“You, there, lad!” he called to me.

I waved negatively at him and was about to turn to my left when a voice-a musical, female voice-came from my right.

“That poor man…such slim pickin’s these days.”

I turned quickly toward the voice, with high hopes for who it belonged to.

I wasn’t disappointed.

“You know,” she continued liltingly, transforming certain t’s into soft d’s, “there is usually a fleet of those ferries here, even this time of year. And those boats, they keep busy, too.”

She was a beautiful milk-chocolate girl in a floppy wide-brimmed straw hat with a red and blue and yellow floral band; her linen dress was robin’s-egg blue and buttoned down the front and made no effort to hide or for that matter enhance a slender, high-breasted figure that could speak for itself. She had the full sensual lips of some dark ancestor, and the small well-formed nose of some lighter one, and large, lovely, elaborately lashed mahogany eyes that were all her own. She was probably about twenty-five years old.

A woman this beautiful can take your breath away. Mine, anyway. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

“But you really should see the sea garden while you’re stayin’ in Nassau, Mr. Heller,” she said, as if our conversation was bouncing right along. “That’s what the glass bottom is for….”

“Excuse me,” I said, swallowing. “You have me at a disadvantage….”

She laughed and her laugh was even more musical than her voice, which seemed to put weight on words and syllables in a sweetly random, intrinsically Caribbean fashion.