Travel Reference
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It had all started at a dinner party several years earlier in Washington, D.C., where Michael
and I had made our home for nine years.
As we lingered over coffee and dessert with our fellow guests, dreading the moment
when we'd have to shrug on our coats and scurry home through the freezing February night,
the subject of tropical escapes came up (as it did with thudding regularity at midwinter get-
togethers). Several Caribbean resorts were mentioned and just as quickly nixed: “Chock full
of cruise ships,” “too expensive,” “dangerous.”
And then, just when it began to seem like every island Michael and I hadn't already vis-
ited was saddled with some fatal flaw, a fellow guest made a suggestion.
“If you're tired of everywhere else,” he drawled, “try Vieques.”
It rang a bell, but I couldn't remember why. I Googled it when we got home.
Aha.
Al Sharpton and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. had been arrested there a couple of years earlier. It
seemed they'd objected to the U.S. Navy's fifty-year-old habit of using the island for bomb-
ing practice. I couldn't say I blamed them—it was pretty
droit de seigneur
for the U.S. to
kick the residents off their land just so they could blow it to smithereens.
There were plenty of pictures of the island. It looked gorgeous. And warm. It snowed
the day after the dinner party. When I got home that night I handed Michael a stiff drink and
made my case for a week in Vieques.
“Let's do some research,” he said in his infinitely reasonable way, after hearing me out.
It wasn't exactly the ecstatic response I'd hoped for but neither was it a
no.
“I've got an idea,” he continued. “Why don't we celebrate your birthday in Vieques?”
“But that's two months away!”
He chuckled indulgently.
“Okay, keep you knickers on. We'll pop down to South Beach for a long weekend later
this month to make sure you don't expire from the cold.”
“Hmm,” I stalled.
“Think about it. Won't it be fun to turn fifty on a tropical island?”
“It won't be fun to turn fifty anywhere.”
“Fair enough, but it'll be more fun in the Caribbean than, say, here in D.C.”
“I guess,” I responded, definitely in a sulk now.
“Then it's settled. Now,” he went on, kicking into planning mode, “would you rather
stay in a hotel or rent a house?”
“In South Beach?”
“In Vieques.”
“A house.”
Fiftieth birthday, here I come.
☼ ☼ ☼
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