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on Front Street, right across from the ferry terminal. While you’re there you can try on some Bermuda shorts.”
    A good thing she smirks when she says it.
    â€œDo guys actually wear those things here?”
    â€œOh yes, they get quite outfitty with them. Socks that match the shorts, with suit coats to go with it. You’ll see.”
    â€œI’ll try not to snicker.”
    One of the butlers appears in the doorway to the alcove.
    â€œYour car is here, sir,” he says.
    â€œBe right there,” I tell him.
    I get up from the table. I give Barbara a hug.
    â€œTiti would like for you to meet us at six o’clock,” she says. “And please, Zack, do give her another chance.”
    â€œYou can count on me,” I say. “I’m all about the three P’s: punctual, properly attired, and polite as all hell.”
    â€œSo pucker up,” Barbara says.
    And she kisses me good-bye.

9
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    The driver is fiftyish, a thickset guy almost as tall as me, with just a smudge of a mustache, a dab of gray against brown skin. He stands by a white minivan. A magnetic sign on the side of it reads: J.J.’s CAR SERVICE: TOURS, AIRPORT, DAILY/HOURLY .
    He holds the sliding door open for me.
    â€œI’ll ride up front with you,” I say.
    I climb in and he climbs in and we are off.
    â€œAre you J.J.?”
    â€œYes, sir,” he says. “John Johnson.”
    I stick out a hand. He shakes it. I tell him where I need to go and how long I think I might need to be there.
    â€œHow much?”
    J.J. shakes his head.
    â€œTaken care of,” he says.
    â€œWhat you mean taken care of?”
    â€œMrs. Ambister, she’s taking care of it.”
    â€œI’d rather handle it myself,” I say.
    J.J. cuts his eyes my way.
    â€œThen you tell her that,” he says.
    J.J. and I are obviously on the same page regarding dear old Titi.
    He turns onto the road to Hamilton.
    â€œFirst time to Bermuda?”
    â€œIt is,” I say.
    â€œYou want me to give the tour talk, or you want to ride in quiet?”
    â€œThe tour talk cost more?”
    â€œOh, I might add on a dollar or two.”
    â€œWhich you will no doubt charge to Mrs. Ambister?”
    J.J. nods.
    â€œTalk away,” I say.
    On the twenty-minute drive to Hamilton, I get a crash course in all things Bermudian. How Bermuda is not just one island, as many think, but 120-some-odd islands, with the main dozen or so connected by bridges and causeways. How there were no indigenous people living here when the first settlers arrived, quite involuntarily, aboard the British ship
Sea Venture,
which crashed on the reefs in 1609 on its way to Jamestown, Virginia. And how there are thought to be at least another three hundred shipwrecks on the reefs encircling Bermuda, maybe even more.
    We pull off near the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse and get out so J.J. can show me a roadside marker.
    It reads:
    Â 
    On this spot her majesty Queen Elizabeth II paused for a while to admire the view. Wednesday the 24th of November 1953.
    Â 
    It’s a nice view—a hillside filled with pretty houses sloping to Hamilton Harbour. If I had a Post-it Note I’d stick it on the marker with the message: “His Ownself Zack Chasteen admired it, too.”
    We get back in the car and I tune J.J. in and out, absorbed by the scenery. Sherbet-colored houses topped off by whitewashed, terraced roofs. Hand-laid stone walls, pocket-size vegetable plots, manicured boxwood hedges, gardens wildly abloom. And a beguiling assortment of street names, each of which seems to suggest its own story: Controversy Lane, Buggy Whip Hill, Ducks Puddle Drive, Featherbed Alley, and, my favorite, Pie Crust Place.
    It’s as if Bermuda is populated by a happy tribe of really well-to-do Hobbits, cozy and content and given only to the pursuit of pleasurable things. It is all just so goddamn charming.
    And then, as we squeeze into a roundabout and merge with