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He took Serbia and Montenegro.  She claimed Macedonia.

“That’s worth Albania and Bosnia,” he said.  She shrugged an assent. 

“What about Greece?”

Their eyes met.  She thought of the white wildflowers on Mount Parnassus in April.  Fingers burnt by roasted chestnuts in newspaper cones on the Athens streets.  The two of them mimicking the poses of every statue in the museum at Olympia. 

“You can have it,” Samantha offered finally, “if I get Italy.”

He inhaled audibly.  She knew what he was thinking.  Dizzy from sweet Orvieto wine on the streets of Sienna, stomachs full of white truffle fettuccine, filming the fifth episode of Sam and Samantha Wander the World.  Sun setting like a radioactive peach, bathing tile roofs in orange light.  Their first kiss, camera forgotten as he pressed against her in a nameless alley.  On the editing screen, she’d looked like an angel, given wings by the wind-billowed sheets of a laundry line slung from one building to another.  They’d kept a printout of the shot in their luggage for years. 

“Fine.  I’m taking France.”

“The U.K.,” she countered quickly.  He looked skeptical.  “London is mine,” she insisted.  As if she wasn’t the one living in their Kensington flat.  As if he’d even liked the city before she introduced him to the jukebox at Bradley’s on Hanway Street.  “And you’re getting Paris.”

“If I give up England, I want Egypt.”

Samantha bit her lip.  It hurt, but she’d known it was coming.  She knew what she had to do.  “Then I keep Morocco.”

He smiled.  “Really?” he asked.  “Still demanding, I see.  Obviously I have – fond memories, as well.”

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