I entered the lobby and checked in, but before going to my room went back outside to flop into a large wicker chair. I propped up my feet on the railing. Rude it may have been, but I'd had a long flight from New York in those days before the commercial jetliners. I didn't care what impression I made. Americans were considered oafish in the English colonies anyway. Trinidad had not achieved its independence as yet.

A race course lay across the street in the heart of the savannah. A late-afternoon sulky race was in progress, a special pre-Carnival event. Shades of playing Keno in Reno and Las Vegas, a girl was walking around taking bets! I waved her by, more interested for the moment in the delectables I chose from a rolling cart as sidekicks for my cool Tom Collins. A few sips of this and a bite or two of that, and I felt better, kicking back even more until I damn near fell asleep.

"Come, come," piped up an English voice nearby, "surely you're not here to doze your time away?"

I opened my eyes and turned my head.

He was sitting alone, a classic Silverfox with a well tanned complexion, his fine paunch straining slightly at the buttons of a well-tailored white shirt mostly covered by a tasteful tie and white linen "ice cream" suit jacket as we called them in those days. A set of adorable crows feet crinkled at the outer edges of hazel eyes that looked like brown pools awash with gold. He had one of those permanent smiles etched above a cleft chin and beneath a neatly trimmed mustache. He was probably about sixty-five. I was still in my twenties. He shifted in his chair and showed a generous bulge at the crotch that promised a cache of treasure for anyone equipped to stay whatever course it took to get there. I flushed with an involuntary twinge of lust.

He seemed to catch my mental drift. Grinning impishly, he gave the treasure trove a careless scratch which sent a shiver up my spine like chalk grating on slate before he motioned to the waiter and asked for his check. I jumped up and offered to pay, but he waved the offer aside with the words: "Our island is famous for its hospitality. I should be buying YOU a drink, but thank you very much."

With a devastating smile and a casual salute, he rose from his chair and breezed into the hotel. As sexually aroused as I could be, I couldn't resist an impulse to follow him inside. Hurriedly, I called for my own bill, signed it to my room and dashed in a minute or two behind him. He was nowhere to be seen. At the bell desk they told me my baggage had already been delivered.

Leaving a tip for the bellman, I started down the hallway to my quarters on the ground floor. The corridor was wide and seemed quite long. I took a turn at the end, at the behest of an arrow pointing to my number, and stopped dead in my tracks.

The Englishman sat on a wide sofa set against an open window just beyond my door, his legs spread apart, his beefy hands resting cozily where his hips joined the thighs, palms down, fingertips angled toward ground zero. Too surprised to speak, I must have looked doltish because he laughed. "As I told you," he said, "Trinidad is famous for its hospitality. May I make that official?"

He stood up, took the room key from my hand with a brush of flesh against me that felt like fire and opened my door, going inside and drawing the drapes to shut out the blazing tropical sun.

"They told me at the desk 'the new American' was placed here." He turned to face me. "I live in a tight little world on this island. Everyone knows everything about everyone else. I can't run wild as I did in my youth. I feel like one of those sulky horses on the racecourse across the park, held back by the reins, running, yes, but never free. I felt drawn to you, an American stranger, feet up on the railing, so casual, so...so free, as I can never be."

I still stood with the closed door behind me. I had noticed the ring when he drew the curtains.

"You're married, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," he answered, "for more than forty years. I can't get it up anymore.Thought I never would again, but you....out there on the verandah....I saw you, and....."

I let out a chuckle. "I noticed."

He looked uncertain. "Have I made a mistake? Have I misread you, young man?"

I shook my head. "No, my friend, you have not."

I went to him and put my arms around him. About the same height, we melded into a tight embrace and began a long, sweet kiss that ended in a deep friendship that lasted, although mostly long distance, for years.