Richard Stevenson - Ice Blues

"That's just the thing. It's off the beaten path. We'll avoid the crowds of noisy nuclear families from New Jersey and spend time in a place uncontaminated by overdevelopment and so forth."

He nodded but remained, I suspected, curious.

Our flight from JFK was due to leave at four, and we arrived on West Twenty-fourth Street just after one. No parking spaces were to be found in the vicinity of the Gay Men's Health Crisis headquarters, so we double-parked in front of the building. This wasn't going to take long.

We dragged the suitcases out of the car and toted them past the signs advertising the organization's lobbying, social service and fund-raising efforts on behalf of AIDS victims. On the stairway we put on our ski masks, then hiked up to the reception office.

"This is not a holdup," I told the startled chap behind the counter. "It's an anonymous donation,"

Before he could speak, we dumped the suitcases, turned, and fled.

In Patagonia it snowed, so we left after a day and a half and flew up to the Yucatan, where we climbed up and down Mayan pyramids for ten days.

Timmy got sunstroke and I got dysentery, and the place was awfully hot.