The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

F O C U S O N F S F I C T I O N T HE R OADS A RE C LOSING 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 ow did I let her burrow so far into me that nearly 40 years later she still lingers just beyond the daylight, curling around my mind like tendrils of sweet cigar smoke, distracting me with the soft clink of ice cubes in her sweating glass of gin and tonic? The thing is, I never should have spoken to her the first time. She was not my type, not part of my plan. Oh yes, my plan. Finish my master’s in international relations, pass the Foreign Service exam, hustle my way to the top, marry the right girl —which I did, but it didn’t last. I married even better the second time — the daugh- ter of a former ambassador — but that didn’t last either. I got my own embassy, too, a small one in Africa — but even that minor victory could not dislodge the memory of her that I will forever savor and regret. So you’re curious about her, are you? Order an- other drink and I’ll tell you the whole story. This is a long flight, and I assure you the movie is a bore. I remember how miserable I was that long-ago Satur- day morning in December — suffering from a perennial weekend gloom that was rapidly becoming a bad habit. I was 25, single, on my first overseas tour of duty in Asuncion — a newly minted political officer issuing nonimmigrant visas. I had degrees fromGeorgetown and Johns Hopkins. I tested at a 4/4 in French! Why, in God’s name, did the State Department make me learn Spanish and bury me in the consular section of this South American backwater? My air conditioner had given out three days ago. It was 6 a.m. and already 85 degrees inside my house. The early morning rain hammered on my tin roof. A N IMPROBABLE LIAISON THAT DIDN ’ T FIT INTO HIS MASTER PLAN HAUNTS AN AGING DIPLOMAT . B Y P ATRICIA M C A RDLE H Patricia McArdle was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Para- guay from 1972 to 1974. After service as a U.S. Navy of- ficer in Morocco from 1974 to 1977, she attended the Thunderbird School of Global Management, receiving her MBA and then joining the Foreign Service in 1979. She re- tired in 2006 after tours of duty in South Africa, Barba- dos, France and Afghanistan. Since retirement, she has been promoting the use of solar cookers in the developing world. She is currently completing a novel based on her year at a British Army–run Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. This story won first place in the Journal ’s 2009 Foreign Service fiction contest.