I had the hotel clerk change it into big bills and put it in the vault. He assured me that nothing bad had ever happened here, and never would, that I was perfectly safe. The natives were friendly, he said; I should forget it and begin to enjoy myself.

The food area was a vast tented pavilion, with plush, oversized chairs and an enormous breakfast buffet of all different kinds of exotic food. I had the cook make me an omelette. He was dark black, like the guys from the night before. I looked over at Diane, who had a couple of orange slices and a banana on her plate. I said, “Hey, come on, eat something. We’re on vacation.” She said she didn’t want to get too full.

As we walked to the water, I said I liked her new straw hat. She said, “If you stare at my gut I will kill you.”

I rubbed some sunscreen on. The beach was totally empty. Where the hell was everybody? “Jesus Christ,” I said to Diane, “this is some fucking resort.”

At lunch the place was full, though, and then the crowd came to the beach, and later that afternoon there was a softball game and we joined in. I got a hit that went over the shortstop’s head. Diane pitched for the other team and somehow lobbed strikes. That evening we ate pasta and shellfish. They had drummers in the pavilion, but we were too tired to stay for more than a minute, and I slept that night the way you’d hope to sleep on vacation—like a five-year-old kid with no troubles. I dreamed about my base hit and woke up to birds singing outside the window. We had pancakes for breakfast, and later the staff organized a big tug-of-war and a sack race, and we met some more of the other guests. Our team won the sack race but lost the tug-of-war.

WE CLAIMED A spot for ourselves on the beach. Every morning you could find us there. We spent our day swimming, napping, baking in the sun. After a couple of days your eyes don’t fight the landscape. The beach was gorgeous; it started at the dock and wound along for half a mile, narrow in some places, funneling into a rocky point with a jetty. The ocean was blue—deep, brilliant turquoise—except that at noon, with the sun directly overhead, it turned the color of tin. Low tide left lumps of seaweed like piles of old, wet wigs; guys came by with rakes and took them away. On the rim of the beach there were big palm trees to lie under. It was cool in the shade. If you waved to one of the staff guys, he’d bring you a chaise.