Libby said, “What I’d really like to do is go to New Orleans and watch the hurricane come in.”

We’d been talking about my vacation. I had a week. Use it or lose it. I was thinking of relaxing at home. Doing a little gardening.

“People are trying to get out of New Orleans,” I said.

“We’ve got to do something,” Libby said. “Besides, I’m named after it.”

“You’re named after Katrina?”

“Right. L follows K. Libby follows Katrina. I’m next. The natural order of the universe.”

“That doesn’t make it your fault.”

Libby laughed. It was not a happy laugh. “Do you still love me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Even though?”

“Even though what?”

“Even though I’m me?”

I’m not an impulsive guy, not by a long shot, but I went on the Internet and got two tickets. I booked us into a room at a last-minute kind of place. I got Libby’s suitcase out of the closet. “Pack. We’re going.”

“New Orleans?”

“Hawaii. Kona Kidd here we come.”

Libby awoke as the airplane was taxiing. “Are there flamingos in Hawaii?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“I had a strange dream. flamingos. Forty of them, all over our front lawn. Do you think it could be a sign? Are there flamingos in Hawaii? Maybe we’re going to the wrong place.”

“There are plastic flamingos everywhere,” I said. “Were these plastic flamingos?”

“At first. But when I picked them up, they turned real. They were heavy and warm, like stone that had been sitting in the sun. But their hearts were cold. I took them to God.”

“What do you mean ‘you took them to God’?”

“They were God’s flamingos. When I picked one up, the rest followed. God was in His office. I started to cry. God said, okay, He’d take back the flamingos—one flamingo for each fuk. When God said fuck it was without the c, so it was okay.”

When Libby says fuck, with or without the c, it does something to me. I was slow to get up for our luggage in the overhead compartment.

“Look at all these Hawaii license plates,” I told Libby in the airport lot as we approached our rental car. “One rainbow after another.”

“Oh, right—your yearly license plate list. So does this finish it off?”

“Yup,” I said. “Next stop, Guam.”

This was supposed to be a joke, but Libby didn’t laugh. I put our two suitcases in the trunk, and we set off to find our hotel.

A couple of times the road nearly petered out. I may have made a couple of wrong turns. It was almost dark by the time we found the Kona Kidd. Part of the roof sign wasn’t working. The final neon pink D flickered on and off. But the hotel itself, two stories just off the beach, didn’t look too rickety. Pink ribbons decorated the sky. Supple palms swayed in the wind. Waves of surf rose and fell. “It’s just like paradise,” Libby said. I went to check us in, while Libby waited in the car.

The office was an ordinary room at the end of the first floor. The door was open. A sandy-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt was sitting behind a cluttered desk. His feet were up on the desk. He was reading a fat, well-worn paperback.

“This is interesting,” he said. “Every day this guy looks in the mirror he sees more and more of his father and less and less of himself. Then one day he’s tying his shoes, and he realizes he’s tying them backwards. His father taught him to tie his shoes from the front. Now the man doesn’t know whether to keep tying them backwards, or to do it the right way. Either way, every time he ties his shoes, he thinks of his father. Poor guy. That’s why I wear sandals.” The man wiggled his toes. “Less sand. Ha, ha.”

“Um, I have reservations,” I said. I waggled my sheet of computer printout.

“Sure, sure,” the man said. “You’re in 209, top of the stairs and all the way down. Just go on up.”

“Shouldn’t we get keys or something?”

“Oh, no need. We’re all pretty much like family around here.”

I must have looked doubtful.

“If you got something you’re worried about, you can just leave it here with me.” He gestured to a pair of backpacks nestled at side of his desk. “But really there’s no need. Why don’t you go on up—have a good time.”

I was about to go, but something registered in my mind. The backpacks. One of them had an insignia. I stepped closer to get a better look. A flamingo insignia. A pair of flamingos, actually. Mirror images of each other. They might have been kissing.

“Interesting, huh?” the sandy-haired man said. “The necks curve together to form a perfect heart. Or if you squint your eyes just right, it could be a woman’s bottom. Hell, for that matter it could be a woman’s cunt.”

The man had a soft, friendly, reverential way of saying cunt. Nothing harsh or cruel in it. Nothing lascivious, either, but all the same my penis lurched a little. I nodded to the man and turned and strode briskly outside to find Libby.

She wasn’t in the car, but I was pretty certain she’d be on the beach, and sure enough, a few minutes later I found her there, staring out at the endless waves. My arms went around her. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” I said.

“What if it’s too nice?”

“How do you mean?”

“What if I don’t want to leave?”

“Well, then, you can stay. You can stay as long as you want.”

She turned into my arms. We kissed. It has been such a long time. I thought it was a good kiss. It went on and on. It lost track of itself.

“You’re sweet,” Libby said. “But what if I want to leave? What if I want to leave right now?”

“You want to leave?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I want,” Libby said. “Why don’t you take me up to our room and fuck my brains out. Maybe if you did that, I’d think more clearly.”

“It’s upstairs,” I said to Libby when we entered the Kona Kidd from the beach side.

“Better shake out your shoes, first,” Libby told me. “Don’t want to get sand everywhere. Libby was already barefoot. We went up the stairs and down the hall. Wall lamps glowed a dull, comforting gold. The wood floor creaked softly under our steps. At the end, just before a window looking out at what was now pitch black, was our door, 209. It wasn’t closed all the way.

I pushed it open. Several candles flickered. The window was open wide. The bed was big. Upon it, their bare bodies bathed by candlelight, a couple was making love. The more I watched, the more the light took hold of them. They practically glowed.

There was something so beautiful about them, so natural, that I couldn’t do anything but stare. The boy was on top. The girl’s legs were up, her heals resting on his ass, her hands on his back and shoulders. They were kissing as they fucked. They were breathing each other. They moved like slow waves of liquid light, like surf sliding sand. Libby and I looked at each other.

We turned back to see the couple coming together. The boy’s buttocks trembled. The girl’s hand squeezed into a tight little fist. A sharp fit of shivering seized them both. They bucked together. The spasms took a long time to subside.

They lay together motionless for what must have been minutes. Libby and I dared not breathe. At last the boy shifted. The girl groaned. We saw the boy’s penis glisten as it slipped from the girl’s sheath. “Oh,” she sighed, upon seeing us in the doorway.