"You have to see the way they talk to each other," her friend said as she sent Dina an invitation to a weekend at a mountain hotel. The Harmonious Couples Club brought together people who always rested their hands on each other's shoulders in photographs. Since her divorce, Dina had doubted even the happy endings in films.
She accepted because of a talk about trust. She traveled with Kenan, a sound recordist doing freelance work at the event. They knew each other from the neighborhood. He did not promise to cure her distrust. He simply pulled over when she said she felt like having some pita.
She spent the first evening at a table with the club's founders. Under the table, one woman showed her husband messages he had to approve before she posted them. Another couple did not speak until the photographer arrived. On the balcony, the club president asked Dina to tell his wife they had spent the afternoon preparing a speech together. She had not even seen him that day.
In the morning, she carried her suitcase to reception. The formal breakfast had not begun. Hearing voices in the kitchen, she glanced through the open door. An older waiter was trying to repair the clasp on his wife's shoe. She was the cook, and she was angry because he had postponed his own medical appointment to cover for a colleague.
They did not look harmonious. They spoke over each other, then stopped. "All right, I'll call again," he said. She handed him a piece of warm bread. Dina noticed that they had settled something without an audience or a sentence worth printing on a T-shirt.
Kenan found her in the lobby and asked whether she needed a ride. Instead of answering, she told him what she had seen. She added that, after she refused the president's request, he had said she did not understand the little favors people did within a marriage. Kenan frowned. "You understand enough not to become his excuse."
She took her suitcase back to her room but skipped the closing talk. With the manager's agreement, she helped the staff arrange tables for the evening concert. The president called it an unusual choice for a guest. Dina told him she had finally found the part of the program that was useful to her. Her friend later left the club after having a conversation of her own with him.
On the way home, Kenan missed a turn. He admitted it immediately, without a story about a bad road sign. Dina began to laugh, freely for the first time that weekend. Outside her building, she invited him to dinner the following Friday. "I have no good evidence that we'll work out," she said. He lifted the bag containing the leftover pita. "At least we have something to start with."