Turkish Delight - a preview

"Hi, Jill!"

I shifted on my chair and got a better grip on my cell phone.

"Tina! I thought you had decided to move to Istanbul!"

She chuckled. "Didn't I think about it. Listen..."

"Must have been fun."

"Yeah, listen... can I bum a place on your couch for the night?"

This was weird. "What happened?"

"Nothing, just... Can I? Would you ask your mother...? Just for tonight..."

"Mom's away. Yeah, sure, but you're worrying me. Whatever happened Tina?"

"You're just great! See you in a while!"

And she hung up on me.

I stared for a moment at the cell.

Tina crashing on my couch for the night? I turned and stared at myself in the mirror. Disbelief was painted on my face.

I had been knowing Tina since forever. Both only daughters of single mothers, both more into books and old movies than into boys and pop stars, we had struck a friendship in fourth grade, and kept going from there. And now that we were both twenty, we were still close friends.

I slipped the Holy Sophia postcard from the mirror frame, and re-read the "Wish you were here!" scrawled in the back in Tina's neat handwriting.

The postcard had arrived last week, but Tina had not.

"She's staying another week," her mother had told me when I had called to get the news.

Unusual, considering what an obsessive planner Tina was, but Josephine was not worried, so why should I be? And now, Tina was back, and she needed a place to sleep. This WAS weird!

I stroked the phone keyboard. Should I call Josephine and get from her what the heck was happening?

I was debating the pros and cons of this line when my doorbell rang. I checked the watch. Less than five minutes. Tina had called me from her home.

I opened the door.