I was determined to find out. So I finished my Sprite, left my cup on the bench, and crossed to another bench twenty feet away, where I sat down to wait. I wondered who would do the job. Was it an actual person, or was there some kind of machine, or was there a cluster of gnomish midget people who scurried out of a tree trunk, jabbering in their helium voices? I needed to know.

Just then a young father passed me, pushing his baby in a stroller, followed by a man my age, pushing his dad in a wheelchair. All of them were wearing mouse ears.

I looked at them for all of five seconds. When I looked back at my empty cup on the bench, it was gone.

They’ve thought of everything at Disney World. For instance, when Jeff and I emerged, drenched, from Splash Mountain—the kids were off with Darla getting ice cream—we had to go through a store devoted exclusively to selling Splash Mountain memorabilia. Splash Mountain pencils, Splash Mountain T-shirts, a Splash Mountain snow globe. Better still was how each person who went on the ride was photographed halfway down the longest and wettest of the three drops. There we were, Jeff smiling slightly with the quiet confidence of a diamond thief. I, on the other hand, had my eyes squeezed shut, my mouth open in midshriek, my arms above my head, as if to surrender.

TIM

TIM

IN THE FINAL HOUR BEFORE ANNA BRODY’S ARRIVAL, I SAT WATCHING THE DIGITAL numbers of the sleek hotel clock blink past minute by minute. My clothes had been unpacked, my toilet kit set out. My wedding ring had been removed and respectfully hidden from view. Using a small hand towel, I’d given myself a birdbath and recleaned my privates.

With nothing to do but wait, I plopped down in the squishy chair next to the baby grand piano. And because I didn’t have a Bible, I took out my small black Moleskine notebook and began to review my notes.

Confession: I wasn’t a particularly adept or innovative sexual partner, which may explain why Kate and I had settled for traditional and limited expressions of our physical love. It was good, what we had. Comfortable. But the word for it was vanilla.

My hunch was that with Anna Brody, it would be anything but vanilla. With her, I would have to expand my sense of the possible. I would need to read up. So on the Saturday before the Weekend, I had taken the boys for story time at the Barnes & Noble on Court Street. While an eager employee read several Dr. Seuss classics, I ducked into the Relationships/Sexuality section and began filling the pages of my notebook.

It was astonishing, the amount of new information one could acquire!