May I. Havesome

Passion Holiday

Chapter 1

"It's like a goddamn city; Cherlynn Beckert said. She was standing next to Les Evans, on the crest of the hill, like a god looking down from Mount Olympus, staring across the pale green valley as it rolled out toward the darkened horizon. She shook her head, her mood caught somewhere between dislike and awe.

It was a vivid, shimmering summer night, touched now and agar by cool, gentle breezes. Above them, the Milky Way seemed to have ruptured, spilling stars like grains of incandescent sand, until the clear midnight sky pulsed with its cold, distant light.

"What?" Les asked. His voice seemed distracted, as if he had been somewhere else, faraway, and the urgency of her voice had brought him back unexpectedly, before he was ready to return. There was the stub of a cigarette between his lips, and he sucked on it, filling his lungs with a harsh, bitter smoke. He dropped the cigarette into the grass and stepped on it. Exhaling, he said: "I'm sorry. I didn't hear what you said I was – thinking."

Cherlynn did not turn or look at him. She continued, instead, to stare out across the valley. Her eyes were large and dark, and the reflection of the stars glinted dully in them. "It looks like a city," she repeated. "Like a goddamn city, all to itself."

As far as her eyes probed through the night, in any direction, she could see nothing but the rich, fertile acres of Mount Shangri-la Lodge, the world-famous vacation resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Miles of rolling hills and valleys, a carpet of neatly trimmed, rippling grass, swaying trees and dense clusters of woods that stood starkly against the night evoked, for some strange reason, her childhood images of the Promised Land.

She could see the artificially-created lake in the distance. The broken light from the stars was dancing upon its surface like fragmented pieces of silver. Beyond the lake was the lush blanket green expanse which marked one of the two eighteen hole golf courses. It was dark and empty, colored with liquid shadows. To the left of the lake, Cherlynn could see the stables with their winding riding paths of crushed cinders, and just a little further on, she could see the pastel-blue supports of the ski lift. They reminded her of sterile steel flowers growing toward the warmless light of the stars. At the foot of the hill, sitting fat and contentedly, was the glass and steel and poured concrete free-form shell of the Recreation Hall. It glowed like a jewel upon the grassy breast of the hill, with soft yellow fog spilling from its translucent windows. Even at this distance, she could hear an occasional spasm of music as it caught upon the hook of the wind, and whispered into her ears.

"It is a city, I guess," Les answered. Cherlynn had her back to him, and he used his eyes to fondle the sensual curves of her ass cheeks. Her dress rippled darkly. "You could live here, I guess. If you had enough money."

The wind rustled her thick, coal black hair, and Cherlynn leaned toward it, using its undulating fingers to fan away the heat of the night. Sweat was causing her expensive, chiffon gauzy Correal original to slick to her back, and. she shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to dislodge it. The coils of gold chain around her neck and the golden bracelets she wore on her wrists clinked mutely, like the sound of coins dropping into a bank.

"It's got theaters, its own highway of roads, even people." Les waited a moment for her to pick up on his previous observations. When he saw that she wasn't going to, he went on instead, barely listening to the words himself: "People. Don't forget people. Christ, what have we got here? Two, three thousand people? Hell, that's more people than a lot of cities. More than say -"