Free A Cup of Friendship by Deborah Rodriguez Page B

arranged the cookies and pastries on platters, Yazmina set the tables, and the windows rattled on their hinges. Whistling drafts came through the caulked edging of their casements, and it seemed only a matter of time before the roof blew off and the house lifted up into the sky.
    Jack had confirmed that Dr. Ramita Malik would come and speak about her work. So Sunny had gone to the bazaar to buy poster board and tempera, and made dozens of signs that she took to the Women’s Ministry, the hospital, the schools, the French House, the UN, the American Embassy, and the other guesthouses and compounds—everywhere she knew where female foreigners lived, worked, and gathered—and pleaded with people to put them up. She’d thought about emailing her women friends, but they’d all left Kabul over the past few months. Sunny had never been one to need or want more than one or two close friends at a time, and really had to know someone well before confiding in them. Her Kabul friends—Chris, the schoolteacher from South Africa; Ellen, a cousin of a cousin of an old friend who had been in town studying Dari; and Suzanne, whom she’d met on her very first day in Kabul, and who ran a beauty school—had all left. Kabul was a temporary stop or a momentary adventure for all but the stalwart or foolhardy, of which Sunny realized she was the latter. Recently she’d felt a little lonely, and not only because Tommy had been away so long this time, but because she didn’t have someone to talk to with the kind of shorthand that only a close friend understands. A look, a raised brow, a down-turned mouth.
    It wasn’t that men weren’t invited to the evening talk. It was just that Kabul was such a world of men, a place where women’s concerns and voices were secondary at best, so why not give women a place and a reason to come to hang out and talk and just be together? The more she thought about it, the more excited she was about the idea. Wednesday nights for women: food, drink, and something to think and talk about.
    The coffeehouse was ready, and hopefully Jack would show. He wasn’t a woman, but he had the heart of one. She hadn’t seen him since he’d made the offer to pull in Dr. Malik, and it made her realize that she too often took him for granted. He was one of those people who make others feel safe and comfortable, make them sit up a little straighter and feel good about themselves.
    The front door opened with a whoosh of wind from outside. It wasn’t Jack. But it was people, and Sunny was glad for that. One, surprisingly enough, was Petr, a tall, gorgeous Uzbek whom she’d met at a party last year at L’Atmosphere—or “L’Atmo,” as the regulars called it, the French nightclub that hosted the Eurotrash, the ex-pats, the wealthy and the wannabes, the drug dealers and the warlords. In short, it was a place where she didn’t belong, but not because they didn’t accept her. She just didn’t want to associate with those types anymore. When Tommy first left, they were all she had. But then she came to realize that they were the same people she had wanted to get away from in the States, only in Arkansas they wore cowboy boots instead of Hugo Boss and carried .38s instead of Uzis.
    Petr was spiffed up and decked out, all raffish charm, with a cashmere scarf around his neck and a Persian lamb jacket, carrying a Porsche man bag in one hand and talking on his cellphone with the other. With him was one of those women who could wear baggy pants loaded with pockets, scruffy hiking boots, a baggy sweater under an oversized safari jacket, and a scarf to cover her head, and still look glamorous. Her face was strikingly beautiful, with pale skin, large black eyes, and a wide mouth. As the woman took off her outer clothes, and then the baggy sweater to reveal a tight T-shirt, one couldn’t help but notice how petite she was, with slim legs and a tiny waist that made her big boobs look even bigger—Petr’s weakness, if Sunny