THEY ARRIVED AT Teterboro Airport to find the airplane refueled and the deicing nearly complete. Stone stowed their golf clubs and tennis rackets in the forward luggage compartment and their bags in the rear. After a thorough preflight inspection and a call to Clearance Delivery, they taxied to runway 1 and were cleared for takeoff.

The departure controller turned them south and gradually gave them higher altitudes, but not until they were handed off to New York Center did they receive their final clearance to their chosen altitude, flight level 260, or 26,000 feet. Stone leveled off, adjusted the throttle and switched on the XM Satellite Radio. Dino was already doing the Times crossword puzzle, and Stone started on the front page.

“I hope you made a copy of the crossword,” Dino said, scribbling away.

“If I hadn’t, I would have already strangled you and dumped your body over Virginia.”

Stone had fi nished reading the Times when they started their descent into their refueling point, a small airfield at Monks Corner, South Carolina, which offered fuel prices a couple of bucks less than nearby Charleston.

Half an hour later they were climbing back to altitude, and two hours after that they were crossing the south coast of Florida at last over open water. Key West lay, invisible, another hundred miles south. Dino was squirming in his seat.

“I’ve never flown over open water,” Dino said.

“The life raft is on the seat behind me,” Stone said, “and the life jackets are in a blue zipper bag right behind my seat. In the event of an unscheduled landing, you put on a life jacket, strap yourself into a rear seat, and when the airplane has stopped moving, open only the top half of the door. We’ll float for a while, but if you open the bottom half, the Atlantic Ocean will join us inside immediately. You wrap the rope attached to the raft firmly around your wrist and hand, push the raft out the top of the door and jerk the cord hard. The raft will inflate. You hold it there until I can get out, then you pull the tab that inflates your life jacket and join me in the raft. I’ll bring along the handheld radio and the beacon that broadcasts our position to the Coast Guard via satellite.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait for the Coast Guard to show up, remove us from the life raft, give us a cup of coffee and take us to a convenient land location.

“How long do we wait?”

“A few hours, maybe less.”

“A few hours in a tiny life raft with you is all I need to complete my day.”

“It’s a character-building experience.”

“And then?”

“We make our way to Key West by available transportation, and my insurance company buys me a new airplane. Feel better now?”

“And I lose all my stuff?”