By the time the Englishman returned to his seat, the roar of the engines had deepened into a growl, and the airplane had begun to stagger downward into Nassau. A cloud wisped by the window and was gone. I feigned interest in the magazine, while my attention poured through the corner of my left eye in the direction of my neighbor, who picked his hat from the floor—it had fallen, apparently, during the scuffle or whatever it was—and placed it back in the bin. It turned out, his hair wasn’t thoroughly gold; there was a trace of red in the color, what they call a strawberry blond. I turned a page. He swung into place and reached for the newspaper, which I had retrieved and slid into the cloth pocket on the seat before him. It seemed like the least I could do, and besides, I can’t abide a messy floor.

“Thank you,” he said. “I do hope you weren’t troubled.”

“Not at all.”

He didn’t reply. I had a hundred questions to ask—foremost, was the boozer still alive—but I just turned the pages of the magazine in rapid succession until I ran out of paper altogether and closed the book on my lap, front cover facing up, the windsor team locked in eternal amity with their Union Jack sofa pillows. The loudspeaker crackled and buzzed, something about landing shortly and the weather in Nassau being ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit, God save us.

I cleared my throat and asked the Englishman what brought him to Nassau, business or pleasure.

“I live here, in fact,” he said. “For the time being.”

“Oh! So you were visiting Florida?”

“Yes. My brother lives in a town called Cocoa, up the coast a bit. Lovely place by the ocean.” He nodded to the magazine. “Doing your research, are you?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “It was just a coincidence.”

“Ah.”

The airplane shook. I looked out the window and saw land, shrubby and verdant, and a long, pale beach meeting the surf, and a car flashing brilliantly along a road made of gray thread. “What a pair of romantics,” I heard myself say.

“Romantics? Do you really think so?”

I turned my head back and saw a serious profile, a pair of eyes squinted in thought behind the wire-rimmed spectacles. He hadn’t touched the newspaper. His lanky arms were folded across his chest, his right leg crossed over his left, immaculate, civilized. He didn’t look as if he’d lifted a pair of boots, let alone two hundred pounds of slack human weight.

“Don’t you? But it’s the love story of the century, hadn’t you heard?” I said. “The king who gave up his throne for the woman he loves.”

“A thoroughly modern thing to do. Not romantic at all.”

“How so?”