Once we arrived at the hotel I didn't think about my father for three days. We did get a room overlooking the pool and the ocean - if you looked toward the right and trained your eyes on the bluish triange that appeared at the end of the long balcony passageway. It was pretty even at a distance and we could reach the sand through a special walkway from the hotel.

Our room was next to the ice machine alleyway so it was rarely quiet. Either the ice was clunking down every two minutes or people were noisily scooping out ice to fill the white, plastic containers that came with each room. I figured everyone in the hotel passed by our room at least once that week, and I would peak out through a curtain opening to spy on them as they passed. Most of them looked like they were on a mission but then I started to think that most looked angry that they had been given the task at all; apparently securing ice was not a fun job.

At night when my mother thought we were asleep I heard her sneak out and go the ice machine, too, for her wine. She poured the wine into an orange, plastic juice container that was fashioned to look like a real orange, from Orange Julius, I think. I never actually saw her drink wine in a glass - or in public. She really must have thought she was fooling us into thinking she was actually drinking juice. What she didn't know was that as soon as the wine went into the orange we could smell it, the aroma first emitting from the container and then later, from her. This was probably the perfect room location for her, then, near the ice machine and away from dad.