My father the accountant had always mocked Gina’s job title. “I mean, can you take a degree in ‘conference visioning’?” he would ask. Well, actually, yes, you could. I didn’t begrudge Gina her thoroughly modern choice of career or her commercial success—not much, anyhow, given the usual sibling-rivalry envy for a sister who in every aspect of her life had always seemed to do better than I ever had.

When I had passed most of the big hotels I cut inland, passing through an alleyway. I crossed Ocean Drive, where even the police officers wore skintight shorts, to reach a main street called Collins Avenue. I bought a small tourist map for a few dollars from a drugstore and briskly toured Miami Beach’s highlights. There was an art deco area, a small district peppered with ornately decorated buildings—hotels, private homes, banks, bars, some set behind heavy security gates. The most beautiful building of all seemed to be the town’s main post office, a pointlessly grand edifice across whose magnificent floor queues snaked desolately.

I couldn’t quite get the city into focus. There was a faint sense of sleaze about the place, of a past of dirty money and menace—and yet somebody had made a determined effort to clean it up, as witness the alarm buttons on the boardwalk. And I knew my sister well enough to know she wouldn’t bring her kids to a place she couldn’t make them safe. Still, I was relieved to get back to the boardwalk, and the huge physical presence of the sea.

I never watch American TV. Those constant ad breaks make me feel hyperactive, as if I’ve been taking too much sugar. I ordered up a movie, a comedy, and a room service “snack,” bigger than most Sunday lunches back home, with a half bottle of Californian Chardonnay. I was asleep before the movie was over.

“George. Lovely to see you, et cetera.” She took my shoulders and actually gave me an air-kiss, her left cheek brushing mine, her lips missing me by a good couple of inches. Automatically I shaped up for a second kiss on the right, but I’d forgotten that’s the European way—in America you get just the one.

Well, that was about as much affection as I generally got from Gina.

She said, “As you can see I took time off work to see you, though Dan couldn’t get away. The boys are on their way home from school. I secured them a half day off.” Her accent was vaguely mid-Atlantic.

“I appreciate that . . .”

Her house was modern, the walls wooden, perhaps a little sun-bleached around the front door. The rooms were filled with light, lined with bookcases and TVs—it seemed there was a set in every room, and in most a computer—and there was a bright but slightly irritating smell, perhaps of pine-scented air freshener. This was a big, sprawling homestead set in an extensive acreage of finely cut lawn, over which sprinklers hissed, even at this hour, eleven in the morning. There is always so much space in America, so much room.