I try to concentrate on my book, but I can’t resist people watching, and I pick up bits and pieces of conversations. There’s an elderly couple with European accents in front of me. Another older couple from Canada. A family of five from Switzerland, and I know the family’s from Switzerland only because the woman—Marcelle? Marcella?—stops to speak to the European couple near me even as two slim Asian women are seated in lounge chairs one row behind me.

There are also Americans here; the women are poured into their suits, and a few are in remarkable shape. The men aren’t very tanned, not like their wives, who’ve discovered Mystic Tan, and they’re thick around the middle, with varying degrees of hair loss.

No one here to get excited about. Not that I’m planning on getting excited.

I try to lose myself in my book again, and I do for another hour until Keith comes by to see if I want that fun tropical drink yet.

I check my watch. Three o’clock. Why not? I had champagne at eight a.m., why can’t I have a blended drink at three?

As Keith returns with my drink, I notice two men in dark blue blazers conferring in the corner beneath a tall palm tree. They’ve little earpieces and discreet name tags. I ask Keith about them.

“It’s hotel security,” he says, setting the drink on the table next to me.

This is definitely a posh place, a place Daniel would like because it’s service oriented. “Can I sign the drink to my room?” I ask.

“It’s already been taken care of.”

“It has?”

“You have an admirer.”

I immediately picture my fantasy guy, someone handsome, charming, someone like Pierce Brosnan, but Keith is gesturing across the pool at a cluster of three very sunburned men, bald or seriously balding, with big bellies.

Ah, my future. Right.

I don’t very much like my future at all. “Will you please give my admirer my thanks?”

Keith nods. “He also wants to know, since he sees that you’re alone, if you’d like to join him.”

I glance at my admirer and his friends again (although I’m not exactly sure which is my actual admirer), and I’m sure they’re nice people, very nice men, but I’m not sure I like even very nice men all that much anymore.

“Keith, could you let him know I’ve just arrived and still unwinding, but maybe I’ll stop by later and say hello?”

But my admirer is more persistent than that.

An hour later, my admirer leaves his friends and approaches me, crouching next to me. “I’m Butch,” he says, sticking out his hand.

“I’m Jacqueline,” I say, pushing up my sunglasses and shaking his hand.

“And you’re perfect, baby.”