"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 -"
Cherlynn turned abruptly. "It didn't used to be like this," she said.
She looked at Les for a moment, her eyes glowing, and then she looked beyond him, at the endless panorama stretched out behind her. The horizon was a lazy series of hills and valleys covered with wind-responding blades of grass. More cluttered than the previous perspective, she could see ugly clumps of buildings like scars upon the hills. There was the main building with its arc-like turn-around leading up to and away from its open wide doors. She could see into the lighted lobby littered with late night wanderers looking for something to do. A huge hanging chandelier of crystal and cut glass exploded its harsh jewel faceted light, and hung suspended above them like a muted symbol. Flung out, like despairing arms, on either side of the main building were the two separate sleeping quarters: Row after row of uniform rooms into which the resort's guests were stuffed. The one on the right: the more expensive rooms; larger rooms, with sunken baths, and color television, and stereophonic music, and plush rich draperies, and marble statues on the lawn. The one on the left: the less expensive rooms; smaller rooms of a functional design, with clean modern lines and picture window walls and an economical sterility of cheap, plastic modern.
"None of this -" she said, sweeping her arm in a grand, encompassing arc, "- was here. It was all empty and natural. Real."
Les looked at her. The material of her dress was pulled tightly across her breasts, making them firm and high and hard-looking. With his hungry eyes he judged their weight and shape, his mouth becoming dry, and the familiar, aching stir throbbing in his groin.
"You've been here before? he asked He stepped toward her, his eyes rolling up and down, from her face to the tips of her straining breasts. "You've been to Mount Shangri-la before this weekend?"
"I've been here many times," she said, her voice a whisper for some reason. Her eyes didn't move for an instant from the shadowy horizon, and Les sensed almost that she was seeing something quite different from what he saw. "When I was a little girl. My parents brought me here with them. We were on our first vacation." She laughed privately at some unspoken memory. "I was seven, I think. It was more than twenty years ago "
"I guess it's changed a lot," Les said, trying to feel her out, looking for the key that would open her up. He'd been with her almost an hour now, and he still wasn't sure which way she might go. He said: "Changed over the years, I mean."
"Changed?" She repeated the word as if it were strange to her, as she were feeling its texture with her tongue, trying to savor its meaning. "No, not really changed. Nothing can change this much It's as if it were completely new. As if this-the present had nothing at all to do with the past."
Les stepped closer to her, until he could feel the warmth of her thigh through the material of his gray slacks. He pressed his body cautiously against her side, sliding up a secret arm until his fingers had wound themselves around her waist. He held her firmly against him, leaning his head forward, staring down the length of her outstretched arm, as if looking at what she could only see.
"How has it changed?"
Cherlynn laughed again, shaking her head from side to side with just the barest movement. Her eyes inched up, toward the rounded, time-weary mountain in the distance. It was bare and scarred, dotted here and there with houses and lights. And, up near the very peak, where it met the sky, she could see the dense, impenetrable thickness of trees and woods. Raw, untouched nature. A forest.
"It was all like that," she said, indicating the faraway point of the mountain. "Trees all over, almost right up to the property line, as if the resort had been a part of it, cut right out of the woods. And there were deer, too, I remember. You could see them sometimes."
"I'm sure there must still be plenty of them up there now." Les stretched his fingers carefully, gathering up the soft, yielding warmth of her belly flesh under the dress. He inched his hand up, moving skillfully toward the swollen mound of her breast, halting just the proper distance from it to implant the idea, if it wasn't already in her thoughts.
"None of this was here," she continued, ostensibly oblivious to his advances. "None of these buildings, nor that ugly, phony-looking lake. There was an archery field over there, and a swimming pool that always used to be covered with leaves. You had to rake it clean before you could use it:"
Les shivered for effect, using the movement to slide his hand a little further up her pliant belly, his extended thumb rubbing per the stiff ridges at the base of her bra. He could almost feel the heavy, pressing weight of her magnificent tit, balanced on the point of his thumb.
"It's getting a little chilly, isn't it?" he asked. "Why don't we go back to my room? We could have a nightcap or something."
"And right over there," Cherylnn went on, pointing her finger at the three-story high glass and steel ultramodern main building, "was Mount Shangri-la Lodge. But it was really a lodge. A small lodge-type building made of wood, nothing, nothing at all like that. They still call this place a Lodge, but the lodge is gone."
"It must have grown considerably," Les commented, wondering how it would feel to shove his cock all the way up into her cunt. Would she be hot? Wet? Christ.
"And the owner came from New York. He was a very friendly man, and they lived right in the lodge, along with the guests. He came out here because of his wife. She had asthma or something, and they couldn't live in the city. They were very nice, but I can't remember their name."
Les touched her breast with the point of his finger. He sucked in his breath nervously, and held it. She didn't say anything. He tested it, thrusting the finger up against the restrained softness. He had to consciously fight back the easy temptation to cup her breast in the center of his hand. Too soon, he cautioned himself. Too soon.
"She died," Cherlynn explained. She jerked her hand down, pointing her finger almost directly in front of them. There, in the middle of the hill, was a mansion. It jutted boldly out off the face of the hill, held up by stilts, balanced what seemed to be very precariously. Pale sagging light spilled from many of its windows. It reminded her of a castle. She said: "But he's still alive. He must be in his eighties. He lives over there, in that – palace, like the lord of the manor. A feudal fief. Like a king, looking out over his own private kingdom.
“He must have made a fortune," Les commented, his businessman instincts rising up and over-riding his sexual impulses, for the moment. "The land alone must be worth millions."
"There used to be cottages there," Cherlynn explained. "Honeymoon ages. But it's all – gone now. And all that's left is this – factory. This goddamn resort factory. This impersonal, money grubbing pleasure, palace, where they charge you a buck and a half for a bucket of ice cubes." She shook her head again, pushing memories away. "Christ. Jesus Christ."
"Well," Les observed, shrugging philosophically, his index finger joining his thumb as they rubbed back and forth across her breast, "that's what happens. Things change. Everything changes. It gets bigger, better."
Cherlynn stepped out of his fondling grip. As she moved away from him, Les managed to slide his hand down her firm body, feeling as much of her flesh through her dress as he could. His grip broke off at the top of her thighs, right where the vee of her cunt was joined. She turned and faced him, studying his face for a moment.
"Thomas Wolfe was right."
"Huh?"
"You can't go home again."
Les didn't understand. He wiped his sweaty palm furtively on his gray slacks. "I guess so," he answered, pretending to agree.
At least he's handsome, Cherlynn thought.
He was tall and thin, with dark brown hair which couldn't deride whether to be worn long or short. It was a bastardized in-between, combed neatly, parted with a ruler, hanging straight down over his collar, and swept behind his ears so that they stuck almost obscenely out. Cherlynn guessed that he was about her age, which put him close to thirty. Perhaps he was a year or two older. Les was good looking, in her estimation, even if it were in a plain, uninspired way. He had a moderate-sized straight nose, dimpled cheeks, soft brown eyes, long fluttering feminine eyelashes, and a quick, easy smile so obviously phony it seemed to be held in place with tape. His clothing was expensive and well tailored, and, most importantly, he wore no wedding ring.
Cherlynn had met him in the Recreation Hall, where the traditional weekend dance was tenaciously hanging on judging from the fitful music leaking softly into the night air. She had been sitting alone, successfully warding off countless numbers of advances from lonely unattached men, while she bided her time and waited for the right man to come along. When he didn't seem to be coming (he never had, after all: not ever), Cherlynn, out of a panicked paranoia, decided to settle for the very next one, regardless of who he was. or what he looked like. If she didn't, she reasoned, there might not be a next-, one. There was, of course, and he was Les Evans.
Cherlynn had allowed him to pick her up, although he would have never suspected that the choice -had been hers and not his to make. They played word games for a while, then Les brought her a drink, explaining that he was a businessman on vacation, resting. They danced a couple of slow dances, and she, like all women, had to endure the grinding thrusts of his erect cock every time he tried to hump it between her moving thighs. She allowed him some freedom, enough to build his confidence, and before he became too carried away with his success, Cherlynn asked him whether he wanted to leave the dance. Thinking, of course, that it was art invitation to her bed, Les readily agreed. He was audibly disappointed when she told him that she. wanted to take a walk Now he would have to start all over again.
"Feel like having another drink?" he asked, trying to start all over again.
She watched his face carefully. "Another drink? Sure, why not."
His face went to pieces with anticipation. "I have – ah – some wine in my – ah – room. Or we could send for -"
"Why don't we go to my room?" Cherlynn suggested. "We can send for anything we want from there as well as we can from your room."
Les looked stunned. "Sure. Fine."
Cherlynn began walking slowly down the hill, her head down, studying the shadows which lay like puddles at her feet. The grass felt ticklish and cool flitting against her ankles. The chiffon crispness of her dress swished softly in the blanket stillness. Les moved quickly up next to her and took her hand, afraid he was going to be left behind
"This is a lovely night, isn't it?" Les said, shielding his eyes as he fried to stare through the glare of light oozing from the Lodge's main building. He was looking for the stars.
"Shhhh," Cherlynn said.
"What?"
"I said be quiet. Don't talk. I don't feel like talking or listening. I feel like thinking."
"Oh. Okay."
They walked on in silence, Les holding fiercely onto Cherlynn's hand, sweating into her palm. His thoughts were wild and sexual, filled with erotic promise and untold possible pleasures. Pride colored his thinking, and he had patted himself on the back so frequently, he was almost tripping over his inflated ego. He walked with a bounce to his step, and a confident, sophisticated, super-cool throbbing in his impatiently erect cock. Cherlynn's thoughts, however, were quite different..
Why did I come back here? she asked herself. Why did I come back to Shangri-la after all these years?
Her shoes were new and expensive and they ached desperately to be pulled off to release her crushed, bloodless toes. The rings on her fingers clinked dully together, keeping a disrhythmic tempo to mark off time. The sound was a jangling counterpoint to the chime-like jingling of her necklace and bracelets.
I must me a masochist to have come back here, she told herself. This place of all places. I could have gone to Puerto Rico for the weekend, or St. Thomas, or the Bahamas. Christ I could have even gone to visit my sister Cecile and her idiot husband on, the Island if I just wanted to get away. But no, I had to come back here, come back to the worst possible place. I had to come home to Mount Shangri-la Lodge.
The slope of the hill became more steep as they neared the base, and their pace increased commensurately. The clinking-jingle-jangle-swish of Cherlynn accelerated until it sounded like a hollow parody against the night. The wind carried laughter to them, and the sound of voices. The music was lively and danceable, but neither felt like dancing.
Cherlynn was an attractive woman, despite what she thought of herself. She saw herself as being fat, dull, and stupid. She was, of course, none of these things, although would never convince.herself of that fact. She was almost thirty years old, and she was unmarried. That single fact alone was all the reinforcement she needed to maintain negative opinions of herself. Her large brown eyes, her soft, vulnerable mouth, the thick rich waves of her ebon black hair could never convince her that she was not plain or homely looking. Her breasts were large and heavy; her waist trim until it flared out into substantial hips, thighs and ass, but Cherlynn was convinced she was fat. She wore her prejudices almost defiantly, as if she were trying to punish the world for not being able to talk her out of them.
It didn't matter that she had an advanced degree in American Literature, or that she was well on her way toward her doctorate. It didn't matter that she was teaching college at one of the most prestigious Universities in the nation, and that she only needed one more summer in order to have tenure. It didn't matter that she was respected in her field, and had published some of the definitive studies on modern American poetry. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered to Cherlynn Beckert was that she was almost thirty years old, and she wasn't married.
Christ, she thought. When was the last time I was here? Ten years -ago? God, closer to-fifteen. Half my life, almost. The last time I was here, I came with my parents the summer I graduated from High school We'd come every summer up -to that one from the time I was a little girl. It never seemed to have changed much during those years. I was still a virgin then, and perhaps that was why nothing seemed to change: because I hadn't changed. I lost my virginity the following spring, my first year at college. Maybe that's why I haven't come back to Shangri-la. until now.
The hill tapered off and dropped them onto a slow winding concrete path that reminded Cherlynn of the gray, trampled tongue of the building toward which they were walking. It was the building to the right of the hill, where the expensive zooms were. The building in which Cherlynns room was located.
"What would you like me to order from Room Service?" Les asked. His tongue was moving nervously across his top lip. "I mean, what would you like to drink?"
Cherlynn stopped and looked directly at Les. She shook her head and sighed. "Christ, she said. "You've got to be kidding."
Les began to respond, then stopped, finally to understand. It confused him because he didn't know how to deal with it. He stood thinking for a moment, then stopped and had to hurry and catch up- with Cherlynn as she walked away from him.
My parents' favorite place, Cherlynn thought, allowing Les to entangle his fingers between hers. Maybe that's the answer. After living at home with them all these years, like some embarrassing maiden aunt, as their ugly, unmarried liability, the living evidence of their failure, perhaps I've begun to think like them. Maybe I wanted to punish them, or myself, by reminding the both of us of just how much time has passed us by. I knew Shangri-la had to have changed; I knew it had to have changed drastically. But I came here anyhow, perhaps just to have one more miserable weekend.
Go! my mother urged, she thought. Maybe you'll It meet someone! Sure, just like I've met someone all those other times, all those other weekends. Well, Mom, I met someone. I found myself. I'm the skeleton in my own closet; I'm the ghost who's haunting my past.
Another couple passed them on the walk, and Cherlynn avoided looking at them. They were laughing giddily together, holding hands like school-time lovers. At the sight of them, Lee shrunk back into the shadows, rubbing his forehead with his hand, hiding his face from them.
Cherlynn thought: I know why I came back to Shangri-la, why I really came back I came out of boredom, out of desperation; I came with the vague idea that perhaps I might find myself a husband. I came back because I didn't know where else to go.
Her room was number 169, and it was on the ground floor of the five story building. Standing in front of the door, Lee trembling nervously beside her, his dark eyes darting up and down the walk, Cherlynn searched through her gold-lame purse until she found the room key. Sweeping it from her hand in quixotic gallantry, Les inserted the key into the lock, opened the door, and escorted Cherlynn into her own room.
"Say, this is nice," he said. He shut the door quietly behind him, his eyes growing wide with a momentary sense of wonder. Her key remained in his hand, and he twirled it jerkily around on his finger. "This room is really something."
"Isn't your room similar?" she asked.
"No. I'm in the other building."
She laughed bitterly, cynically. I might have known.
The room was large and rectangularly shaped, perhaps forty feet long and twenty feet wide. The ceiling was tiled with row after row of acoustical paneling. Still, it hadn't prevented Cherlynn from listening nightly to the groaning and squeaking of the bed in the room directly above her. There was a red shag rug on the floor, stretched plushly from wall to wall, and there was a narrow living room area to the left of the door as they entered the room. It consisted of two chairs, a round table on x-crossed legs, and a color television equipped with stereophonic sound. Further into the room there was a huge, king-sized mattress with a red leather headboard that had Shangri-la emblazoned across it in gold lettering. A triple dresser faced the bed, and its wide, low attached mirror was directly parallel to the middle of the mattress. The room was neat and orderly, and, in comparison to the summer night they had left behind them, considerably cooler. The hum of the air-conditioner was like a buzzing, mechanical music in the background. Sprawled across the bed, totally out of place in either the neatness of the room, or in the fierceness of the season, was a full-length mink coat.
"Is that your coat?" Les asked, needing to say something to alleviate the electric-like tension that was, filling the room.
Cherlynn stared numbly at the coat. "No, it's not. It belongs to my mother."
"Is she here with you?"
"No, I'm here alone."
"Then why did you bring the coat?"
Cherlynn shrugged helplessly. "Who knows. Maybe I thought I was going to need it."
"In the middle of the summer?"
"Ali, Christ!" Cherlynn pleaded, sitting on the edge of the mattress, her expensive Correal original riding up, exposing her well-formed, slightly parted thighs. Her rings clicked nervously together, and the slender gold bands made a tinkling music as she shifted around. "Listen: are you going to fuck me or not?"
Less eyes widened, and he dropped the door key on the floor. "What?" he asked incredulously.
"That's why you're here, isn't it?" she asked, bitterly trying to decide who she hated more: her parents, Les Evans or herself. "You are going to fuck me, aren't you?"
Les mumbled something.
"Well, get on with it, for Christ's sake. Time isn't going to stand still and wait for us."
Numbly, Les walked toward her. He was confused, and again he didn't know how to handle her. It was like a dream, a wild; erotic fantasy, unlike anything that had ever happened to him in his life. He was about to reach out and touch her, when Cherlynn put her hand between his thighs, and began to fondle his erect cock.
"Jesus!" he gasped, his hands dropping heavily to his sides. He stood there insensibly, his feet rooted to the red shag rug. "Jesus!" he repeated. "Jesus!"
"At least you're big," she said softly, looking for some kind of consolation. She ran her hand up and down, from the base of his belly, to the swollen thickness of his cockhead. The shaft was outlined through his fashionable gray slacks, her slender, rose-tipped fingers circling his erection. She said: "Come and fuck me with it. Come and fuck me."
Les bent over and kissed her. He kissed her hard on the mouth, his tongue stiffening as it slid between her lips and pressed into her warmth. He could feel her tongue lashing at his, striking him savagely, making him bleed with her saliva. He placed both hands on her breasts, kneading them in and out while her obviously expert fingers masturbated him savagely.
Cherlynn broke the kiss off. "Fuck me!" she told him. "Don't make romantic love to me. I want to be fucked. I want to be fucked hard and deep!"
Something snapped in Les's brain, and he fell heavily upon her, his fingers pulling at her clothing. He pulled her skirt up and tugged on her pantyhose, inching it down to the middle of her widely-spread thighs. His mouth chewed into her breast, licking at her through her bra and the gauzy material of her dress, leaving a stain of saliva like a wet, misshapen symbol. He grasped the elastic of her panties, and pulled on them frantically, trying to slide them over her gyrating, rolling hips.
"Rip them off!" she cried, opening his zipper and sliding his hard, erect cock out. Her fingers snaked up and down the pulsating pink shaft, jerking him toward her cunt. "Rip them all off… all of my clothed! Shred them! Tear them to pieces! I've got plenty… plenty!"
Les responded with raw, primitive, impassioned sexuality, matching in intensity what Cherlynn's passion offered in total abandonment. He gathered his clothing in his fists, twisting it between his gnarled, impatient fingers, and he ripped at it, he tore at it, he pulled at it, he yanked at it until every thread of fiber was gone, and she was stark naked. All that remained on her body was her cold gold bracelets, the coiled gold links of her necklace, and her diamond, ruby, and emerald rings on her fingers.
"Fuck me!" she gasped, lifting her wet, gushing cunt, screwing it down around Less driving cock. "Fuck me hard! Fuck me deep! Fuck me -"
His cock went in, all the way in, until he was fucking her deep and hard. He could feel the moist, clinging walls of her passageway grinding itself around the throbbing thickness of his cock, rippling up and down like sensuous, responding fingers. He could hear himself entering and withdrawing from; her body, her cunt making a wet, squishing noise as he. lifted her thighs and wrapped them around his driving middle. He fucked her in and out, in and out, fucking her until she came, fucking her until he came.
"I'm coming!" she cried, tightening her pussy around the ball of pleasure that was spinning madly between her thighs. The pleasure was prickled and full of thorns, and each time she squeezed herself around it, she came again, more powerfully, more shatteringly. "I'm coming!… I'm coming!… I'm com -"
Les grunted. He began to come. He could feel his sperm pumping into Cherlynn's moist, twenty-nine year old cunt, filling its quivering passageway until the thick, hot goo seeped between the fluttering black-haired lips, and left a damp, irregular stain across the huge, king-sized mattress.
Cherlynn's moan turned into a sob as she shuddered to master, the intensity of her orgasm. Inside of her she could feel Less cock as it shriveled into nothing. The sperm became cold and slimy.
Are you satisfied? Cherlynn demanded, thinking of no one in particular, thinking of someone very much in particular. Are you satisfied? Are you? Are you? Are you?