December 25, Rincón, Puerto Rico. I find the luxury of this villa we rented mysterious. The walls plastered brilliant white, arches everywhere, tile floors in a large diagonal checkerboard pattern, the double doors that open onto the sea made of teak that shimmers like whiskey, brass hardware. The furniture is of darker wood, it is richly but not exuberantly ornamented, with rattan covering. Two floors, upstairs a giant bed with canopy, from which thin white veils hang, downstairs the terrace with a small pool, whose steps start just below the threshold of the double door. It is illuminated in two levels – either constant yellow-orange, or in fluently changing colors.

If it were just a matter of pulling together enough aesthetics to justify the price, you’d need less. It wouldn’t have been necessary to prepare a dinner for us, with double cutlery and double plates, cloth napkins and the food next to them in plastic boxes, an orchid on the table, champagne and a cake from the best bakery in Puerto Rico, Someone must have a joy in it, a passion for it that goes beyond the mere need to make money from it.

Stars extremely clear, even Milky Way, although pool and terrace lit and the lights of Mayaguez on the horizon. Orion unusually vertical above us. And iguanas in the garden this morning. They glide across the lawn like streamlines, slender as an arrow, almost a meter long. Then we see one sitting motionless under bushes at the edge of the garden, which I, because huge, at first think is a mockup, but it is alive, eyeing us intently, and then shuffling off into the undergrowth.