As the trip winds down, the enthusiasm for chocolate hits a sugar high. Our biggest surprise comes at Mustique, the private island where supposedly Mick Jagger, Tommy Hilfiger, and others occasionally visit their mansions. Here, there is an equestrian center but no golf course. "Golf attracts the wrong kinds of people," a resident explains.

We strike out three times in a row, our worst failure of the trip. Then we meet Ali, the almost hairless founder of tiny Sweetie Pie Bakery.

"I'm very excited to meet you!" he buzzes, and we have no idea why until we learn that he drinks five cups of coffee a day. Without any kind of prompting, he narrates his epic bio—son of an Algerian immigrant, leaves school at age 12, eventually learns to bake tender million-layered croissants, and now also runs an international newspaper-printing business.

"But chocolate!" he exclaims, finally pausing after many breathless minutes. "Tell me your story!"

Ali, beside himself after hearing the co-op's history, cannot help scheming: "The bars need to be little nibs for espresso plates. Or a much more elaborate table chocolate, six in a box. Or customized chocolate for Mustique's 40th anniversary! We have homes with 40 guests and they need top-class chocolate for soufflés, croissants, everything. You could charge whatever you want. I once auctioned off a cake for $25,000!" He buys four dozen.

All of which is rad. Except that we no longer really care. We've gone Jack Johnson. We skim the sea bottom with rays, grill on the stern railing at sunset, and bullshit with boatmen selling lobsters or their wives' banana bread. That evening, we end up at a tiny, one-bar sugar mound called Happy Island, where we permit two young waitresses to instruct us in the subtleties of a locally popular and fantastically raunchy dance called the dutty wine, or "dirty wind." We have only a few bars left to sell. We throw chocolate around like confetti.

Poetically inspired, and perhaps a bit rum- punched, I'm convinced that chocolate is it. The link. The sweet connection between what is and what could be, the caffeinated escalator from daily life to dreams. Was it not chocolate that brought us to this beautiful island? Was it not chocolate that magically upgraded our charter, distracted the customs agents, encouraged the locals to treat us like locals? And is it not glorious, ecstatic chocolate that has us toasting and singing and sweaty-nasty booty grinding? Hand on the ground, ass to the stars, chocolate!