I said very little to Molly about the purpose of my trip—she would have tried to talk me out of it. All I told her was that I needed a vacation alone. In Athens I found what I wanted and rented it, the Stormie Seas, a forty-foot caïque, flying the Union Jack. It had a crew of two social rebels, a young married couple—navigator and captain, mate and cook. I told them the kind of islands I wanted to see and they understood. We cleared Piraeus’s channel on our five-horse motor, then shut it off and, relying on cloth, turned south toward those islands of the Cyclades that tourists don’t trample. Quiet at last, my load of tensions eased, I asked myself a question I’d asked before, but now in earnest: Could I disappear from the world where I’d trafficked all my life and become someone else? Could I start over again? You will certainly say that is the most foolish of questions, but in time—it did take time—that is what I did: disappear from the world I’d inhabited all my adult life, to become someone else.