One Fourth of July weekend during a particularly lean spell, they'd decided to treat the family to some ice cream, but standing at the dairy freezer, had suddenly realized they could scarcely afford even that meager indulgence, given that they'd had not a cent in the bank and about ten dollars cash between them to stretch over the holiday. Seeing the crestfallen look on Al's face as he'd read the price labels, Mary had grabbed him by the elbow and exclaimed: "Come on, mister, go for it! Whoever finds the cheapest quart wins a free trip to Rio!" It was one of those situations when you either had to laugh or cry, and her mock announcer's voice had pushed Al's precarious emotional balance toward the former. Cracking up hysterically, he'd plunged into the freezer as if he actually had been a contestant on a game show, all at once a whole lot less depressed than he'd been a moment before--which, of course, had been Mary's intent. Though she'd outscrounged him by twenty-two cents that evening, they had bought the ice cream for the family and he'd come home feeling like a winner for a change. From then on, the "trip to Rio" bit had become a standard tactic they'd used to relieve the strain of their constant financial woes. After a while even the kids had gotten in on it.

Four decades later, living simply but quite comfortably on Al's postal supervisor's retirement pension--things had gone well for them after his promotion, except for a health scare three years earlier, when he'd developed a severe cardiac arrhythmia that required normalization with an artificial pacemaker--Al and Mary were celebrating their Golden Anniversary with a real trip to Rio as well as other sight-seeing locales in Brazil, the travel and hotel reservations fully paid for by their now grown and married children, who had cooked up the idea as a surprise gift. Thus far the vacation had been spectacular. They'd spent five days in Copacabana, taken an air shuttle to Brasilia for a tour of the country's western region that included a breathtaking hot-air balloon ride over a wildlife preserve in the Pantanal, then flown back east, making a two-day stopover in Sao Paulo before boarding the night coach back to Rio, where they planned to spend the final weekend of their vacation.

After sampling the buffet in the dining car about three hours into the ride, they had taken their seats in the middle of the train, Mary pulling a Danielle Steele novel out of her travel bag, Al settling in for a snooze beside her, when the fluorescent overheads flashed on and started buzzing like a nest of wasps.

Quizzically scrunching her eyebrows, Mary looked up from her paperback, then turned to her husband.

Her expression at once became frightened.

Al had awakened with a start and had both hands on his chest his face pale, his mouth wide open and pulling in shallow snatches of air.