Their response came back: We want to go to South Beach, too! Only kidding! Yes to baby-sit!

Jeffrey stood up from the computer with all the details written down on a sheet from Delilah’s to-do pad. He turned down the music and cleared his throat. The five Kahlúa/whiskey coffees made him feel light and giddy and unlike his usual self. He, the parsimonious farmer, had single-handedly booked a trip to South Beach, Miami! If he wanted to go, he knew they would want to go.

He was right. They jumped for joy! They let go a group cheer. They toasted one another and they toasted him. Imagine! Jeffrey! Leaving Friday! They vowed to buy Lana and Vesselina and Mrs. Parks truly fabulous thank-you gifts. Addison said he had a friend who owned a sushi restaurant right there on Lincoln Road. Greg had played in a band with a guy who was now the DJ at the underground club at the Delano. Whoo-hoo! It was the best vacation they’d ever taken, and they hadn’t even left yet.

Phoebe went to the tanning booth twice the week before their flight and burned the skin off her nose, but no matter. Tess didn’t have a single bikini that fit; the scale at the gym said she had gained seven pounds since the summer. But who cared? It snowed again on Wednesday and again school was canceled and again Jeffrey and Delilah were trapped in the house with two rambunctious little boys who wanted nothing more to do with Delilah’s homemade Play-Doh and other indoor distractions. Delilah said, “I’m going to miss them so much! But not really.” She made six dozen chocolate chip cookies and three dozen peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses. “Mommy and Daddy are going to be gone for seven days!”

They arrived at the airport in full-length down coats. Phoebe wore her fur hat with the ear flaps, which the Chief jokingly called her Russian qat. Their flight to Boston was canceled because of weather in Boston, even though on Nantucket it was bright and sunny, with a wind-chill factor of minus twenty-two.

Addison worked his magic with the woman behind the Cape Air desk, and they were on the next flight to Providence and had been rerouted from Providence to Miami. Piece of cake. One stop at Au Bon Pain, an issue of the Economist front to back, and a twenty-minute nap later, Jeffrey’s plan had come to fruition. They stepped off the plane in Miami, Florida. They shed their coats, gloves, scarves, and the Russian qat and followed the man holding the sign that said “The Castaways” to the limo.

Is it possible to tell a story that is happy from start to finish? Doesn’t the word story mean that there is conflict, then resolution? Maybe the trip to South Beach didn’t properly qualify as a story, because all Jeffrey remembered was good upon good, best upon better. They asked the limo driver to stop at the liquor store on the way to the hotel. They bought champagne, Patrón, Mount Gay, white wine, a case of Corona, tonic, seltzer, Coke, limes, lemons, bottled water, pretzels, peanuts, sesame sticks, potato chips, nacho chips, bottled salsa, bubble gum, and a scratch card. The scratch card was a winner, the Chief announced: five hundred dollars. Everyone thought he was kidding; each of them bought scratch cards from time to time, and no one had ever won more than two bucks.

“I’m serious,” he said.

Delilah checked and let out a hoot. Five hundred dollars! They couldn’t believe it! It was, at that moment, better than world peace. The Chief cashed the card, collected the money, and paid the bill. He had enough money left over to pay the limo driver and tip the bellman at the hotel who was responsible for their sixteen bags.

The Sagamore was cool and white and filled with avant-garde objets d’art. The concierge was a lean Frenchwoman named Geneviève who had platinum blond hair in a geometric cut. Upon their arrival, she handed out lasciviously pink raspberry caiprihanas, along with ripe pieces of mango dipped in sea salt. Geneviève led them through a secret passageway to a space-age elevator that jetted them up to the penthouse suite.

The penthouse suite was all white, as promised, with mirrors and sleek, cutting-edge electronics. There were four identical white bedrooms lined up to overlook the ocean. Each bedroom was dominated by a king bed iced with butter cream and dotted with fondant pillows. The bathrooms were white tile and white marble threaded with gold. There was a living area with white leather sofas and high-design glass tables; there was a “kitchen,” which consisted of a fridge to store the liquor and a counter on which to cut the lime wedges and spill the snacks. Addison did both things in short order.

The place was heaven—not just heavenly, but heaven, as in the place Jeffrey wanted to go to when he died. Always when he checked into a hotel, his first instinct was to make love to his wife, and he had that instinct right now. He led Delilah wordlessly into their white bathroom, peeled off her winter clothes, and began to kiss her.

“Do you love it here?” he asked.

But she was too happy to answer.

Later he lounged on the green-and-white-striped canvas furniture on the impressive penthouse balcony, drinking a Corona, inhaling the view across the white beach and the ocean as if it were a drug.

He did not remember every hour of the vacation as clearly as those first hours, but he did remember certain things. Sprawling with Delilah on the white-cushioned papasan by the shimmering turquoise pool, debating the pros and cons of going to war with Iraq with Addison, who lay next to a sleeping Phoebe in the neighboring chaise. All the women—and the men—around the pool were beautiful. They were thin and tanned and wore designer sunglasses and sleek bathing suits and white, flowing coverups. They spoke French or Portuguese, they kissed on both cheeks, they ordered the huge salade Niçoise for lunch and ate only the olives. They ordered cold, sweating bottles of white wine and drank them the way Jeffrey and the others drank water (which came in cylindrical glass bottles that cost twelve dollars apiece). It was hot in South Beach, eighty-seven, eighty-nine, ninety-four. Delilah was Mediterranean, she turned brown as a nut in one afternoon, but Jeffrey was a farmer. He respected the sun, he knew what it could do. He dunked frequently in the pool, he drank four bottles of the expensive Dutch water, he moved under the umbrella to play dice with Greg and the Chief.