They always tried to fit in wherever they went, to respect the sense of place. In Vegas they had gambled and driven to see the Hoover Dam. In London it was Buckingham Palace and the crown jewels. At the Point, in Saranac Lake, they canoed and hiked and cooked over a fire. In South Beach, it was clear from the beginning, they did not blend. They were as obvious as a pack of grizzly bears—the unhealthy pallor, the flab, the Red Sox hats to shield their eyes from the sun. Andrea, in her black tank suit, did actual laps in the swimming pool, and their fabulous European fellow guests watched her with undisguised interest, as though she were some kind of curious wildlife.

A woman doing the butterfly stroke in the pool!

The ladies went shopping on Lincoln Road. They were in and out of BCBG, Ralph Lauren, Lilly Pulitzer, AG, Lucky Jeans, and a bunch of boutiques that sold sequined dresses and over-the-knee white snakeskin boots. All the women bought new sunglasses at Aspen Optical, even Andrea, who couldn’t have told you whether Tom Ford was a fashion designer or a car salesman; even Tess, who couldn’t afford them. The new sunglasses were big and round, with gold bling decorating the sides. The women put on their new sunglasses and mugged for the Chief’s camera.

“We’re getting there,” Delilah said.

They had to change their internal clocks. They drank triple espressos in the morning, skipped breakfast, took a nap by the pool, drank iced tea and expensive Dutch water, picked at a light lunch (did they even serve carbohydrates in South Beach?), walked on the beach, shopped frivolously, savored a café con leche at the Cuban place on the corner, called the kids to check in, then…

Then the day began. They opened Coronas and slipped in wedges of lime, the girls popped champagne and filled up slender flutes, they toasted one another, they took deep, grateful drinks. They showered and lounged on the impressive balcony while wearing the hotel’s waffled robes. They snacked on sesame sticks and sliced mango with sea salt. It was seven-thirty, the sun was setting, they made love discreetly behind closed doors while “getting dressed.” Greg played Buffett and James Taylor’s “Mexico” and then, once the sun set, he swung into Sinatra and Bobby Darin and they all gathered in their silk and sequins, heels and perfume, ready to leave for dinner. Their reservation was at nine o’clock.

Nine o’clock! At home they would have eaten pot roast at five-thirty, been finished and cleaned up by six, had the kids in bed with stories by six-thirty, and been back down with the dishwasher churning at seven, while outside snow piled up or the wind screamed like a woman in agony. Some nights they watched reruns of The Sopranos, some nights they rented movies, some nights they crawled into bed at seven-thirty with the latest David McCullough tome and fell asleep after ten pages. Some nights they cleaved to each other and made love despite being weighed down by the layers of flannel, chenille, and goose down. Every night, save for the ones when they gathered at the Begonia, they were fast asleep by nine o’clock.

But not in South Beach! In South Beach they arrived at the threshold of the restaurant at nine o’clock and were escorted to their table, where they sat, without deviation, in this order: Phoebe, Addison, Tess, Greg, Delilah, Jeffrey, Andrea, the Chief. They were a strand of DNA, repeated, then repeated again. They ate things like sushi and soft-shell crabs in a Meyer lemon reduction, and they shared desserts with passion-fruit foam and honeycombed pineapple. They drank wine at dinner and ended with shots of Sambuca or sips of tequila. And then, feeling happy-happyhappy and ready to go, they cabbed it to a nightclub. At the first nightclub, BED, the doorman had their names on a list, provided by Geneviève, and they were whisked past the waiting mob (made up mostly of teenagers, Jeffrey noticed; truly, to fit in in South Beach, they needed to be twenty years younger). They were shown to an alcove with two cocktail tables pushed together and four ultrasuede cubes where they could sit, should they want to sit.

They looked out over the dance floor, at more gorgeous Europeans lounging on round beds in the midst of a sea of gyrating young bodies.

Jeffrey ordered a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Grey Goose and tonic and lemons. A beer for the Chief (twenty dollars) and four bottles of Icelandic water. They came with a dish of salted cashews, presumably complimentary, delivered by their preternaturally beautiful (though scowling) cocktail waitress. She poured everyone a drink with disdain. (She knew their type—married thirty- and forty-somethings, probably with a stable of kids back home, wherever they lived, Peoria or East Bumblefuck, Idaho.) Jeffrey took a sip of his ice-cold vodka tonic with a twist and declared it an elixir of youth. He was ready to dance.

They let loose in a wild, free, sexual way. Jeffrey had never moved his body like this in public. There had been some crazy parties at Cornell, of course, but this was elemental, tribal, it was a trip to the moon. Jeffrey was released. Was he thirty-eight? The father of two small boys? The owner of a hundred and sixty-two acres of permafrosted land? It didn’t matter. He took off his jacket, slid off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt. He was sweating, he was breathless, he was dancing, he was living!

And he was not alone. There, like satellite planets coming in and out of his orbit, were Greg, Phoebe, Delilah, the Chief, Tess—and a guy Jeffrey didn’t recognize, an interloper who was getting awfully close to Phoebe. Jeffrey was aware of this much, and he was about to ask the guy to step back. Phoebe could not be counted upon to protect her own airspace; she seemed not even to notice this guy.

Then Jeffrey realized the interloper was Addison without his glasses. He had taken his glasses off, he was sweating too profusely, they would slip off, the dancing was so wild, they would fall off. The reason the interloper kept bumping into people was because it was Addison, the sight-impaired. He could not see a damn thing without his glasses, and Jeffrey wondered what it felt like to be dancing in a blur of bodies, to be reliant on sound, smell, touch. Jeffrey wanted to be Addison.