him. He tried not to think about her, the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He thought she was perfect. He saw all ages, shapes and sizes of people every day. To him, she fit the ideal he hadn’t even known he’d created. She was sophisticated and mature with refined manners. He saw people at their most out there. If this was her most unreserved, he liked it. She loved the sun and the water but also the shade and the sand. He’d watched her trail her fingertips in the sand, digging until she reached the cool layer beneath the surface. He had observed the way she delighted in the sensual, the innocence of her reactions mirroring those of the little girl. Alex found this enchanting. He had been watching her all day. Running her fingers through her hair, drinking sparkling water, listening to the waves, not wearing headphones, taking in the beauty of the scene. She seemed alive and very present in the experience of the moment yet completely unaware of her own beauty and its power in shaping the moment.
The gods sat back on their thrones after watching the meeting, each confident to be on the winning side. But still planning to interfere.
Alex made it through the rest of the day, fetching and carrying. Finally, the sun began to set and the beach cleared out. It was high season and the days were exhausting, an eight-week boot camp for cabana boys. There were no days off, there were no breaks. You just worked. But the money was pouring in and this was most of their income for the year. There was plenty of time to lounge around in the off season.
However, today had taken a toll on Alex. He couldn’t get that woman off his mind. He didn’t even know her name but there was something unforgettable about her. Of course, they had all paid in cash so there was no way to track any of them. Not that he would. That would be ludicrous. Nevertheless, Alex decided he deserved some distraction. He went into town to a bar he liked and was waited on himself.
An hour later, a large bull-like man strode in. He was wearing wrinkled, disheveled clothing and reeked of fish and whiskey. “Line ’em up, cowboy,” he slammed his meaty fist down on the wood bar.
Alex slightly jumped at the thud. The bull-man slapped Alex on the back with his other hand. “Didn’t mean to startle you, son. You look all in,” the big man laughed, picking up a shot glass and downing the drink.
Alex was traumatized. If this drunk, smelly old geezer thought he looked bad, he must look awful.
“Let me buy you a drink,” the big man said, sliding over one of the shots the bartender had poured. “Yamas!” he held aloft his glass. Alex saluted him and the liquor slid down his throat.
“Yamas,” Alex said desultorily setting the glass back on the bar.
“What’s the matter, son? World got you down?” Big man pounded the bar again. The bartender brought over the bottle and refilled the glasses. “Leave it, cowboy,” the man ordered. He had a gruff but friendly way about him. “What’s your name, son?”
“Alex.”
“Mine’s Hem.”
“Hem?”
 “Yessir. Been quite a day, quite a day. Had a two hundred and fifty pounder on my line. Worked that fucker for four hours. Lost it. Can you believe that?”
“That’s rough.”
 “No shit. Must have been a female.”
“Why’s that?” Alex found himself smirking.
“Only the females give me that much trouble and get away with it. God damn.”
“Maybe I should buy you a drink,” Alex was openly grinning now.
“Maybe. Let’s knock ’em back and then stiff this bartender.”
The bartender rolled his eyes and turned away. He wasn’t worried.
“Now, what the hell is troubling you, sonny boy? Females?”
“Maybe. A little.”
“A two hundred and fifty pound one? Or maybe if you add ’em both together?” Hem laughed at his own joke.
Alex thought about that for a minute. “No, that’s not my problem. Not two women.”
“Always been mine! Maybe more than two! Three, four, five—who’s counting? Oh, yeah, my wife.”
“You’re married, huh?” Alex asked.
“Married as hell. To the wife!” Hem raised another glass. Alex clinked his with it and down the booze went. “Son, I propose this to you. Stay away from women altogether. In fact, let’s make a pact.”
“A pact?”
“Yes.”
“What about your wife?”
“She’s out of town.”
“Really?”
Hem nodded vigorously. “Yep. Don’t know if I will see her for a while. A year, let’s say. Why don’t we make a little agreement? You stay away from women this year, and I will too. We won’t think a thing about them. Fish not included.”
“Fish not included.” They clinked glasses again.
“And if you happen to find a mermaid, you’ve my blessing to try to fuck her,” Hem laughed. “But I warn you, it’s about as difficult as you imagine! Especially because you can’t breathe underwater.”

The next day the Jewel of the Seas docked at Piraeus. They were going to climb the Acropolis. This was a full day tour and they were one of the first groups off the ship. Their tour guide happened to be a very good-looking Greek man who was intent on flirting with Hope the entire day. It was quite a contrast to yesterday. Alex had barely glanced at her. This man George was relentless in his attentions. Julia kept nudging Hope to rouse her response. But Hope was not interested. She looked out of the window as the bus headed out to Cape Sounion after lunch. So many of the men were good-looking. It wasn’t a stereotype but a reality. Golden-brown skin, handsome features, tremendous physiques: centuries of legendary beauty had been distilled through blood. After touring the Temple of Poseidon, Hope sat down at the hilltop cafe and ordered an espresso. She had been so drowsy on the bus ride here, she’d missed half the scenery. She’d heard someone on the bus say, “That was an expensive nap.” Hope didn’t want to miss any more of the beautiful mainland before they were back on the ship.
George sat down in the chair opposite her. The cafe cat, gray with white legs and sea-green eyes, jumped in his lap. “How are you, little thing?” George said to the cat, scratching its cheeks.
“She likes you,” Hope commented.
“Most cats do for some reason,” George smiled. “I think it is because I scratch a place it is hard for them to reach.”
Hope squinted her eyes, really hoping this was superficial conversation and not innuendo. He hadn’t come off as smarmy all day. “Is that so?” Hope asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes. Right here,” he showed her. “Their cheekbones. They love it.”
“Hm,” Hope commented and downed the espresso the waiter delivered.
George smiled disarmingly and gestured out toward the sea and back to the temple. “Well, what did you think?” He did have the charm and good-looks of a matinee idol.
“Beautiful. I love Greece.”
“Thank you.” George nodded quite soberly.
“You’re taking credit for Greece?” Hope couldn’t help smiling.
“Of course! This is my country!” George laughed. The waiter brought him a coffee. “I am a part of it as much as it is a part of me. That is the way for all Greeks. There is no difference between the land, the sea, the sky and the man.”
“The four elements.”
“No. You forget fire. The land and man are the same: all dust.” George sipped his coffee and leaned back in the chair. The cat pawed at his clean white shirt for attention.
Hope considered that for a moment. Maybe she did forget fire sometimes. Heat was dangerous. Look at what Prometheus had suffered for giving it to man. “Do you think there is any truth in the old myths? Why do they feel so true here?”
“I think any legend, myth or story passed on for so many years must have some truth. It is in our own souls we have the capacity to discern the truth from the fiction.” George checked his watch, drank his last sip of coffee, patted the cat and put her down from his lap. “Time to go,” he stated as he rose from the chair.
Hope took one last look around the cape and wondered when she would be here again. Greece was getting to her—after all, her great-grandfather on her mother’s side had been Greek. If George was correct, she had little choice but to accept that her fate was tied to this land.

Two
Hope sat in her New York office on a cold January morning six months exactly from the day in Mykonos. Gloom settled on her shoulders like a wet woolen cloak, heavy and dampening her spirits. It was freezing outside but not the bitter cold that makes one fight for survival. It was simply the cold of a winter too lazy to bite into its victims, a winter which enjoyed tormenting its prey.
Hope scrolled through the pictures of Greece on her phone for the millionth time. The sunshine was visible, captured by the camera as beams of light. It washed over the ship, the sea, the islands, the people and food and tables and whatever was the subject of her thousand photos from last summer. She missed that light, craved it like a child of the sun. Sighing, she set the phone down and tried to concentrate on the petty task at hand, filing the permit request for a location shoot on Governor’s Island in May. She filled in field after field, lamenting her lack of discipline to create and use shortcut keys. She typed the same things over and over and over. Submit.
She sent the form off to the mighty office of mayoral approval and picked up her phone again. Nearly noon. She started thinking about lunch. There were the various routine notifications and a couple of texts. One was from Kenneth who was finally back from Japan. She clicked on his text to reply.
Meeting for lunch, Hope felt herself delightfully crushed in his enormous embrace. She had no idea how long it had been since someone had touched her. Months, maybe. She held on the extra moment and then detached herself physically and metaphysically, resuming her cool.
“How are you?” Hope asked as she slid into the booth the hostess had led them to.
Kenneth rolled his eyes and batted his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, don’t get me started. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Car shows aren’t your thing, Kenneth?”
“I will say this. I was able to go to some archery festival in the middle of a palace. There are all these women archers in beautiful kimonos. Might be a very interesting location for you. Called Kyudo.”
Smiling wryly, Hope took a sip from the cup of tea she’d asked for. “Fantastic. I’ll keep it in mind.”
Kenneth shrugged and then asked, “How are you doing? You look like shit.”
“Well, fuck you very much. I feel fine.”
“Really?”
Hope looked down at her unmanicured fingernails and then fluffed her unwashed hair with one hand. “Yes. Of course. Just winter blahs.”
“Longing for Greece?” Kenneth joked but Hope started in her seat.
The waitress brought the bowls of French onion soup they’d both ordered, their favorite thing at this cafe by Grand Central, but suddenly it looked like gray dishwater to Hope.
“Remember that colorful, delicious watermelon salad we ordered on Mykonos?” Kenneth reminisced as he perforated the Gruyère.
Hope laid down her spoon with a small clatter. “Kenneth. Can I tell you something?”
“Of course. Why are you asking, after all the secrets I’ve told you?”
“I still think about that Greek waiter.”
“Oh my God! Alex?” 
 “Yes. Alex.”
Kenneth choked on his laughter and drank a sip of water. “This is why I love you, Hope sweetheart. Always the unexpected!”
“What?” Hope batted her eyelashes at him in innocent protest.
“You have like a total of ten minutes with this Greek waiter months ago and still think about him and when was your last real date?”
“I told you. I’ve given up dating. Like cigarettes.”
“Yes, I know. But at least a dozen men have checked you out in this place since we’ve walked in, even in your winter blah state. Surely you could find a real, live person in this vast melting pot we live in to keep you warm.”
“Alex is a real, live person,” Hope retorted. “He just happens to be several thousand miles from here and probably has a wife and six children.”
“No, I didn’t get that vibe from him. I think he was single. Very solitary, as a matter of fact, lone wolf type. But yes, quite far from here. Why don’t you turn and bat those eyelashes at the table with the attractive businessmen behind you? Surely you could get a date the old-fashioned way if you won’t use Tinder.”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence. But wouldn’t the old-fashioned way be for a gentleman to come calling? Why should I have to do the work?”
“Haven’t you ever been on top? But the point is you aren’t exactly approachable. You’ve spent twenty years in this city putting up your forcefield to keep the weirdos and wild ones at bay. Now your walls are quite visible and there are easier targets for mere mortals to aim at. Look.” Kenneth nodded in the direction of two pretty twenty-somethings who were now giggling in the direction of the table full of men. “Another lost opportunity.”
“Fuck off.”
Kenneth raised his eyebrows. “See. That’s exactly what I am talking about. Fortunately, I am tenacious and gay so I have the rare privilege of actually getting to know you. But one is the loneliest number…”
Hope sighed dramatically. “Kenneth, you are exasperating. You know who else texted me that I could have lunched with?”
“Don’t change the subject. Who?”
“Celeste. Now you know who your competition is. I think you should up your game.”
“Up yours, darling.”
Hope’s eyes twinkled as she suppressed her laughter and ate her soup.
That afternoon as Hope drowsily scrolled through images searching for possible sites to shoot a restaurant interior for a television series, a video started playing on the bottom of her screen. The woman in the video was a classic film star, a very beautiful blonde with a great smile. Judy Garland’s “The Man That Got Away” was dubbed over the video about the failed romance of Lana Turner and Tyrone Power. Hope enjoyed Judy Garland’s voice and let the song play until the end while she continued to search through interiors for work. Maybe she dozed off and dreamed the rest. But at the end of the video which had been still shots overdubbed with the song, Lana looked directly at Hope and spoke. “What are you waiting for? He’s still there, waiting for you.”
“Who is?” Hope heard herself ask. Shaking off her dream, Hope stood and walked to the window. She looked out at the bleak landscape. Returning to her desk, she clicked on Google Flights. The airport code for Mykonos was JMK.
Ugh. The flights were expensive. Undaunted, Hope typed in NYC to ATH. Very reasonable. And less than one hundred dollars from Athens to Mykonos on RyanAir. Before she thought about it anymore, she bought roundtrip tickets departing March 18th and booked two weeks in the hotel by the beach where she’d fallen in love. A stupid, impractical, unrequited and absurd love. But it was better than this asinine moping.
Feeling better than she had in months, Hope wrapped up in her coat, scarf, gloves and hat and headed for the door. Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” was playing on the radio on the receptionist’s desk and Hope couldn’t help smiling to herself.

Mykonos was a different place in spring. Hope arrived in the middle of a tremendous rainstorm. As in New York, cabs were hard to find in such weather. Finally, after waiting half an hour at the airport, she located a taxi to take her to the hotel.
The lobby was silent. The hotel had only just opened for the season. Hope felt ridiculously conspicuous. Alex walked in.
Hope didn’t breathe.
Alex walked behind the counter and politely enquired, “Checking in?”
He looked exactly as she remembered except less tanned and it was the first time she had seen his eyes. They were incredibly dark brown with thick golden-tipped lashes.
“Yes.” Her years of training in keeping cool were coming in handy.
“Name?”
“Hope Sanders.”
Alex was silent as he searched the database then printed off a receipt. “How many keys?”
“Just one, please.”
Alex faintly arched an eyebrow as he gathered the key and receipt together to hand to her. “I’ll need a copy of your passport.”
Hope pulled her passport out of her handbag and gave it to him. He turned and moved a few feet to to the copier. Instead of berating herself for her supreme idiocy in flying to Greece to see this man, she admired the hardness beneath the black t-shirt and khaki pants. He was indeed exactly as she remembered and her stomach did somersaults.
She was here, Alex thought. Why was she here? He had just been thinking of her this morning as he made coffee. Was he a wizard? Had he conjured her here? He finished copying the passport and filed the copy before turning and returning the document to her. “Do you need help with your luggage?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Not realizing he was offering to help her, Hope was vaguely surprised when Alex came out from behind the counter and took both of her suitcases in hand. She followed him up a flight of stairs to a narrow, whitewashed hallway. He set the cases down in front of a door and reached toward her with his hand out. She wordlessly gave him the key and he unlocked and opened the door. He stood back to allow her first entry.
The room was amazing. It was actually two rooms, a suite with an incredible one-hundred and eighty degree view of the Aegean, a private balcony and a painted blue beam ceiling. Alex brought the suitcases in and stood watching her as she looked around the space. “Anything else?”
Hope shook her head. “Thank you.”
He nodded and stepped toward the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob while she watched him straighten his shoulders. He turned back around. “Mykonos is not the same now as in the summer when you were here. The season is just starting. Please let me know if you need anything. Otherwise, it should be very quiet and you will not be disturbed.”
Hope nodded and said nothing. But she met his eyes. He remembered her. Everything unsaid stood in the space between them for a few seconds and then he turned back to the door and left. Hope dropped into the nearest chair and allowed herself a moment to breathe and shake a little bit. Then she pulled herself together and found the nearest mirror. She looked all right, thank God. She actually looked rather nice. Her skin was clear, her makeup looked good, her hair had held up in the rain and her outfit had traveled well on the short flight from Athens where she’d spent last night at a posh downtown hotel after the overnight flight from JFK.
Alex headed back downstairs and quietly freaked out. He went to the computer and pulled up the reservation for Hope Sanders. He hadn’t known her name all these months. Hope Sanders. Hope. That was a lovely name, simple yet powerful. She was so beautiful. She was staying two weeks—Alex couldn't believe it. He read her address: 52 West 77th Street, New York, NY. She didn't sound like other New Yorkers he’d met. Her voice was soft, quiet, lyric.
Scrubbing his shaved chin with his palm, Alex tried to make sense of the last quarter hour. He’d been arguing with his uncle about paying a padded invoice, walked into the lobby when he saw the taxi leave, and there she was. All through autumn and winter, sudden images of her on the lounge chair, floating in the water, walking along the sand would flash into his mind. How many thousands of beach goers had he served whose faces blurred into nothingness? Only hers remained. Alex scowled at the monitor, clicked back to the home screen and headed outside. The rain had eased to barely a drizzle. Alex walked down to the shoreline. He kicked off his shoes, cuffed his pants and stood with his feet in the cold water, arms crossed, looking out over the sea. Maybe it would be good to get on the boat this afternoon, clear his mind.
The sun came out from behind the clouds and a sunbeam hit the water in an explosion of light. Alex looked down to shield his eyes from the blinding reflection and saw the shimmer of gold in the sand swirling around his feet. He breathed in deeply and offered a wordless, unconscious prayer to whatever divine forces were guiding his life on the exhalation. The golden flecks in the sand always reminded him Apollo’s birthplace was just around the corner, across the waves.
Hope watched Alex from her balcony. He was standing alone on the empty rain-dappled beach with the sun streaming through the cloud remnants and the blue-green of the sea behind him. She knew no matter what happened in the days to come this would be the picture of him she remembered forever, worth however many thousands of miles and dollars to find him. Maybe she wasn’t destined for true love, the same love so many have found. The love of weddings and anniversaries, babies and birthdays, waking up in the same bed and solving all of life’s little problems together. Maybe the only love she’d ever have was the one now blooming in her heart until she felt she would burst. Even if the love was only hers, it was real and hers to do with as she pleased. And for now, nothing could please her better on this entire blue planet than to let her eyes see. She stood motionless on the balcony, watching. She wished she was a poet so she could capture the moment in words or an actor with a powerful, pretty speech to make into the wind. But she was a location scout who dealt in scenes and backdrops. As much as she wanted to photograph the moment, she wanted more to remember it vividly. So she did not reach for a camera. She simply looked.
After a while, Alex turned away and walked north out of sight. Hope felt her breath leave her body, air she’d trapped and held for a long time. She really needed to breathe around him; this whole bated breath business would kill her if she didn’t stop. Laughing to herself, Hope wondered what would happen next. She was here. And he had remembered her. And that one instant of tacit awareness had given her the word she always carried with her: hope.
Alex walked for a few minutes up the hill to the end of the dirt road. A small Greek Orthodox church was set in the middle of a barren pasture. Alex looked down on the landscape he had always known. Alex had been born on Mykonos thirty-six years ago tomorrow. He had sailed the waters around the island thousands of times but had never been on an airplane, had never been farther than Athens. He had never wanted to. The world came to this shore. He had met Arabians and Parisians and Australians and even Hawaiians. He often wondered why they came so far to this rocky island but they all seemed quite happy to be here.
New York. He wondered what that enormous city might be like. Like everyone, he’d seen it so many times in movies, it seemed somehow familiar.
Why was she here?
All the thoughts in his head, however he tried to distract himself, came back to the one thought.
Why was she here?
Maybe she had thought Mykonos was nice, like the millions of other tourists before her, and had decided to come back for another, longer holiday. She’d only spent one day here before. That was a very reasonable explanation. That was probably what it was. There was no reason to get excited. She was just another guest.
But…
What if there was more to it than that?
Maybe she was a lesbian or meeting someone here. Maybe she was getting divorced or had cancer. Maybe she was a writer or composer and wanted to shut herself up in her room and work. Maybe she was petty and callous and shallow and selfish.
But…
Maybe she was…
He didn't even dare to think it into words. It was a feeling inside him, nebulous and undefined, that maybe she was what he had given up finding long ago.
He had already been brave back in her room, letting her know he remembered her. He decided to be brave again. To be brave as many times as was necessary until he had his answer. Feeling quite virile, Alex headed back down the hill to the hotel.
Now what? Hope asked herself. She wasn’t tired. She tried reading the novel she’d brought but couldn’t concentrate on the intricate suspense story. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t a writer or composer and didn’t want to work. She could take a walk. That was a good idea. She changed her shoes and put on her windbreaker. Then Hope opened the door to find Alex preparing to knock on it. They smiled awkwardly at each other. His eyes were the best-looking part of him and she’d traveled five thousand miles without ever having seen them. “I was coming to see if you needed anything,” Alex mumbled.
Hope shook her head, still smiling awkwardly.
“Actually, I wanted to see if you—” Alex paused, searching for the right words “—needed someone to show you around or help plan your time here.”
Hope looked up under her eyelashes into his chiseled, handsome, unrevealing face. “I don’t have many plans, actually. I had decided to take a walk.”
Alex didn’t answer. He moved to the side to let her pass but she didn’t advance. “Do you have any other suggestions? The beach looks closed,” she commented.
“Well, of course you can go out on it. But we don’t have the chairs and restaurant service like in the summer. Do you like sailing?” he asked.
“I’ve never been.”
“Well, that is something you can do if you are willing to try it.”
Hope shrugged indifferently.
“I have a boat we could go out on,” Alex offered.
Suddenly, a warmth suffused Hope’s body. She realized he had come to her room to ask her sailing. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning on Day One of this adventure. She was thrilled although she masked her emotions as well as he did. “Sure, that sounds lovely,” Hope replied.
She followed him down the hallway and stairs into the empty lobby. For a moment, she thought about asking him if he had to work but they had entered an unspoken arrangement of little dialogue. Obviously, he didn't have to work or he wouldn’t have asked her sailing. He grabbed his sunglasses off the counter and slipped them on. They walked outside and he led her over to an older coupe Mercedes. “The marina isn’t far,” Alex informed her as he held open the passenger door.
Hope nodded and climbed into the car. She stared straight ahead, only briefly darting her eyes to the side view mirror to watch Alex walk around the back of the car. Lithe, hard, graceful: Hope didn’t know what to compare him to. He was unlike anyone she’d ever seen and yet the archetypal male.
Alex got in the car, started it and drove moderately out of the parking lot and halfway up the road he’d walked an hour ago. He then turned toward the pavement and followed its winding route over the hill and across the plateau to another descending road at the bottom of which a small marina harbored two dozen crafts.
“So pretty,” Hope murmured, unintentionally breaking the silence between them. The sun was out now with only a few scattered puffy white clouds in the sky.
“My boat is the one to the farthest right,” Alex replied. She identified a thirty-five foot sailboat moored at the edge of the marina. Alex parked the car and she opened her door before he had a chance to get to it which she immediately regretted. He looked vaguely disappointed or disapproving, she couldn’t tell which. He turned away and stood looking out toward the water while she climbed out of the car on her own. He indicated the path they should walk down to the dock. The water was still slightly choppy after the storm and the boat rocked in its mooring. This time Alex did help her, taking her by the arm and assisting her on board. He cast off and started messing about with sails and rigging while Hope kept out of the way. Within three minutes, they were well onto the water.
She was back. Greece was more than beautiful or captivating. There was magic in the ancient waters, among the isles. It was the domain of the gods, divine and full of splendor. Hope could hardly believe she was on a sailboat alone with Alex within moments of her arrival—but in Greece, anything was possible. The only impossible thing was that she’d ever lived without knowing this. The sunshine was not as strong as in July when she’d been here last. In March, it was gentle and young and innocent, shining as if the world was as new as the spring. Hope felt some elixir surge in her veins from no physical source. It was simply life. She turned to look at Alex at the helm, standing immobile as he faced the water. He raised his chin in invitation to come toward him and she staggered slightly from her seat to the wheel. “Want to steer?” he asked.
He stood to the side as of course she accepted. She placed her hands at ten and two and he placed his beneath hers, encircling her. She would fit perfectly beneath his chin, he noticed, but still did not touch her. They headed out toward Naxos, the island across to the south. The wind rattled through her; she didn’t need to breathe. Oxygen pumped through her lungs without effort. Her hair whipped furiously around her head and she regretted her lack of sunglasses as her contacts were drying to her eyeballs. But she was spectacularly happy. Thoughtlessly, she smiled back at Alex. Disarmed, he took a step closer to her so his chest was against her back. She leaned against him and his hands crept to halfway cover hers. They were rough and warm and sent waves of feeling through her: recognition, longing, sanctuary. Both of them shared an awareness of completion though neither had previously acknowledged any lack. It was geometric: the formation of a plane from two lines. The space of their existence expanded along the suddenly manifested coordinates to create within each of them individually a permanent sense of other. The long wait before coming back to the point of origin was finished.
“‘For time is the longest distance between two places,’” Hope remarked without thinking.
“What’s that?”
“Tennessee Williams quote. Don’t know why it came to mind just now.” The boat pitched as a rogue wave sideswiped it. Seawater splashed onto the deck as Hope was thrown back against Alex.
Alex kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other one came around Hope’s waist, holding her steady. The sea calmed but Alex did not remove his hand. Her ventral side had always indeed been her soft spot. She had rarely let anyone touch her there, nor did she normally like it. It took quite a bit of self-control not to react and reject instinctively, to simply feel what it felt like to have his hand on the front of her body at her navel. Hope felt she was melting from within.
In fact, it felt strange to inhabit her body so fully. So often she lived in her mind, in the virtual reality of the internet, on her phone, in a book or a movie or television show. So often she was trying to escape her physical reality, which was quite normal in her culture: on the subway, alone in her apartment, at work, waiting. Rarely did she fully inhabit the moment physically, mentally and emotionally. And here she was.
They sailed on another half hour until Naxos loomed in front of them. The sea was quite well-behaved now, the boat barely rocking. Alex hove to and they both sat on the benches looking out at the land. “Have you ever heard of Naxos?” Alex asked.
Hope shook her head.
“In myth, it is the place where Theseus left Ariadne.”
“He deserted her?”
“Some say Dionysus commanded him to leave her. In some versions of the story, she was already married to Dionysus. Nevertheless, it is agreed Ariadne was Dionysus’ wife and they lived happily every after, as the saying goes.”
Hope smiled. “Really? No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that.”
“Do you like the Greek myths?”
Hope shrugged a little. “I love them. The real question is, do you?”
“I’ve grown up on them.”
“That’s what I mean. In America, everything we learn about seems remote not only in time but place. All of it seems very far away. It is hard for me to imagine living in the midst of so many stories, so much history.”
“But you like Greece?”
“Yes, I do. A lot.” Hope was starting to get uncomfortable as the conversation headed into dangerous waters.
“I am glad you came back then.”
Alex was four feet across from her. She wished she had some sunglasses to hide behind too. She hadn’t been in this business for a long time. But she had sworn to herself to never again be the one to make the first move toward a kiss. It was enough she was here, that she had come back.
The moment passed.
Alex stood and worked the sails, pointing the boat toward home. “If we go out again, I will bring lunch next time,” he said.
Hope pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she sat on the bench. She didn’t reply, gazing out over the blue Aegean.
They sailed back to the harbor with only the sound of the wind and waves. Hope remembered the story of Theseus and how his father had given his name to this sea. Patience was a virtue in the Greek legends: Penelope and Andromeda were honored for their patience. The impatient ones, the ones who took matters into their own hands like Clytemnestra, Pandora and Medea—their stories didn’t work out well.
Well, Hope could wait. It was Day One of the adventure and so far, so good.
Alex felt stupid. He should have kissed her. But he had chickened out. She was beautiful, refined and intelligent. Holding her for those few moments had been perfect. Then he had blown it. He should have moved to sit by her and brushed the hair from her temple or some move like that. But he had sat there like an idiot and then ran for home.
She was sitting on the starboard bench turned away from him as he brought the boat up to the dock. She offered to help but he was quite used to sailing on his own and said he could manage. He helped her out of the boat. She walked up the hill in front of him.
What am I doing? he asked himself. She seemed so sophisticated and calm even out of her element on this foreign adventure. Yet in the few hours since her arrival, she had succeeded in riling up his long dormant emotions.
They rode home in their first uneasy silence.
Alex renewed his hours-old vow already broken to be brave as many times as necessary. “Can I take you to dinner?”
Hope turned her gray-gold eyes toward him and tilted her head. A spark of mischief struck her. “I don’t know.”
An incredibly long pause followed.
Finally, Alex replied, “Why not?”
Hope didn’t answer.
Alex pulled over to the side of the dirt road. He took off his sunglasses and looked at her. “Well?”
“Is there live entertainment?” Hope’s cheeks were tight as she struggled to keep her face straight.
“What?”
“You know, like dancing or acrobats or something.” Hope was smiling now, trying not to laugh at the perplexed expression on his face.
“No.”
“Well then, what will we do? Just eat?”
“Yes. That is what dinner means, isn’t it?”
Hope shook her head, the corners of her eyes crinkling in amusement. “Yes. But sometimes there is a little more to it than that.”
“Like what? Scintillating conversation, I suppose you mean,” Alex retorted.
Hope shrugged, “Something like that.”
“That’s not me.”
“I know.”
They sat in the pulled over car for a moment, at an impasse.
“Come anyway.”
“All right,” Hope agreed, laughing. She didn’t really know why she was laughing except that she was happy, and he was so serious.
Alex glared at her for a moment, put his sunglasses back on and finished the short drive back to the hotel. He came around to open her door and this time she didn’t lift a finger until he reached his hand down to help her out. She loved the feel of his rough, warm hand enveloping hers. “I’ll pick you up in two hours. I’ll have someone bring you some fruit and cheese, though, since I don’t think you’ve eaten since you arrived.”
“Thank you.”
“You remember my name?”
Was he kidding? “Alex.”
He nodded sharply in satisfaction and walked her back to her room. “Two hours.”
She agreed and he turned to briskly walk away.
Hope unlocked her door and went practically skipping into her room. Why did she like him? What did a love story between two fucking modern stoics look like anyway? This was stupid and fun and she hadn’t been this happy in years, if ever. She lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, lost in pleasant reverie. The boat was still rocking beneath her as she replayed the moment over and over when they did not kiss. Her stomach had been churning like a Ferris wheel, cocoons knotted around the butterflies inside her. He was every bit as taciturn and charming and handsome as she remembered—that hadn’t been daydreaming. He was a real, live human thousands of miles away from her home. But it had only taken a couple of plane flights to be with him. Two days ago she had been finishing packing in New York, dropping her dogs off at her friend Julia’s and taking a cab to JFK. She had flown overnight on Sunday and arrived in Athens yesterday. Just this morning she had caught the airplane from Athens to Mykonos. And hours later she was in this state. To her, action had proved its superiority. For months, she had fretted away her time at trivial tasks that did not spark joy in her soul. Why had she wasted so much time?
Impractical.
This whole thing was impractical. Say it was true love—then what? She dared not think of that now. She rose from the bed and went to the shower. She gasped and then clapped her hands in joy like a little girl. The shower was designed so you could see the freaking Aegean while using it. Unbelievable.
Hope showered and dressed in a simple black sheath dress and sandals. Someone did bring her a fruit and cheese plate. And then Alex showed up. He too had showered and his hair was combed and crispy. He wore a navy blue button down shirt and gray slacks.
He drove her to a restaurant on top of a hill overlooking the town. The city lights were golden against the blackness of the water beyond. The restaurant had strands of globe lights illuminating the terrace and candles flickering on the tables.
After they ordered and the wine was brought, Alex leaned back in his chair. “Now I shall attempt to make scintillating conversation.”
“Oh, good.”
“But it will probably be mostly questions.”
“All right. Fire away.”
“You live in New York.”
“Technically, that is a statement.”
“Are you from there?”
“No. I moved there about twenty years ago.”
“From where?”
“I grew up in Reno but then I went to UCLA. After I graduated, I moved to New York.”
“Why?”
“I had been interning as an assistant to an executive of Olympia Studios and then they promoted him to CEO right around the time I graduated. He had to move to New York and he asked me to come along to work for him. So I took the job.”
“Did you work for him long?”
“Yes, about seven years. By then, I’d fallen in love with the city and didn’t want to leave when he stepped down and returned to LA. So a friend of mine put me in touch with Charles.”
“Who is Charles?”
“Oh, he’s my partner. But back then, he was my boss. We have a location scouting company.”
“What’s that?”
“Location scouting? Well, nearly every movie and television show use locations on their shoots. Even if most of the show is filmed in a studio, there are almost always exterior location shots interspersed in the scenes. Our company helps film and television units identify and get the required permits and scheduling for all of these locations. I started working for Charles about twelve years ago and we became partners two years ago. We have six people working for us and keep pretty busy.”
“You don’t sound too thrilled about it.”
“It has lost some of its charm this last year. I turned forty and now I question everything.”
Alex looked surprised. “You’re forty?”
 “You’re shocked? How old are you?”
“Thrity-six. Tomorrow.”
Hope didn't know which to respond to, the fact that he was more than four years younger than she was or that his birthday was tomorrow. Luckily, she didn’t have to decide as the food was delivered at that exact moment.
As they progressed through the meal, Hope reciprocated the interrogation. “Well, what about you? What do you do?”
“What you’ve seen so far. My uncle owns the hotel and basically I’m next to take over. He and Aunt Agathe never had children. So I help run the hotel and I like to sail. That’s about it.”
“I thought you were a waiter last summer.”
“I am. Or the bell boy or the bartender or pool boy or desk clerk and on a few rare occasions the maid. I am not the chef. My aunt and her minions run the kitchen. Sometimes the staff is unreliable so I fill in wherever needed depending on the season. I think it comes with owning a business.”
“You were a very good waiter.”
He accepted the compliment, pleased. “You were a very kind customer.”
Kind was not a sexy word. “Thank you.”
 “Dessert?” This waiter had impeccable timing, stepping in perfectly during the awkward moments.
“So…you work at the hotel and like to sail. That’s it?” Hope asked after the waiter left.
“Well, there is one other thing. And it is very important. The most important.”
“You’re married?” Hope raised her eyebrows.
Alex smiled. “No. I’ve never been married. You?”
“Are you trying to change the subject?” Hope asked. “But no, I’ve never been married. What is the most important thing?”
“I have a daughter.”
“Coffee?”
Hope rescinded her amiable thoughts about the waiter’s timing.
Soon, Alex continued. “About six years ago now, my friend Althea and I were at the bar.”
“Drinking.”
“Yes. And she had broken up with her boyfriend for the tenth time or so. She was blue and lonely. I was there and bored. We drank too much and one thing led to another. And all of that led to our daughter Eleni. She is five now.”
“What happened with Althea?” Hope asked over the rim of her coffee cup.
“We’re still good friends. We were only together the one night. Both of us realized we were not meant to be more than friends. But the boyfriend came back about six months later and they got married. Now she has another daughter and a third child on the way. We are a family. A strange family but—”
“I’m from New York, Alex. There is every human situation ever invented there. Do you have pictures?”
 Shyly, Alex produced his phone. Eleni was his lock screen. He showed Hope a dozen pictures of an angelic, golden haired princess.
“She looks like you. She has your eyes.”
Alex made a face and put his phone away. Hope had scooted her chair close to his while they were looking at the photos. He took her hand.
Neither said anything. Conversation was over. Alex paid the bill and they went to the car.
“Are you busy tomorrow?” Alex asked outside her hotel room door.
Hope shook her head.
“Shall I see you in the morning then? We can spend the day together.”
“All right,” she nodded.
“Good night,” he said softly.
“Good night.”
He did not try to kiss her. Hope was regretting her promise to herself. But she would wait.
After Alex left, Hope undressed in the bathroom and then turned out all of the lights. In the dark room, she stood in her short silky black bathrobe watching the moonlight create a silver trail on the water below and wondered where it went. She slipped naked into the cool sheets and replayed scenes from the day through her mind before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning Hope woke up much later than she’d meant to a knock on the door. “Oh my God,” Hope exclaimed as she jumped out of bed. She threw on her bathrobe and opened the door the tiniest crack. Alex stood outside looking like fucking Prince Charming with croissants, coffee and orange juice.
“Good morning,” he said.
Not ideal start. “I overslept. Happy birthday. Just give me one minute.” She slammed the door harder than she intended as she rushed to make herself presentable.
Alex stood in the hallway feeling like an idiot. She had looked quite alluring with her hair a mess, flashing him briefly as she had adjusted her bathrobe.
She reopened the door and invited him inside. In three minutes, she had brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face, combed down her hair, put on her glasses and the first clothes she’d found: yoga pants, bra and black cami. “I’m so sorry. I meant to get up hours ago. My alarm didn’t go off.”
He had walked into the middle of the suite. “That’s fine. You’re on vacation. Do you want me to come back later?”
Hope glanced wildly about the room, looking for something clever to say but the walls failed her. There was no writing on them. “Do you want to come back later?” She asked, disappointed. She wanted him to stay.
“No. I want to stay.” In fact, he thought, he wanted her hair messed up and her clothes back off.
“All right.” He was looking at her quite differently than he ever had before.
He set the breakfast down. “Did you sleep well?”
He advanced toward her. There was something predatory in his expression.
Hope nodded, rooted to her spot on the floor.
“Bed comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
He stood very close to her now. No romantic candlelight, moonlight, soft music set the mood.
There was only the clear light of morning. He bent his head forward and pressed his hard lips to her soft ones. She didn’t move. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. She pulled her glasses off.
“You are very beautiful,” he told her.
Hope felt insecure and silly. He kissed her again, this time putting his arms around her waist. Her arms went up around his neck. He probed her lips with his tongue.
She hadn't kissed anyone in a really long time.
Her lips parted.
She tried to remember what to do next.
His thumb came up alongside her neck and into the base of her hairline. She didn’t even know she liked that.
He was very warm, like his skin had absorbed the sun of Mykonos. His physique was rock hard like the land.
He didn’t really know exactly what had gotten into him. It wasn’t his usual mode of operation to seduce the American guests on his birthday. But he wanted this woman and he didn’t want to wait any longer. Her disheveled appearance at the door had awakened in him a demanding desire. It seemed to foreshadow how she would look afterward, wanton and completely natural.
He kissed her long, slender neck. She moaned.
He heard the noise. Assent.
He slipped the cami and bra straps off her shoulder and placed his lips in the hollow of her collarbone. His hand cupped her breast through fabric.
“Alex,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
She unbuttoned his shirt and blinked a few times. His chest was like from some crazy Calvin Klein underwear ad. She started buttoning the shirt back up.
“What’s wrong?” Alex looked confused.
“Maybe you should put this back on. It’s too much.”
He took her literally and stepped back.
She grabbed him to her and pulled him onto the bed. “I’m just kidding. You’re gorgeous. I mean, I already knew that but…”
She ran a hand under his shirt to feel the abs. She wasn’t fat and she worked out but she had nothing like this going on.
He kissed her now. Tongue. She remembered. Melt.
“I love your neck,” Alex murmured against it.
His hands pushed up the hem of her shirt. She dragged it over her head. She thought she looked pretty good in this bra. She’d bought it on Pink Friday against her more prudent judgement. It was quite flirtatious. His shirt came off.
She didn’t really consider halting this operation. Wasn’t this why she’d traveled to Greece? With the desire to end up in bed with this man?
Alex continued his attentions. Her lips were flushed and her hair was starting to look like it had when he’d arrived.
It was time for her to find out the answer to the big question. Was it big or—? Hope felt him pressing hard against her and decided to get it over with. She unbuckled his belt and undid his fly. She reached her hand over his buttocks and around to the front. Her hand paused and then proceeded. Very hard. Quite nice size. She pushed his pants and underwear down. He helped. Then her pants came off. He ran his hands over her and through her. Hope was overwhelmed with sensation. He pressed himself between her legs while kissing her intensely.
He entered her gently and then thrust home. Her breath caught as he sank into her. And then it was fire.
Hope let herself be consumed. She became ash and then a phoenix—powerful, mythical. Yes, she had been on top before, thank you very much, Kenneth. Now she turned Alex onto his back and straddled him, fully enjoying the sensation of ascending.
Alex alternated between tightly shutting his eyes, overcome with pleasure, and watching Hope on top of him. He wanted to last forever but that wasn’t going to happen.
However, it was early in the day and he was mostly confident he wasn’t too old yet to repeat this in a little while. He felt her coming against his penis in rhythmic, compressing extraction. He yielded to the sensation and felt overwhelming release.
Hope collapsed on top of him, the hardness of his abdomen slick with their sweat against her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her to him. She raised her chin from his shoulder and he tangled his fingers in her wild hair to bring her mouth to his for a kiss.
“Hope.”
“Yes?”
His big brown eyes devoured her face. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Alex,” Hope said smiling.
But they did not miss each other. It had simply taken a while.
Some people never find the one they are looking for, or perhaps look the other way at just the wrong moment or are too fucking demanding or obtuse to climb into bed/the relationship. Also, they must climb out of their own heads and phones and mirrors and actually be aware of others in the world.
They were both giddy like normal after a good idea. Alex climbed out of bed to give Hope her bathrobe and felt very satisfied. She looked exactly like he had hoped she would, well-fucked. He gave her the coffee and they ate croissants and got crumbs on the bed and drank orange juice and then started making out.
Within a few moments, he was hard again and pressing against her. She lay back as he pounded into her, flattening her against the sheets until she felt…simply felt, and wouldn’t think anymore.
They didn’t leave her room all day.

The next morning they awoke to sunshine so strong it found its way around every edge of curtain, through every slat of the shutters. Hope got out of bed, slipped on her robe, flung back the curtains and opened the shutters. If she never had to advance past this moment, she would be quite content with life. The aquamarine sea sparkled with silver light and the golden sand glimmered as it shifted in the gentle breeze. Were the spirits of the gods pleased this morning? she wondered.
Alex was pulling on his pants and buckling his belt. She turned and watched, scarcely believing she had spent all of yesterday and the night touching his incredible body. She was unaware of her own beauty as she stood in front of the window. Alex walked across the room and stood shirtless in front of her. He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her palms flat to his sculpted chest. “Come on, I want to take you somewhere,” he said to her hair and then kissed her forehead.
“I don’t think I can walk.”
She felt the laugh travel up from his belly through his chest. She laughed too.
“Fine. But if we stay here all day, you may be permanently crippled by tomorrow.”
She pressed her lips together and considered, looking up at him with wide eyes. He attached his lips to her neck, turned her and walked her backward to the bed.
Later, they tried again to leave the room. First they headed to the shower which was very enjoyable. Finally, the need for coffee and food was enough to propel them outside. They’d lived off room service yesterday. It had been Alex’s birthday so he’d had the day off. But he knew he couldn’t stay holed up with a guest forever without hearing about it vociferously. That reminded him…he texted his uncle he was taking more time off. They had breakfast at a nearby restaurant, ordered a simple lunch to go and then drove to the marina.
Wordlessly, Alex and Hope walked hand in hand to the sailboat and climbed aboard. Alex cast off and they sailed around to a deserted, rocky cove on the north side of the island. Alex pulled up a playlist on his phone and attached is to the bluetooth sound system. Hope was surprised to hear Frank Sinatra coming out of the speakers.
“You like American music?”
“Yes.”
She scrolled through his library and saw Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters. “I like American music too.” She gave him a big, cheesy grin. Alex laughed and Hope was impressed with herself for figuring out how to make him laugh. She had the idea he didn’t laugh often.
However, he could easily make her swoon. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. Then he took off his pants and underwear and dove into the water naked.
She had fallen into a fantasy and hoped she never went back into the ordinary world. On this uninhabited part of the island, they were all alone. She double-checked there was no one around and then followed suit.
Skinny-dipping is a rather poor name for the exquisitely delicious sensation of feeling water slip over your bare skin. Hope had never swum unclothed before. It was the most erotic, liberating experience she’d had since she’d left the hotel room.
Floating on the water, hoping her nipples wouldn’t burn, she tried to reconcile American life to this hedonistic awesome decadence. And could not.
Once they tired of swimming, they climbed back on board and lay naked in the sun on the deck.
“Is this what people do here?” Hope asked. She was lying on a towel on her stomach, hoping her rear wouldn’t burn.
“Yes.”
 “Is this what you do?” She looked over at his body stretched flat on his back on the deck. God, he was beautiful. His arms were over his head, biceps slightly flexed. His penis lay flaccid against his groin. He looked completely unselfconscious and endlessly fuckable. Hope thought about continuing her midlife crisis indefinitely.
“Sometimes.” Alex answered. She saw a bit of stirring in the area of interest.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
She saw he had tan lines so he didn’t do it much. “Why have you never found someone?”
“I don’t know. I have occasionally wondered that myself.” Alex slid his sunglasses off and peered over at her with one eye squinted.
“You know what? Me too,” Hope laughed. She moved and straddled him. “Should we go below deck?”
“No.”
“Alex,” Hope protested, not quite ready to be so intimate in the open. But it was too late.

Eating the lunch of bread and cheese and olives, tomatoes and prosciutto, drinking cold champagne, Alex analyzed the features of the woman in front of him. She was more beautiful than he remembered simply because having her here in person was so much better than fading, imperfect memories of her. For his age, he hadn’t actually been with that many women. But he thought he had never had such intense, incredible sex in his life. Maybe it had simply been too long.
She had arched eyebrows and gray-gold eyes, long black lashes and high, prominent cheekbones. All traces of girlish youth were gone. Here was a woman in her prime. Her lips were full and curved and she usually smiled with her mouth closed.
“What?” she asked as she realized how intently he was watching her.
“What are people doing in New York right now?” he asked to distract her from his attentive observation.
“Well, let’s see. It is Thursday. About seven in the morning. So people are starting to get out of bed. Some people are already out. The streets are waking up. Give it an hour. Then the rumble starts. The city is alive. Millions of stories played out side by side and unknown by the other. It really is beautiful and amazing.” After rhapsodizing about the love of her life until now, she began describing what a pain in the ass it was and how hard and terrible, the weather and rain and garbage and pigeons and rats and the fucking subways. “There’s filth and trash and ungodly smells and that’s on a good day. There’s honking and hassle and crowds and so many fucking tourists who don’t know which way their ass is. The restaurants are noisy and you have to yell through two hours at dinner. It is lonely and cold and dirty—”
“But you love it,” Alex stated.
“Yeah. I do.” Hope laughed. She stood and dove back into the water. She didn’t want to think about that anymore.
Alex came in after her and they swam around the boat and kissed and floated on the water’s surface. When they boarded, Hope grabbed a towel and went straight into the cabin of the boat, Alex on her heels.
On the bed, the covers stripped back, Alex started at her brow and began a methodical movement with his mouth downward on her body.
“Why did you come back to Mykonos?” Alex asked at her collarbone.
Suspended between pleasure and apprehension, Hope didn’t answer.
“Why?” he pressed.
“Don’t people come back?” She avoided the question. 
 “Yes, all the time.” Alex was at her sternum. He looked up into her eyes. “Lots of times they come from the cruise ships for their day at the beach and then come back. But why did you come back?” He paused his game and moved his mouth near hers.
She really didn’t want to answer. Even though every wish of hers had come true, the thought of saying the words—the truth—terrified her. She couldn’t remember ever being so scared of fucking something up. “Alex.”
“What?” He kissed her. His smooth, hard lips pressed faintly on hers, urging the truth to emerge. He stopped kissing her and propped his head on his elbow. “You want me to say it first.”
“Say what?”
“I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

On Mount Olympus, there was an eruption of exclamations—both cheering and booing. Accusations of interference flew back and forth but it wasn’t against the rules. They all had interfered in many human affairs over the years.
Aphrodite took her son aside and congratulated him. “Well done, dear.”
“I didn’t do it, Mother.”
“What?”
“I never shot the arrow. I didn’t need to. They took one look at each other and fell in love on their own.”

“You couldn’t?” Hope asked.
“No.”
He began kissing her neck, sliding slowly lower down her body as he spoke. “I didn’t know anything about you. You didn’t even pay that day, your friend did. In cash. No way to find out anything. I really could not believe it when I saw you in the lobby the other day. So…why did you come back?”
“Alex. I came back to find you.”
“You did?”
“I kept thinking about you. Months went by. I felt like a lunatic. But here we are.”
“Yes, here we are.” His mouth found its target and moved silkily against her. She gasped and clutched his hair. She felt herself rising up out of her skin in crescendo as waves gently rocked against the boat. He unlocked the door to a new dimension, a secret portal to an unknown world. She felt time and space eradicated and simply existed on a plane of pure, sublime energy. Here there was no thought or language, only feelings of ethereal and perfect release. When Hope thought about that later, she was astonished and amused by the paradox. In the middle of the most fleshly thing you can do, you are released from self and the prison of flesh and become transcendent.
That was a lot to deal with. Coming back down into herself, Hope lay still on the bed. Alex found this all very entertaining, feeling quite happy himself. Men came but it wasn’t like this, a trip to outer space. And it didn’t happen all the time. She wasn’t sure if there were such a thing as varying degrees of female orgasm mentioned in human sexuality books but she might write her own book about it one day if there weren’t.

Three
Athena and Poseidon in their guises strolled along the Acropolis as the sun set over the hills where democracy was born. Both had always loved this city and had competed for the right to be its patron. Poseidon had given a spring, but of saltwater. He had also given the townspeople the horse. Athena had bestowed upon the citizens the olive tree and they had judged hers the superior gift. However, they cured the olives in brine and used the horse all of the time. So Athena sometimes wandered up here with her uncle and enjoyed his company. He had adopted the ways and manners and figure of the twentieth-century playwright Tennessee Williams, complete with Panama hat, walking stick and bushy mustache. “Why would you bet love is required?” Poseidon wanted to know. “I’ve known you since you sprang into existence, Athena. You’ve never been in love. You are powerful, wise, beautiful and strong. You’ve lived your whole life on your terms, on your own. Why would you bet love is required for happiness?”
“You are right. I have never been in love.”
Oh. A wave of inexorable sadness filled his breast. How many times had he been in love? Countless—the number of waves in the sea. He had loved endlessly. He had hated a lot and been angry and shallow and vain and jealous too. But he had loved. And he was happy.
“I’m sorry, niece.”
“It is of no consequence. Wisdom is its own reward.”
Poseidon raised an eyebrow, considering. He draped one arm around her shoulders. “You’ve done a lot of good in the world, my dear.”
Athena smiled sadly. “And that, too, is its own reward.”
The lights of the city were coming on, sparkling like diamonds across the vast, encroaching night. The city was as beautiful in the dark as in the day, each light representing the soul who’d flipped the switch and stood counterpoint to blackness. The famous face which had been stark, beautiful and mesmerizing in life was composed, its mask of invulnerability concealing the turmoil within. She did not know why she was sad. She had chosen this path of wisdom and practicality, claimed those as her birthright. But as with the virgin queens who had lived through the years, there was an inherent loneliness in solitary strength, of standing on one’s own. The desire to be known fully by one heart, one mind, one body in a marriage of souls was the unattainable myth, even for a goddess.

“So you’ve never been married.” Alex held Hope in his arms in the bed below deck a week after she’d returned to Mykonos. Alex was resuming a conversation they had started days ago. Alex had told her his parents had died in a car accident when he was sixteen and his uncle had invited him to work in the hotel Alex’s grandfather had started. But they were constantly interrupting their own revelations with sex in the tradition of every love affair. Each day had been like the last, an ongoing cycle of discovery. Eating and drinking, sailing, sleeping, bathing in sea or shower and exploring the islands together were all that was added. As impulsive and outrageous as her decision to see Alex had been, Hope had succeeded in her midlife crisis to find the essence of life without all the complications we surround ourselves with to pass the time.
Hope shook her head. She didn't really want to talk about her love life but she figured it was probably time to finish the conversation. Might as well get it over with.
“I was in love a long time ago. Twice. In college actually. The first love was foolish and really only a stepping stone to the second one. I loved him with everything that was in me. But he didn’t love me. And that broke my heart. So that is also part of why I moved to New York, to get as far away from my old life as possible. And it worked. I was in love with New York instead of that guy. I went out, dated, had fun, made some great friends. Then about ten years ago, I got into another relationship with someone. His name was Chris. We ended up moving in together. We got engaged. Everything was moving along according to plan. And then one day I realized…”
“What?” Alex prompted.
“He wasn’t who I thought he was. I’d made up this whole persona for him. And it just wasn’t him. It was me. And I was in love with a figment of my imagination. And I realized that wouldn’t work. Marriage is hard, by all accounts. I didn't want to go through with something false, something that wasn’t authentic. Wasn’t true love. I didn’t want to have kids then get divorced along the way—didn’t want to do that to them. My parents were divorced and it sucked.”
They were both silent for a few minutes. Alex asked quietly, “Are you afraid I am a figment of your imagination?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid you are one of mine.”
Hope smiled and kissed the hand she was holding. “Who do you want me to be?”
Alex paused before replying. “My antidote.”
“Alex?”
“Hm?”
She didn’t have anything to say. She just liked saying his name and having him answer. She brushed her fingers over the knuckle of his forefinger, watching her hand move on his. No one had ever wanted her like that. She didn’t even know what that meant yet. Love was as foreign to her as the Greek language with a whole new alphabet that was technically more ancient than her own. Hope had already traveled oceans to get to this place but she wasn't sure where to go from here. She put her trust in Alex for the moment, following his lead as he began kissing her. They could talk more later.

Alex docked the boat at a marina on Naxos and they walked up the hill to one of his favorite restaurants. From here, you could see Mykonos, Delos and beyond. American music played in the background. “I see why you like this place,” Hope commented.
At the table next to them, a younger couple was very drunk. And hilarious. They were speaking in English so Hope couldn’t help listening. Her ears craved English.
She smiled at some dumb thing they said and they caught her eavesdropping, thereby inviting interaction.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?” the man asked. He was fiendishly dark and handsome even with the intense scowl now upon his face.
The girl was giggling. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the wind. She was blonde and tall and absolutely stunning. “Of course she does, D. You’re ridiculous!”
The man laughed and poured wine into his companion’s glass. “Here, you’ll love it,” he then broke protocol and poured some of his bottle into Alex’s and Hope’s wineglasses as well.
Alex raised a leery eyebrow but took a sip and nodded. “Very good.”
“Thank you, my own estate.”
“Cheers,” Alex raised his glass. Now they were all friends. Proceeding to joke and drink and laugh through three more bottles, the evening became very entertaining. D handed Alex a cigar as the coffee was brought.
Ari got Hope smoking with her. Hope hadn’t had a cigarette in three years. It was divine. They were rocking out to a Tom Petty song together.
D motioned at a different couple seated on the terrace below them as he spoke to Alex. “Look at those two…they don’t know what’s going to happen. He’s been plying her with his seduction techniques all night. She is flirting right back but not giving it up so easily. This is the way of the world. The good thing about us is we know we will be—happy—tonight. That is the blessing of marriage, my friend.”
Alex didn’t correct him. “How long have you been married?” Alex asked instead.
“Oh, almost forever. I knew she was my woman the moment I saw her. Destiny, you know. I have never regretted a minute of it.”
Aretha Franklin’s “Dr. Feelgood” started playing. Ari lit another cigarette and enacted the song with her arm draped over Hope’s shoulders. They were both cracking up.
“Look at her. She’s loves this fucking song.” D smiled and poured a little more wine.
“It is good,” Alex agreed. This was the best wine he’d ever tasted.
“You know the actual title? ‘Love Is Serious Business.’”
“Is that right?” Alex knew, but asked anyway.
“Yes. There is a lot of truth in it. Like tonight. Good company!” D clinked glasses again.
Ari had nearly impersonated Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally toward the end of the song.
“Time to go,” D said. “Cheers, mate!” He and Ari walked off together toward the adjacent hotel.
“Think they stuck us with the bill?” Hope laughed. “What characters. They’re Harley and the Joker from Suicide Squad.”
Alex hadn’t seen that movie nor many of the others she often referenced. Apparently, movies were an obsession in American culture, well beyond occasional entertainment the way Alex viewed them. The waiter came up and he and Alex discussed the bill in Greek. Once the waiter left, Hope asked, “What happened?”
“It was just the opposite. They paid for everything.”
“Oh, that was very generous. Nice people.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Alex had his doubts, feeling as if he’d seen an apparition.
Hope and Alex spent the night on the boat, too drunk to sail home. Alex turned on Aretha’s 30 Greatest Hits and proved he wasn’t too drunk for what was important. As they were falling asleep, Alex murmured, “Do you believe in this stuff?”
“What?” Hope whispered back.
“Destiny. Love at first sight. That kind of stuff.”
“Not really. Or I didn’t.”
They fell asleep to the words of “I Say a Little Prayer,” feeling like it had been answered before they’d known they’d said it.

Alex took Hope to meet his daughter. He had been planning this for a few days. He had thought about bringing Eleni to the hotel one day after school. But he decided that wasn’t what he wanted. He thought Hope should meet everybody at once.
So on Friday, ten days after her arrival, Hope was invited to watch Eleni give her spring dance recital after school. Dressed as ladybugs and butterflies, the girls danced around the stage in fits of gracefulness and shyness. Eleni was a pink butterfly in the front on the far right. She was adorable.
Hope watched Alex almost as much as she watched Eleni. The man he was with Hope was overlain with a transparency of paternal love. When it was all over, after much bowing and photography and applause, Eleni came running out and hugged her father. He scooped her up in his arms and squeezed her to him for a moment before turning her to face Hope at her eye level. In Greek, he said, “This is my friend Hope.”
“Nice to meet you,” Eleni said in English.
Hope smiled. “Nice to meet you, Eleni. You dance beautifully.”
“Thank you.” Suddenly shy, Eleni turned and hugged her dad tight. A pregnant woman and a man holding a toddler joined them. They all spoke in Greek while Hope stood there smiling and wishing she could understand a word they were saying.
“This is Althea and David,” Alex introduced the couple. “And Auria,” he included the pouting toddler. “This is Hope.”
Both Althea and David shook her hand and spoke in English to her, making small talk and asking about New York. “But you like Greece?” Althea asked eventually.
 “Oh, yes. It is magical.”
Althea raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. But magic wears off.”
Hope looked startled.
“Or maybe it doesn’t. I am pregnant. Don’t mind me—I say bitter things sometimes,” Althea smiled bleakly.
“Your children are lovely,” Hope retreated to a safe compliment.
“Thank you. We had better head home. Very nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Hope replied. The family moved toward the door.
Eleni ran back and grabbed Hope’s side and gave her a hug. Then Eleni followed after her parents and sister.
“Well, that was interesting,” Hope muttered.
“What do you think?” Alex wanted to know.
 “I think I should learn Greek.”
“Me too,” he said, grinning ear to ear. He grabbed her and hugged her tightly. Then he pulled her behind him to the car. Quite suddenly, Hope was feeling a little too old to play the ingénue love interest. She was supposed to leave in four days. Talking about New York had stirred some remembrance of things past, dogs and responsibilities and friends and accounts and America.
She didn’t mind meeting his daughter and the family. That had been an honor. What she wasn’t loving was the ice cold bucket of reality dumped on her when she realized the situation she was now in.
As was her custom, the answer to reality lie in retreating to an alternate reality. “I think it is time we begin your advanced cinematic education, Alex,” Hope said that evening after dinner. He lived in a small house a kilometer from the hotel. It had one bedroom, a kitchen and bathroom and living room, very similar in size and feel to her apartment in New York. She had already downloaded on her phone one of her favorite movies, The Philadelphia Story. She had watched it so many times over the years that she knew almost every line of the movie. With popcorn and Apple TV remote, they cuddled up comfortably on the couch and spent the next two hours in the world of high society portrayed Hollywood style.
“Look at those two,” Artemis sneered, gazing through the roof where she stood. “What do they know?”
As Cary Grant spoke the line, “I suppose you’d still be attractive to any man of spirit though. There is something engaging about it, this goddess business,” Artemis tossed her head.
“Fools.”

Hope was impressed with her ability to compartmentalize time. For the next two days, she and Alex continued their pattern of staying in her hotel room, on the boat or at his house, spending every moment together. Neither spoke much once their basic stories had been told. They spent hours together in virtual silence, enjoying the sunshine and warmth after a long winter, the waves of the sea either from the beach or on the boat, and hours in bed together. The furious desire had abated but the sex was continually getting better. They couldn’t get enough of each other. In between, they had breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The clock was counting down, hanging like the sword of Damocles over their heads. The morning before she was to depart, Hope and Alex walked from his house to the marina and boarded the boat. They sailed toward Delos which wasn’t far and dropped anchor a few hundred yards from land.
In the two weeks since she’d been here, Hope’s skin had changed from the pale of winter to golden. The sunshine was captured in her hair as well. Alex thought she was even more beautiful than when she’d arrived. Now he knew her every expression, had seen her soften and relax and flourish in the world they created together.
“Hope.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what I think a good relationship is?” Alex asked quite uncharacteristically.
She shook her head.
“It is where each person puts the happiness of the other person ahead of their own.”
“Okay.”
“I think being kind, generous and unselfish ultimately produces the most satisfaction.”
Hope nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Well, do you think you could do that?” Alex wanted to know.
“What?” Hope hadn’t realized he was talking about them.
“You would put my happiness first and I would put your happiness first.”
Hope thought. She had put her own happiness first her whole life. “I don’t know, Alex,” she answered honestly.
He brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. The wind was picking up. The boat began rocking a little.
“Hope, I love you. I am asking you to marry me.”
Hope froze.
She hadn’t considered this was even a possibility. Marriage? After two weeks?
“Alex. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes,” he urged. He pulled a small jeweler’s box from his pocket and opened it. A beautiful solitaire glinted in the light.
Hope knew this was the most important moment in her life. She knew it, but she had no idea what to say. She stared into his brown eyes and then at his mouth. She wanted to reach over and kiss him and hold onto him and never let time go.
But she knew she couldn’t stay here.
“I don’t think I can, Alex.” She looked down at her hands.
He didn’t know why but he had not expected that answer at all. It seemed so obvious to him. “Don’t you love me?” he wondered aloud.
“Yes.” She looked back up, her gray-gold eyes filled with tears. “Yes, I do love you.”
“Then what?” He felt so stupid, like he was the stupidest person on earth. How had he made it through all of these years and survived if he was this stupid?
“I need to go back to New York.”
“Why?” That was not the answer he had expected either.
“I belong there. I have a life there.”
“Your life isn’t tied to a place. It’s here,” he reached over and touched her heart. “And here.” He put his hand on his chest. “What else matters?”
 “So you will come to New York with me?”
Now Alex froze.
“I know. You can’t. You have a daughter.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Why did you?” Hope replied, immediately regretting it.
Alex stood and turned away. He walked over to the rail and looked out at the land. He felt nauseous. The boat, which had always been a sanctuary, now felt small and confining. He raised the anchor and trimmed the sails, heading for home across the choppy water.
Hope felt like something she’d scraped off her shoe. She sat in the bow letting the air wash through her while her mind blanked.
As they pulled into the slip, Alex secured the boat. But before disembarking, he tried one more time, knowing once they set foot on land the course they set in motion was unchangeable. “Remember that movie we watched the other night?”
“The Philadelphia Story?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“What was the word the girl used?”
“I don’t know. Yar?”
“Yes, yar. What did it mean?”
“I don’t remember.” She couldn’t think.
“Yes, you do.”
 “Easy to handle, quick to the helm, fast, bright,” the line suddenly came back to her.
“I know you’re not that girl. I don’t expect you to be yar. But I thought you loved me—”
“I do!” she protested, the tears finally spilling over.
“—Enough. Enough to matter.”
“What does that mean?”
“Obviously I am asking you to give up something you have and that is important to you. But is it more important?”
Hope was really miserable now. “Alex, please—“
“Then why did you come here?” The hurt flashed.
He was right. Every dream of hers about him had come true. And now he was offering her happily ever after. And she wouldn’t take it. “I wanted to see you again.”
“Hot waiter?”
“That’s not fair.”
“All right,” he said. He stepped onto the dock and politely held his hand out to her. Impersonally, he guided her ashore. They walked up the hill. At the crossroads to his house and the hotel, he stopped. “I’m going home, Hope.” Even saying her name caused pain now.
She stood there, wiping away tears. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. This sucked. He watched her impassively, fighting the instinct to wrap her in his arms and cry too. “Alex—” she whispered. His hard, stoic nature that she so loved was his shield now. She could see it as plain as day, like ancient armor displayed in a museum. Hope took a deep breath, stopped crying and straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t think what to say so she did what came naturally.
In New York, the answer is always movement. Keep going. There is a constant drive, a force forward in the city. So she turned and walked away.
Detached, unthinking, she returned to the hotel, packed and showered and slept and dressed and left without checking out. She rode in the taxi to the small airport, boarded the plane, buckled her seatbelt, put on her headphones and closed her eyes. It was over.

Time rushed by like a river in flood. Moments, hours, days, weeks. One thing after another caught in the current, in the cascading river as it flowed ever onward. These were rapids, white water. Finally, time came into a calm pool, reflective and still. In that murky water was a pause, a chance to rest and regroup.
Two weeks after returning from Greece, Hope looked from her living room window out over the rooftops of the world. She was on the twelfth floor on West 77th Street and the blocks south of her were brownstones so she had an open view. The San Remo stood in its majestic glory to her southeast and she could glimpse the park and the Universalist church. The tips of the Chrysler Building and Empire State and H&M were visible. Times Square glowed white against the clouds at night. But now it was morning and the sun was trying to get past the park to the Upper West Side. A light snow had fallen last night, winter battling the calendar as it did every year. To her south and west, Hope could see the Dakota and Time Warner buildings and the Ansonia. It was a lovely view. Hope had lived here for ten years and never grew tired of it, even in the dead of winter. Her apartment building blasted heat all winter long. Hope loved a cozy winter day with nothing more to do than watch the snow fall. Hope used to like to read bestsellers and prize winners. Now she found herself binge watching more often than reading.
In her apartment, she kept alive some tropical plants and a couple of orchids. She also had a goldfish and her two dogs. She had fresh cut flowers from the corner market on her dining table. In the winter, she lit candles and drank tea and read books or watched shows with the dogs curled up next to her. Occasional siren songs of the city drifted up from the streets. On bad weather days she worked from home.
There was a good restaurant on the corner. Starbucks and Shake Shack and a deli were all very close. She didn't have a great bakery nearby and had to walk about five blocks to Orwasher’s but she figured that was for the best.
There was a wonderful bookstore called Book Culture up Columbus from her and a sushi place and Spanish place and plenty of French and Italian restaurants.
Everything was perfect. She had worked hard to set up her life so it was continually progressing yet wonderfully routine. There were seasons. New York was about seasons. Hope wasn’t a huge opera-goer but she managed to see a couple of operas and ballets and classical concerts every year. She went to plays and rock concerts, baseball games and sometimes a hockey game if a friend asked her. She went to parties and dinners and movies and the occasional red-carpet event for her company. She had memberships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMa and the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Historical Society and the New York Botanical Garden. These were helpful in entertaining out of town visitors. Hope didn’t get to clubs anymore and had narrowed her favorite bars to about three. But that was enough. Once spring truly arrived, she spent every day at the park, like everyone else.
But now it meant nothing. April was usually her favorite month but as each day passed, Hope felt like something inside of her was decaying.
She watched the sky turn from blue to gray as the sun failed to make it to her window before the clouds rolled in. She felt her heartstrings plucked like the Chinese instrument on the new age radio station she was listening to. She wanted to cry. But it was impossible to cry. Crying meant she was sad. Sad meant something bad had happened. And if she admitted that then she would have to admit she was wrong. And if she admitted she was wrong, her whole life would fall apart like a house of cards.
She needed to keep it propped up on lies she told herself and denial and staying busy. On routine and familiarity and the constant search of new. If she moved far enough away in time, she wouldn't have to face herself or her broken heart.
Lying in bed at night, the image of Alex’s face with the sun shining on his bronzed skin, his sunglasses, the flash of the rare smile materialized in her mind’s eye, unbidden. The wind and heat, the shine of the white paint on the boat and the sparkle of blue water. His eyes deep brown with gold-tipped lashes, intense, intent, his hard narrow lips that somehow transformed into the on switch for her body.
Hope tried to not think of him. Her day had gone exactly as planned from coffee to bedtime. It had been full and productive, vaguely social, inspiring, creative, physical, profitable. But fuck.
She picked up her phone from the night table and scrolled. The pictures were so beautiful, a glimpse into past time. Was it? There was the idea that nothing is really lost to time. All things are happening simultaneously on different planes. Hope didn’t believe that for a moment and lived according to the time-is-a-river concept. But part of her did still exist in these moments of time, imperfectly captured by a camera, where her heart dwelt unfractured, whole, pulsing with newfound love. Then, like a bad appendix, it had burst, ruptured.
Fuck.
She wanted to go back. Back to that moment on the boat before he asked her and live there and never leave.
Time unfolding, space unfolding. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away. The science fiction writers have explored all of this thoroughly. Fold a piece of paper, one corner matches another. Folding space, folding time. Folding. Hope stared at her favorite photos until her eyes watered and she nearly dropped the phone on her face as she dozed off. Laughing at and slightly hating herself, she put the phone back on the night stand and turned to her stomach. She bunched her pillow up, took a deep breath and fell asleep. Almost.
Happiness as fleeting as the day is only momentary and unable to be captured. It passes like time. Going to bed, we hope for and assume and count on another day tomorrow. And so it is with happiness. We might recover it with the sunrise. We might not.
A cool breeze through the cracked-open window caressed Hope's feet and the nocturnal sounds of the city were the normal lullaby she slept to. She waited for the weight to descend, the heavy pressing that flattened her to the sheets, to the mattress and smoothed her into oneness with them into the land of dreams. But there was a clicking in her mind, a little flash, like the armed security alarm on a car dash. Blink, blink, blink. She looked at the little light and listened to the clicking. What was it? Go away. Time for bed.
The blink and the click resolved into a word: dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Fuck off.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Alex. Alone. Alex.
She missed him.
Hope ignored everything, clung to ignoring, ignorance, willful ignoring, stubborn ignorance and fell asleep.

She left.
Alex couldn’t believe it.
She left.
During the days of sleepwalking through his routine as the season picked up and more guests arrived at the hotel, Alex still couldn’t believe it.
She left.
She had left. She was gone.
It was as if it had never happened.
Alex’s mind was blank most of the time during those weeks immediately following her departure, in shock. The world was empty for him now. He tried to feel used and angry and bitter but mostly he was numb.
And then one day weeks later he went out on the boat to the open sea with no one around.
He did not completely lose his shit. He did not kneel down and cry or pray or scream at the sky. He stood at the boat rail and looked out at the water. He didn’t think about jumping in and drowning himself or drinking himself into a coma. He wouldn’t do that. He was a man. He had a daughter. He owed her and himself the ability to stand upright and take the hammering of life. Life happens to everybody.
But for just a few minutes out here alone he thought of Hope. He brought to life in his mind her body beneath his, her taste against his tongue, her beautiful gray-gold eyes, her lips flushed. He had felt home with her. He had felt un-alone for the first time in his life. And then she had left. Him. She had left him.
And now he was alone again.
The sun was ending its ride across the sky. The golden horses flared their nostrils as they sensed the upcoming horizon. Helios cracked his whip with unnecessary and raucous abandon. Light radiated around him, from him. Descending, the golden chariot reflected against the glimmering ocean, silver flashing against blue. In all the years of island sunshine, it was the first time Alex had seen the god.
“Don’t worry, young mortal,” Helios called out. “The day will come again!”
Trailed by twilight, Alex sailed back to Mykonos in the pink, gold and purple of a world which still held mystery, and comfort in the divine.

Four
Write your own myth. Hope was working on a project about creating your own myth or some such crap. But nothing was going right. She had to finalize details on seven locations for this project and no one was returning her messages or emails. It didn’t help the temperature had dropped twenty-seven degrees overnight and she was freezing. The subway had been delayed and she had spent forty-five minutes on the fucking platform this morning before tripping on the stairs as she exited.
She read the write-up on the project for the fourth time, trying to make sense of it. All the myths we still believe create in us an altered version of reality and shift us away from truth. There is one truth: Love. All forms of love relate back to the one central origin of life.
“Charles!” Hope called out.
“Yes, dear?” Charles popped his bald head in her doorway. He was a single black gay man fifteen years older than she was and one of her best friends.
“What the fuck does this mean?” She showed him the description.
“Nothing. But the production has funding from some foundation.”
“Fantastic.”
 “Listen, I think people are stupid but they are the best we’ve got. You know that.”
 “I know.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t just agree to marry that guy and work from Greece. You should have jumped at the chance.”
“I don’t need this right now, Charles. I am trying to work.”
 “It’s modern times. There is this thing called the internet. You could work from there most of the time, you know. Or we could both retire and let the younglings do the work and we’d reap the profits. What the fuck are we waiting for?” Charles came to sit on the edge of her desk. She knew he was more than half-serious and she didn’t know if she had a good answer for him. “I’m getting older too, like ‘Landslide’ says. I’ve got things to do. Miles to go before I sleep.”
Hope felt her cheeks twitching with laughter. “Charles, what do you want to do?”
“I just told you! Let the little bits run this place, or we work remotely, check in occasionally, come to New York now and again—at least for the good parties—and fuck it all. You go off with your Greek sailor slash hotelier and I will find his long-closeted cousin.”
“He doesn’t have a cousin.”
“Surely a second cousin then. Or I may take the trip to Australia I’ve been dreaming of, go on walkabout.”
“Charles, don’t tempt me.”
 “Why not? When have I ever been an asshole to you? For the last twelve years we’ve gotten in and out of trouble together like Lucy and Ethel. Why would you think I’d be upset if you married him? You deserve happily ever after, Hope.”
“That wasn’t all of it.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. Me, I guess. I don’t know if I am cut out to live in a fantasy world. But today isn’t a good day to ask me that.”
 “Was it fantasy? Or was it real?” Charles cocked an eyebrow at her and stood up. “If you ask me—“
“Which of course I didn’t.”
 “—I think you made a huge fucking mistake.” Charles leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “But what do I know?” he asked as he headed to the door.
Sighing, Hope wished she hadn’t called him in here. What if he were right?

Hope was bitter now. Spring had arrived and with it the traditions of New York after winter. Central Park did indeed become the center of activity as cherry trees bloomed in snow white and pink clouds of blossoms. Crocus and daffodils and tulips whose tenacious green shoots had weeks ago pierced the snow-covered ground now bloomed in pastel colors. The fragrance of hyacinth wafted from corner markets as people bought branches of yellow forsythia and pink quince to bring the spring indoors. But none of this sweetness penetrated Hope’s defenses. She held herself inside the fortress she’d built around her heart, hoping against hope to be rescued by a miracle, by divine intervention.

Hera arrived in New York, toured a couple of museums and caught a Broadway show. Occasionally, people glanced at her. She was beautiful. Her current incarnation as Lana Turner had been a brilliant idea. She enjoyed this body with its seductive curves, petite frame and divinely gorgeous face. Last century they’d honored poets and painters. She’d been Mary Cassatt, not sexy at all. Before that, they’d been revolutionaries. One has to do things to make one’s immortality bearable. The different guises were one of the ways the Pantheon did so.
Hera hadn’t been to New York in a long time, since the Met opened. So much had changed. But it was still the same energy and vitality that drove the place constantly forward. She found New Yorkers to be a strange mix of super finicky and not bothered at all. Hera thought about all of the people who’d lived in this incomparable city and all of the New York stories. The words that shape a story are thoughts from a mind contained in a skull attached to a body which exists for a number of days on this planet. This person woke up and ate and attended physical needs and had a mother and probably feet which walked the ground. This is the commonality. Within this human condition, this person sought to record, report, enact, enable, theorize, poetize their observation, perception and wisdom into a relatable story for the edification or at least entertainment of another. Why? To give meaning to the days and purpose to life, perhaps to leave something behind that elevates one unknown mind into higher thought. Humans build story upon story. Hera looked at the buildings surrounding her and laughed.

On her way home Wednesday evening, Hope stopped into The Milling Room to have an after-work cocktail with Stephanie who had said she needed to talk. Hope was early and Stephanie wasn’t there yet. A beautiful petite blonde in a flower print dress was sitting at the bar. She had wavy platinum hair and beautiful green eyes.
Hope sat two stools away from her, saving the one next to her for Stephanie. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit as each table and the rest of the bar were full. Hope ordered a drink and waited.
The blonde turned to her. “I figured something out today.”
Hope nodded, not replying.
“I saw this book once. When I toured Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house. It was called The Divine Drama of History and Civilization.”
“Okay,” Hope replied.
“Never did get a copy of the book. It’s funny how much knowledge gets lost to time. What if the answers were in that book, what if that guy had figured it all out already?”
“Then what would we do?” Hope finally took the bait. Now she was hooked into conversation with this woman. However, the woman reminded her of someone. And seemed mostly harmless.
“Ah, good question!” The blonde waited as Hope’s drink was delivered and raised her glass. “Yamas!”
Startled by the Greek salute, Hope toasted the stranger and took a drink. “Well, what did you figure out?”
“Pardon?”
“You said you figured something out today.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I did,” the woman remembered. “I figured New York out.”
“All right. Let’s hear it.”
“You know how there were all those cool kids in school. But then all of them later say oh, I was anorexic or depressed or struggling with my sexuality or whatever?”
“Uh, okay.”
“New York is just like that. There is this mystique that is really a mass deception. New Yorkers tell themselves—and believe—that they are the coolest and most important people on the planet. But they’re really not so different than everybody else.”
“Okay. So you’re not from here?”
“Nope. Not from here.” The woman took a drink of the new one delivered by the bartender.
“Oh. You look familiar. I thought I might have known you from somewhere.”
“I hear that a lot. You know that song ‘Popular’ in Wicked?”
“Maybe.”
The woman started singing it. Hope looked around for another place to sit. The woman stopped, “Well, that is what I think New York is like. Everyone wants to be popular.”
Where the hell was Stephanie?
“But you know what is really important?” the woman asked.
“What? True love?” Hope challenged sarcastically.
“Yes!” the woman shouted. “But what I was going to say is negative space. Dark matter. What isn’t there at all.”
Hope took another sip of her drink and pulled out her phone to see if Stephanie had texted. Nothing. She ordered another drink and continued to wait, hoping this conversation wouldn’t devolve any farther.
“Like batik.”
“Batik?” Hope repeated.
“Yeah. It’s what they don’t dye that makes the design. Same with some ancient Greek pottery. It is what isn’t there that shapes what is.”
Hope thought about what wasn’t there and only one word came to mind: Alex. And Stephanie, in the short-term.
The beautiful woman continued her rambling. “All the sky is past. And dark matter makes up much of the universe, according to that Tyson guy. But I think if you really want to figure out what shapes life by not being there, you have to be a minimalist. Not clutter up space with distractions and complications. Simple. Then you can see what is there and what isn’t there. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“Yes, lots of sense.” Thank God, Stephanie was coming in the door. Finally. “Nice talking to you,” Hope said as she left the bar for the table which had opened up and Stephanie was taking.
“Sometimes I think you are really lucky, Hope, not to have kids,” Stephanie started right in as Hope set down her drink on the table. “Because here is the thing they don’t talk about, people don’t talk about. With teenagers. It isn’t always that they do drugs or get pregnant or have rotten boyfriends. A lot of times it is the small things. I feel like my current job is to be a wet blanket. Smother dreams. And that sucks. I feel like my kids are so fast and far ahead of me that I am constantly just a drag to them. And that sucks too.” Stephanie inhaled a deep breath and continued her monologue before Hope had time to think of a response. “I am aging. You know me, you’ve known me forever, I used to be beautiful and sexy and fun. A rebel, a party girl and a badass. Now I am…old. But not really old. I still remember and I still want to be myself. But I am this smelly wet dog blanket instead. That is my role in my family, in my life. It was fun when it was layettes and Easter dresses and birthday parties.”
Hope turned to see if she could go back to her conversation with the lunatic stranger instead of her crazy friend. But the other woman was gone. Hope longed for the easy silences between Alex and her. There were too many words in the world. Hope rallied and tried to be helpful. “What about prom dresses and senior announcements?”
“Nope. You can’t cheer me up. Just let me wallow a little,” Stephanie waved her hand dismissively. “It is a bunch of small disappointments and inadvertent arguments and criticism—both ways—that is constantly rotting away the love, that extreme love I felt for them when they were my babies.” A waitress came and took Stephanie’s order for a New York Moll. “I’ve spent much of my life trying to appease and please people who are never satisfied. Now I’ve entered the strange wilderness of middle age. As the kids grow and leave, who are you without your youth?” The waitress brought Stephanie’s cocktail and she immediately drank half. “Motherhood turns out to be a refiner’s fire and what’s left is a bit ashen, and burned.” Stephanie finished her drink in two long sips and ordered another one.
“Rough day?” Hope asked.
Stephanie shot her friend an unappreciative look. “I might not get done everything I wanted to accomplish in my life. It’s hitting me like a ton of bricks. There is opportunity cost—and opportunities lost. Gone. Vanished. Evaporated during episodes of Seinfeld and 30 Rock after a long day and the dinner dishes.”
Hope had heard enough. “What haven’t you gotten done? I mean, I have known you forever, like you said. You wanted to get married and have babies and you’ve been a wonderful mother. The kids are great. They are growing up—and you can’t smother them. You need to put their happiness first and let them go.”
“I know.” Stephanie drank the second cocktail. “But it’s hard. I thought I knew what I was doing. But now I feel like maybe I should have made different choices.”
“Steph. You didn’t like your job working for that asshole stock broker, remember? What else did you want to do?”
“Leave some sort of legacy. Find some way into immortality. Be remembered.” Stephanie was predisposed to talk with her hands and alcohol amplified the desire. Hope leaned back on her barstool as the gesticulations became increasingly animated. “But I’ve figured out there are only two ways to be remembered: by history or by family, and that is only to the second generation.”
“So you want to go down in history?”
“No, I realize that’s not going to happen. So I must focus on being remembered by my family and then that can only be for kindness or cruelty—love, or the lack thereof. And that will only be by my children and grandchildren. Great-grandchildren don’t remember. Perhaps you can leave them some financial legacy but that is often squandered.” Stephanie sucked the dregs of her drink and contemplated ordering a third one.
“So what are you worried about?”
“I am afraid they will only remember me as a nagging bitch who doesn’t like to cook anymore.”
The waitress came back by and Hope ordered appetizers for them while Stephanie dealt with some texts from her daughter. “Everything all right?” Hope asked when Stephanie looked up to resume their conversation.
“Yeah. Ava needed some money for the field trip her high school is taking tomorrow and I transferred some into her account. It’s fine.”
“Well, there you go. You’re still helping her solve her problems.”
Stephanie shrugged. “I guess.”
“It’s different now. Things change.”
“But what’s left? There’s this long, open road of the future and I hate taking the back seat in my own life.”
“Don’t look at it like that. Look at it as negative space. What isn’t there is as important to the design as what is. Like batik. And then enjoy your freedom.”
“Like you do?” Stephanie was in earnest. She admired and sometimes envied Hope’s life. Stephanie’s phone lit up on the table. Hope could see “THANK YOU! You’re the best! I love you, Mom!!!” with a bunch of heart emojis.
“Yeah. Just like me.”

The tourist season was picking up at the hotel but they had increased their staff. So far the three new employees had proven very reliable. Alex spent as much time as he could with his daughter this spring. She was so beautiful. And although Eleni loved him very much, she was happiest with her sisters and mother and stepfather. She was so excited about her new sister Chloe and she constantly described how she helped her mother with different things. 
 “You’re glad about the baby then, Eleni?” Alex asked.
“Yes, I love helping Mama with the baby. It’s my favorite thing ever!”
“You don’t miss getting more attention?”
Eleni tilted her head to the side. “I think I get more attention now. Because Mama likes me helping her, too,” Eleni smiled.
Alex dropped her off at home after their ice cream date and watched as Eleni ran to check on the baby. “How’s it going?” Alex asked Althea.
“Great. Chloe is so much easier than Auria was. I feel like I can finally catch my breath.”
“Well, you look like you can actually breathe now that you’re not pregnant anymore,” Alex smiled.
“How are you doing? Any word from Hope?”
The smile left his face and Alex shrugged.
“Alex.”
“What?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Gee, thanks, Althea. That’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. She made you happy.”
“She left.”
“We will be here.”
“I gotta go. Working tonight.”
Althea came and kissed him on each cheek. “Just think about it.” Alex hugged her with one arm and called goodbye to Eleni. She ran out and squeezed his leg. “Bye, Papa. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said to her back as she ran away to play with the baby and Auria again.
Falling into bed exhausted that night, Alex drifted off to sleep within moments. Dreaming, Alex wandered in memory to a shore not far from his home. He could see the face of a young man he’d met once twenty years ago. Blond and blue-eyed, the kid had been a youth like himself. It was right after Alex’s parents had died. Alex never knew the kid’s name. But he had rescued Alex. Alex had swum out as far as he could, not caring if he had the strength to swim back. He didn’t care about anything anymore. His parents had driven him crazy with their nagging and shouting but now they were gone.
This young man had found Alex drowning and hauled him to shore. Alex had never known where he came from or how he found him. They sat on the beach while Alex recovered and didn’t talk.
Eventually, Alex fell asleep and when he woke up the young man was gone. Alex was on Delos. He found the ferry back to Mykonos, talked his way onto the boat and went home. That was when his uncle had asked him to start working at the hotel with him and what Alex had been doing ever since.
Alex woke up and stared at the beams of his ceiling in the moonlight. That had happened, he remembered. He hadn’t wanted to live anymore. Life was too painful and empty. As the years passed, Alex had filled each day with work and sailing and now Eleni but he had compressed all emotion down into the BIOS of the microchip and then unplugged the machine.
Hope had restarted him. Why had she left?
“Why has she left?” Alex heard someone say.
Startled, he sat up and looked around the room. There was no one there. It must have been a voice inside his head.
Alex thought about the question. Why had she left? She had said she loved him. He believed that was true. They had made love so many times it was impossible to believe otherwise. No one, not even an American, could be so false.
She said she had to go back to New York. Why?
He thought about it. What did he know of her life there? She was a partner in a business. She had two dogs. What else?
He suddenly realized he knew very little about her life there. And he hadn’t bothered to find out, caught up in the selfish chaos of being in love and a little sex-crazed.
He had asked her to put his happiness first, promising to put hers first. And at the first test, he thought she’d failed him. But, really, he’d failed her equally.
“Exactly,” he heard the same voice say.
“Who’s there?” Alex asked, feeling ridiculous. There was only moonlight and night air, the sounds of cicadas and waves. Listening, Alex thought he heard the sound of someone singing outside, fading into the distance. Shaking off the strange feeling, Alex opened his laptop and started trying to figure out how to get to New York. He didn’t even have a passport.

Hope was struggling to move forward, feeling as if the world were made of mud. Mud people. “The land and the man are the same: all dust,” the Athenian tour guide’s words echoed in her mind.
Walking in the park one weekend, Hope sat down on a bench deep in the Ramble. After a few minutes, an old lady sat beside her. “I hope you don’t mind if I rest a bit here, dear. No other benches around.”
“Of course not,” Hope replied. “I can get going.”
“No, no, please stay a while.”
Hope shrugged and stayed put.
“You know, I’ve lived in New York almost fifty years,” the woman said. “I came here because you can be alone in the midst of millions.”
“That’s true.”
“I like my privacy.”
“Me too. Who doesn’t?”
The old lady nodded. “Fifty years go fast, believe it or not. And here I am, alone, just as I wanted.”
Hope wished she’d left five minutes ago.
“Are you happy?” Hope asked. “That’s what is important.”
“Is it? Maybe happiness is overrated. Maybe just getting by is what is important.”
Hope felt like she’d been slapped.
A jogger ran by them both. He circled back. “Anyone ever tell you you look exactly like Greta Garbo?” he said to the old lady before going on his way.
The woman’s gray eyes were merry. “Not too often.”
Hope looked at her phone. Noon on June 20th.
“It’s not too late,” the old lady remarked.
“Too late for what?”
“Whatever it is that will make you happy, dear. Think about it. Wisdom is more valuable than money. The art of living well requires much wisdom. And you forgot the very first lesson. First say to yourself what you would be and then do what you have to do.”
Hope checked her phone again. 12:02 on June 20th. Two minutes worth of wisdom was too much. “I’ve got to go.”
“Goodbye, dear.”
Hope strode briskly down the path toward her house.
“Sometimes you have to just dive in!” she heard the old lady call after her.
The words echoed against the boulders Hope was walking between and resonated in some deep chamber of her heart. She remembered diving naked off the boat into the water. That moment of lift, toes against the wood, free falling through balmy air into the waiting water. Barely even a splash. The silken feeling of the water against her bare skin. To dive deep, turn and kick, then emerge knowing such things were possible and survivable and incredibly fun.
A friend had an extra ticket to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Central Park. Hope had loved Shakespeare for many years after her class had done that very play back in fifth grade.
She’d forgotten the play was set in Greece.
Under a full moon on a perfect evening, Hope sat next to Celeste and listened to the age-old banter and romance and tried not to come apart at the seams. By the last scene, her longing for her own love was ripping her to shreds, torn by her heart and her mind. Sitting in the audience of hundreds of people, the set’s twinkle lights against the greenery, Oberon and Titania dancing in the moonlight, the three Athenian couples’ happily-ever-afters, the play within the play that sent up Romeo and Juliet created in Hope a paralyzing loneliness. Her love for Alex overwhelmed her. She knew she would have to do something about it.

Alex landed at JFK. That had been okay, the plane ride. Not too bad. Alex realized he had rarely been scared in his entire life. He had been born on Mykonos. He had gone to school with all of the other island kids. His parents had died. He had nearly drowned and been rescued by the strange young man. He had worked in the hotel and finished high school and dated most of the different local girls over the years. He had bought his boat twelve years ago. Since then, he had been caught in three different storms where he wasn’t sure he’d survive but he hadn't been scared, simply fatalistic. Over the course of his life, he’d been annoyed and angry and frustrated and lonely and happy and drunk and euphoric. But he’d almost always had a modicum of control over his life, except for those storms at sea. During those times, he’d been at the mercy of fate.
But perhaps he had always been at its mercy.
As the plane had taken off, Alex had felt his stomach rise to his throat and his heart stop beating. But then the plane had leveled and the flight attendant brought him a drink and nobody else seemed petrified. So Alex had tried to relax.
After nine hours, as the plane descended in American airspace, Alex felt reasonably confident he could do this again.
He followed his plane-mates toward baggage claim, even though he hadn’t brought more than a carry on. Once there, he saw a sign for ground transportation and walked that way. There was a line for taxis. Alex got in the line.
Eventually, he climbed into a yellow cab and gave the driver Hope’s address.
Alex had been to Athens many times and had seen traffic before. But when the skyline of Manhattan appeared in the distance, Alex’s eyes widened. Was it real? It seemed impossible.
The Egyptian cab driver wove, inserted, honked and finally made his way onto the bridge. The city came ever closer. Soon, they were on the East Side and then crossing the park. The cab driver came to a stop next to the natural history museum. “This good?”
“Uh, sure,” Alex replied. As fast as he could, he tapped the buttons on the screen and inserted his card into the machine. “Thanks.”
He opened the door on the left and was immediately honked at.
“Other side,” the driver pointed.
Alex climbed out of the right side of the cab and retrieved his suitcase from the trunk. He waited until traffic cleared and then crossed the street. The awning said 52. This was it.
Alex hauled his small suitcase into the lobby and was stopped by a doorman. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Hope Sanders.”
Without saying another word, the doorman picked up his phone and dialed. “No answer,” he said in a moment. “I’ll try her cell.”
Alex waited. The lobby was very spare: beige marble, two gray velvet chairs, a gilt mirror and blue-gray Persian rug. Two elevators waited behind him but without the doorman’s permission Alex wasn’t going anywhere. A wall of one hundred mailboxes stood on the opposite wall and a large painting of Central Park was on the fourth wall.
“She’s not picking up. We can try again in a few minutes. She expecting you?”
Embarrassed, also a new feeling for Alex, he shook his head. “No, not really. I can go check into my hotel and come back.”
“Okay,” the doorman was actually quite friendly. “You want to leave a message for her?”
“No. I will just try later.”
The doorman came around the counter and held the door for Alex to leave and a couple with a Boston Terrier to enter the building. The doorman was rather excited. Hope had been a resident here longer than the eight years Rafael had had this job. She had been awfully melancholy lately. Maybe this good-looking out-of-towner would cheer her up.
Alex walked two blocks down West 77th Street to Broadway and turned left for a block. He had reserved a room in the closest hotel he could find. He checked in, reeling from the street noise and sirens and horns and subway rattling beneath his feet. He had been jostled, bumped, prodded and passed by a hundred people on the short walk to the hotel. This was more than being out of his element. It was a trip to a whole new world, literally and figuratively.
Like most Greeks, he had relatives who had made the transition. His great-grandfather’s two brothers had emigrated a hundred years ago. It was strange to think this enormous city had been built by people leaving flocks and farms to learn how to construct skyscrapers and carve subterranean transport.
Alex lay down on the hotel bed and fell fast asleep. He had never been out of his time zone before.

Hope showered and dressed and prepared to meet Kenneth and Felipe at the Beacon Theater for a comedy show. Kenneth was determined to get Hope laughing again. After the Greece debacle, Hope had been hopeless, Kenneth said. Felipe routinely wondered why he bothered with her. Kenneth argued she felt like his little sister. Shrugging, not caring, Felipe let another of Kenneth’s idiosyncrasies roll of him like water off a duck’s back. Loving Kenneth was like loving a cactus, possible but occasionally prickly.
Hope had worked until seven-thirty, taken the train home and then the elevator upstairs while the evening doorman was talking to another resident. She changed as quickly as she could because now she was in a hurry to be on time. Donning a black jumpsuit and sandals, Hope realized she’d misread the clock in her state of distraction and was now ten minutes late. Feeling like an idiot, she hurriedly applied her lipstick and headed out the door.
She hurried down 76th Street in the summer twilight. The show was starting in four minutes with no late seating. Kenneth was going to kill her. She only had two blocks to go. Suddenly, someone grabbed her arm and she opened her mouth to scream as she hauled back her other arm to fight.
“It’s me,” Alex said, holding up his hand to fend off the impending blow.
“Holy fuck, Alex, what in the hell are you doing here? You scared me to death!” Her phone was blowing up with texts from Kenneth. “Hang on.” She texted Kenneth. Can’t make it. Explain later. “He’s going to be pissed.”
“Who?”
“Oh, my friend. Doesn’t matter. What are you doing here?” They stood under a streetlight as the dark fell. A rat ran across the street to a pile of garbage on the corner. People kept jostling past them as they stared at one another.
Alex stammered, trying to find the right words.
Impatiently, Hope touched his elbow. “Come on. Let’s get off the street.” 
 They walked around the corner to a bar on 75th. “Do you like beer?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” Alex agreed. This was the kind of bar that mostly served craft beer.
“Two Other Half porters,” Hope ordered and moved to the pub table once served. It was a hipster dive bar with board games and an aquarium and everything was rather sticky, Alex noted.
She raised her hand and poked his arm with her index finger. “Are you real?”
“Yes. Is this place?”
 “What? This bar?”
“No. New York.”
“Of course it is real! What are you doing here? I thought you never left Greece.”
“I never have before. I got a passport and I came to see you.”
“You did?”
It had never once crossed her mind that he would do this. She didn’t know why. She had always thought to see him again she would go back to Greece. Alex out of Greece was much different.
He looked…different.
Smaller, maybe.
“Well, have you eaten?” she asked.
Alex shook his head.
“I have no plans now. Let’s have some dinner,” she smiled.
“All right.”
They finished their beers and walked a few blocks to a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant Hope liked. It was noisy and crowded like every other restaurant they’d passed walking up Amsterdam Avenue. As they waited for a table, Alex moved to Hope’s side and yelled in her ear to be heard. “Is there anywhere quiet we can go to talk?”
“Sure, later. If we want to eat dinner though, this is pretty normal for a Friday night.”
Hope was buying herself time. After the beer and a cocktail and her share of a bottle of Malbec, she felt more prepared to deal with the heart attack he’d given her.
Neither spoke much during the meal; they weren’t the type to yell personal revelations at the top of their lungs in public simply to be heard. “Let’s go back to my place,” Hope spoke over the noise of the crowd as the waiter brought the bill. Alex reached forward to pay but Hope had already handed her card and the bill back to the waiter. Alex nodded and finished his coffee. He had never had Chinese-Peruvian food before.
They walked, not touching, the few blocks back to her building. Hope sailed past the doorman with Alex into the elevator. They rode to the twelfth floor and turned right, walking down a narrow hallway. Hope unlocked her door and her little dogs started barking with all of their might. Hope picked one up under each arm and talked to them. The city shone outside of her enormous living room window, a skyline of white light.
Eventually the dogs stopped barking and she put them down. They went over to sniff and jump on Alex while she flipped on the lights.
“Please have a seat,” she offered, pointing at the sofa. “Lulu and Jack stop it. Come here.” She walked in the kitchen and the dogs followed her as she gave them treats. “Would you like some water or something? I have some wine,” Hope called to him.
“Nothing, thanks.”
He heard her getting glasses down from the cabinet and setting them on the counter. She came back with two glasses of ice water.
“I’m so thirsty. I think that chicken was salty,” she commented as she entered the living room and put the glasses of water down on an end table. She sat in the chair perpendicular to the sofa and looked at him. The two dogs jumped up and sat on either side of her. She pet one absent-mindedly.
“How was your flight?”
“Fine.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Hotel NY on Broadway and 76th.”
“Oh, good. It’s nice and not far.”
“Yeah.”
Her phone was going off again. She texted Kenneth that Alex was in town and that she had to go.
Alex watched her on her phone against the backdrop of the city skyline and was unnerved. This was her. The woman he’d pined over for months. Who had a whole life here he knew nothing of.
“Hope?”
She looked up.
“You still love me?”
Her face softened. “Yes.”
“I love you too. I think about you all of the time. I am sorry for—” he cut himself off.
“For what?”
“For blaming you. I can see I was wrong.”
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
He looked around the room, at her paintings and books and plants and furniture. “I thought you left me. But you really just went back to you.”
Hope nodded once. “It’s not the same though.”
“For me either.” He opened his arms at the same time she came off her chair into them. “I missed you,” he breathed into her hair, her perfume enveloping him.
“I missed you too, so much.”
Kissing her was like coming home. She wrapped her arms around his neck and melted into him. Being together was enough for the moment.
Hope went with Alex the next day to check out of the hotel and bring his suitcase back to her place. She introduced him to Rafael and the other doormen and said Alex was staying with her for a while. She never asked him how long he was staying and he didn’t say anything about going back to Greece. Hope had fun taking him around New York and trying to figure out if he liked it at all. As usual, he showed little reaction. They went to a Yankees game, poked around the shops in the Village, walked in the park. They met her friends at Pier One and went dancing at Damrosch Park. She bought tickets for a schooner cruise up the Hudson leaving from Chelsea Piers.
Hope watched Alex as the boat sailed uptown. Could he be happy in New York? Or was he tied to Greece, not only because of his daughter but because he was part of the land, all dust? What did that make her? From this nations of misfits and city of loners, where did Hope belong in the world?
All of her friends voted for her to go live in Greece with her hot man and simply enjoy life. But this wasn’t a democracy after all. It was up to her. Alex had asked her when he proposed if she would put his happiness first and offered to put hers first.
She had felt and had been a part of New York for twenty years. But the last few months had taught her that she was not necessary. It was like that quote about dying: You have been asked to leave the party and the party will continue without you. It was hard on one’s vanity.
So when the council of her friends wanted her to go, it was another blow to her ego. Losing her identity as a New Yorker or at least sacrificing her sense of self was part of what love required from her. Is love required for happiness? What does love require?
To be happy, sacrifice self for others.
Hope knew twenty years after her death no one would remember her. She also realized being controlling, selfish and demanding—stock attributes of her life—was the antithesis of being yar. Drinking champagne on the deck of the Adirondack as it sailed up the river, Hope finally relented. She had committed to the preservation of herself since she’d been a lonely little girl. Decades ago in the dingy apartment her mother had left her in alone to go drinking, Hope had vowed survival. And she had survived. She had clawed and clung and fought and thought her way through the labyrinth to this moment. And it was time to let go. She had time left, the rest of her life to learn how to give herself away.
Is love required for happiness? Obviously. Whether it is love for your child or friends or community or partner, love is required. To live without the concept of caring for another produces only despair. Love is required for a human to be whole. And it has to be real, not a television show or other fantasy. You have to get dirty and risk being hurt. The fear of the pain cannot isolate you. Insulating yourself by distraction will not cut it.
“You know, you ruined sailing for me,” Alex murmured.
“I did?”
Alex nodded.
“You ruined New York for me,” she smiled. “There are all of these people who are not you. It used to be this city where anything could happen. But for months, I have felt like the world was empty and meaningless.”
“The heartbreak was the only real thing.” Alex added.
“And then you fixed it. Like magic.”
“It’s us. We’re the magic.”
“Alex, I have something to tell you.” Hope took her phone, opened an app and showed him a plane ticket to Athens.
“You were coming back?”
“Of course. I had to.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s almost July,” Hope answered. “I have to go somewhere. And where else would I go?”
That was good enough.

EPILOGUE
Hera sat next to Zeus on her throne and smiled. “No matter how virile—or the opposite—all men come from women. That is proof, dear husband.”
“Proof of what?” Zeus thundered.
“Women are strong enough to rule. But more importantly, women are strong enough to keep the balance. In order to do that, there must be equal strength of the two sides. The female keeps the world in balance. What you mistakenly perceive as weakness is truly strength. It is much more difficult to hold such power, to be the very source of life and not be violent and forceful. How much more strength is required for self-control than giving in to base desires?”
“Is that what I do, wife?”
“I stay my hand. I keep balance in the world. Woman holds the power of life and death at the cradle. And my will guides her actions. To stay the hand when a simple act could prevent future harm, hurt, war, killing, oppression, sin, pain, evil requires much love—and faith that love can change the heart of man to righteousness.”
“You couldn’t do that, destroy man in the cradle.”
 “Never confuse couldn’t with wouldn’t. The power I have is as strong as yours but rather than demonstrate its might through tempests of destruction, I choose to show it through love. Gentleness, mystery, beauty, intimacy, compassion, patience and devotion are the tools I use to create life—and love, ubiquitous and innocuous, rare and devastating. Love is required for happiness. Self-sacrifice is required for love. Happiness requires self-sacrifice. These are all intertwined. There is no who to hate and who to love. Love all. Love is all. Love is required.”
“Isn’t that what we were quarreling about? Weren’t you unhappy because you thought I was in love with someone else?” Zeus reminded her.
“You jumped to that conclusion. And I never bothered to try to change your mind. I thought we might enjoy some diversion.”
“Hera, my love, what would I do without you?”
 “You would be awfully bored.”