I’d been staring at this image, on and off, for most of the journey from New York, having paid a dime for the magazine itself at the newsstand in the Eastern Air Lines terminal building at LaGuardia Field. (It was the latest issue, now there’s coincidence for you.) I’d held it on my lap as what you might call a talisman, throughout each leg of the journey, each takeoff and landing, Richmond followed by Savannah followed by some swamp called Orlando followed by Miami at last, smacking down to earth at half past five in the afternoon, taxi to a shabby hotel, taxi back to the airfield this morning, and I still didn’t feel as if I’d quite gotten to the bottom of that photograph. Oh, sometimes I flipped the magazine open and read the article inside—the usual basket of eggs, served sunny-side up—but mostly I studied the picture on the cover. So carefully arranged, each detail in place. Those Union Jack pillows, for example. (We just couldn’t be any more patriotic, could we? Oh, my, no. We are as thoroughly British as afternoon tea.) That hair ribbon, the bow. (We are as charmingly, harmlessly feminine as the housewife next door.) The enormous jeweled brooch pinned to her striped jacket, just above the right breast—and what was it, anyway? The design, I mean. I squinted and peered and adjusted the angle of light, but I couldn’t make any sense of the shape. No matter. It was more brooch than I could afford, that was all, more jewels than I could ever bear on my own right breast. (We are not the housewife next door after all, are we? We are richer, better, royal. Even if we aren’t quite royal. Not according to the Royals. Still, more royal than you, Mrs. American Housewife.)

The airplane lurched. I peered through the window at the never-ending horizon, turquoise sea topped by a turquoise sky, and my stomach—never at home aboard moving objects—lurched too. According to my wristwatch, we were due at Nassau in twenty minutes, and the twenty-one seats of this modern all-metal Pan American airliner were crammed full of American tourists in Sunday best and businessmen in pressed suits, none of whose stomachs seemed troubled by the voyage. Just my dumb luck, my dumb stomach. Or was it my ears? Apparently motion sickness had something to do with your inner ear, the pressure of fluid inside versus the pressure of air without, and when the perception of movement on your insides didn’t agree with the perception of movement from your eyeballs, well, that’s where your stomach got into difficulty. I supposed that explanation made sense. All the world’s troubles seemed to come from friction of one kind or another. One thing rubbing up against another, and neither one backing down.