A 9/11 Conspiracy Novel
Historical Fiction
Date Published: 05-12-2023
Publisher: Workbook Press
As early as December of 1998, the CIA reported that Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Queda organization prepared for direct attacks against the United States using hijacked aircraft, prompting the FBI to place Osama Bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted List.
In an effort to recruit the best possible Operations Officers to take on these dangerous terrorist organizations, the CIA approaches a young, intelligent, and exceptionally beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed Sherry Aspen and sends her into Afghanistan to locate whatever terrorist cells are hiding there and report these locations back to Langley. But as Sherry soon discovers, she is but a mere pawn in a much larger game of intrigue and espionage.
Despite all that she has to give up to obtain the most relevant information to protect the United States, the CIA turns a deaf ear to what she finds in the Middle East, except when she learns of a terrorist plot to attack the Twin Towers in New York City just months after she is deployed. As a result, Sherry is on the run, not from any of the terrorists in the Middle East who may want to kill her, but by the CIA itself.
In this exceptional work of historical fiction, Harvey Havel outlines a conspiracy theory in the form of a novel that questions whether or not the tragedy that took place on September 11th, 2001 was really based on the actions of only one man and not more powerful forces at work, such as the CIA. By following Sherry Aspen on her mission through such places as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Israel, Havel takes us on a thrilling ride that uncovers what may have been the real reasons behind the 9/11 attacks in which nearly 3,000 innocent American civilians perished. For anyone interested in alternate perspectives of what might have caused the 9/11 attacks as well as those who crave high-caliber literary fiction, this important and carefully-crafted novel is a still very timely and a definite must-read.
Chapter
One
January
2000 – Washington D.C., USA
A beauty such as hers is not without its cruelty. She had a look that could wreck a man’s soul
and extinguish whatever hope grows in his heart. But there is no logic to this beauty. It just appears there, and once taken in, it
never lets go of its hold. Such was her
beauty, and it isn’t the type that enlightens or enlivens. Rather, a man wants to capture it for himself
so badly, that it changes him into a mad hunter without a strategy, without any
tools or weapons, without a voice to coo it near so that he could keep her all
for himself with all the greed in his heart.
That is the trick – to capture her beauty just for himself, to own her
heart, so that she will forever be looking for him, even as she stands right in
front of him.
It would be a dream if all she saw was an ugly man. But in this terrible, ridiculous world, such
a woman can never be captured by such ugliness, as her world rests in the arms
of other men, clones they are, who look alike and talk alike and have the same
odors and highbrow palaver. They have
the same disposition. She may have held
out a sympathetic hand to the ugly and the damned, but she is only meant for
the best. And so, the ugly and the
damned have to accept her charity, while she gives her body to the type of men we
loathe and want dead. And while she feels
sorry for these ugly men, she makes love to the clones who have stolen and
plundered her heart through every era, decade, and century. There is no disruption to this continuous
cycle. To break it would mark the end of
Western civilization.
The rare recessive flower opening to a lesser, colorful one
in what is an otherwise planned, orderly, and highly cultivated garden will
never be salted by anyone except a God whom a man, in the depths of his own
madness, has screamed to in moments of his greatest despair. Because the ugly man will never win her
heart. He will go so far as to confuse
the curse itself – is he himself cursed? Or is the beautiful woman whom he hunts the
real curse? But the generational copies
of her visage that walk passed him wherever he goes will always remain - each
copy different in subtle ways but all
equally oblivious to his existence, as women such as she concentrate on those
electronic contraptions they thumb in their palms, sorting out other clones who
await her arrival at the next dinner party where they all cannibalize each
other, if only to protect their collective beauty and sell it to make their
millions and declare victory over the Third World, drenching the pitiful parade
of the lesser ones with a thunderstorm of their own making.
A woman so fair has to be owned and captured, as that is what
heaven and nature had meant by creating her, an agreement between the two, a
resolution of sorts to this never-ending conflict that keeps the Earth spinning
on its axis, just so the ugly and the damned have her to look up to, for lesser
women to dress like her and talk like her, for nations to follow her into
endless war zones and broken ghettos just for a glimpse of her figure or a
touch of her soft hand. They need her to
be placed on pedestals of worship.
Otherwise, there would be no point to the grueling procession that
begins on the bestial floor and extends to the heavens, no point to the pain it
takes for the flower to break through dark soil and emerge as a luminous rose,
its petals thin, soft, and delicate, then falling to earth to birth many more
of them, killing a world of useless weeds.
Because this beauty of hers conquers completely. While smelling of roses, her blonde locks
radiate below us like a thousand brilliant haloes, casting a light so blinding
that we as her supplicants see that she doesn’t belong at eye-level but high
above, she a substitute for an ascending sun that warms the planets that circle
her crown.
It’s curious, then, what the ugly and the damned of this
world want with a natural blonde they can’t touch, talk to, or kiss. They separate her from the rest, despise the
clones who win her hand, or perhaps they need her as a sacrifice, to tie her
upon an altar and reveal the truth to her about the humbler men she has been
avoiding since the beginning of time.
And while giving her body to the clones she has been paired with ever
since birth, this woman, not unlike the queen of a nation, obeys the scroll, as
she descends from her throne to heal her subjects. Her empathy for them delivers her to the
Earth below only to buoyed up again by a society that refuses to let her drift
too far down.
Could it be that her natural blonde hair is the reason for
this? Or her suntanned buttery skin,
perhaps? Do those blue crystal eyes of
hers, rammed into the consciousness of every dark-colored boy at an early age,
cause a rat race in which a lowly man can never compete no matter how great his
own potential? Her body doesn’t
represent a prize or a trophy to be won, though, as incomprehensible as that
may seem. Her descent from the heavens
signifies the need to possess her or to cast a spell that only an ugly and
damned man could conjure, because there is really no reason for giving her body
to those look-alikes, as every man she opens herself to is that way. Her man is always the king on top of the heap,
and it is always the same man. It is Hell
to witness this process. It sticks
within the minds of those most alone, like a dense fog that constricts
blackened lungs that exhale dry, hollow coughs of gross injustice in rapid
release. Because the fact that Sherry
Aspen lies in bed with the young man she has been paired with is the most
intolerable of all injustices. An ugly,
damned, and darkish man can only look upon the two snuggled in their bed in
their cozy Vermont chalet and be alarmed at the perfection of their bodies
together.
She was in the throes of a dream when an irregular breath
broke her from a sound sleep. Her soft
bronze arms had been wrapped around her lover that night, and she carefully
untangled herself from his strong back and neck. She lifted herself up from the king-sized
bed and tiptoed into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of cold milk. Outside her window, the first winter snowfall
fell upon dry pinecones that were nestled beneath tall evergreens. It forecasted good skiing that morning. As the sun broke over the rolling Green
Mountains, she heard a soft wind curling against the windows. Luckily, her muscles weren’t at all sore from
a full day of skiing the day before. Her
boyfriend’s muscles, the man she was sure to marry after they both graduated
from Georgetown in just a week’s time, weren’t sore either. They would both be graduating early after
winter exam week.
She made sure not to wake him, as the kitchen was close
enough to the large room where they slept.
After the milk she drank coated her throat, she made a pot of dark roast
she bought from the gourmet coffee shop down the access road. It had a chocolate aftertaste to it. She usually liked her coffee light and sweet,
but her tastes had changed ever since she met the handsome gentleman who may have
one day become her husband. As she
sipped her coffee, she heard his breathing, his body rising and falling in the
bed that they shared. She would soon
wake him by caressing his face, she thought, or maybe running her hand through
his thick brown hair. His body was
strong and lean, his muscles discernible through the silk sheets under which he
slept. She had never beheld such a
beautiful body, and as she stared out into the evergreens and up towards the
snow-laden mountains, she caught her reflection in the window just then.
She agreed that she was just as beautiful, and together they
would complement each other’s beauty.
They belonged at the dinner parties and the wedding receptions. They
were the same, as though they grew up in the same region, or perhaps they
looked like cousins from the same stock.
They were the ones the commoners saw in the magazines and the television
ads, as the rich were just more interesting. They held hands, smiled, and loved life
completely, because, believe it or not, such a world did exist. She lived in it exclusive of others who
simply lived around it and always wanted to get in it. And those who were scraped off the sides
could only cast their stones at the pig-fuck at the center where the two of
them stood. The commoners weren’t
exactly envious of them but upset at the corruption they generated and the
unfairness of it all, or at least that’s how she saw everyone beyond her circle. If she simply stooped to the outcast, the
scapegoat, or the leper, she would have touched their defects with enough of
her beauty to last lifetimes, but instead, with her boyfriend and college peers
in the way, she stood as an obstacle to the dreams and wishes of the feeble and
disfigured ones who fell into the abyss were she had pushed them. So, we cast our stones at them and preach
revolution once every century.
There too were the ones who supported and surrounded the
couple with ingratiating remarks and sycophantic regards, as they secretly
longed to be touched and anointed by their powers and were immediately sucked
in just by being mere acquaintances of theirs.
And when reality beckons them back to their mediocre lives, these
sycophants confirm their secret hatred for the couple. Even if the masses had nothing but iron and
lead, they would forge crowns for the couple, kiss their tender hands as rulers
of a new civilization that promised beauty and prosperity, as those closest to
them quietly weave crowns of thorns for their execution as they slept.
After her coffee, she sat by him on the bed. She ran her delicate hands through his
hair. For several moments he did not
stir, and so she ran her hands down his back, which soon awakened him.
“What’s wrong?” he said, coming out of sleep. “What time is it?”
“It’s seven in the morning,” she said.
“Sherry, go to sleep.
The mountain doesn’t open for another couple of hours. We have all day.”
“I can’t sleep anymore.”
He turned over on his back.
His chest faced her. She bent
down and kissed his lips.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then what are you doing up?”
“I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Our future.”
He chuckled at this and said, “what about our future?”
“Can you tell me the story?”
He chuckled again and had her lie down next to him. She curled in close to him, and as he
caressed her blonde locks, he began telling the story of their lives together
as man and wife one day.
“First, we finish college,” he whispered into her ear. “We have to do that. Every couple must do that. I will graduate with a degree in Economics,
and soon I’ll intern for my Dad’s public relations firm downtown. We’ll get a nice big house, a place to raise our
family, with a wide lawn and a large backyard and a swimming pool. And the house will be close to campus where
the both of us are living now. And once
I work with my Dad for a few months, I’ll fly up to Cambridge, to Harvard Law
School, and attend classes there. Once I
graduate and pass the Bar, I’ll return to DC to work for my father. I’ll eventually head the place, you see, but
that is not enough. I want to lead. I was born to lead. I’ll eventually work with one of my Dad’s
friends who sits on the Senate, and I’ll get to know how things are run in DC
as an insider. Then, once I learn the
ropes, I’ll run for the Senate myself.
And do you know what? I’ll win.”
“For California?”
“Yes, of course. Once
I’m a Senator, we can finally live just how we’ve always wanted to. We’ll live on the ocean in Malibu, or how
about Santa Barbara? We’ll raise our
beautiful children there, and everything will be just fine.”
“And what about me?”
“Ah, yes. That is the
best part of the story. First, you
finish school with me with a degree in Biology.
And while I intern with Dad, you’ll move up to Cambridge and go to
Harvard Medical School, as we planned.
There, you will train to become a pediatrician who helps troubled kids
all over the world, especially those people in those poor places, like Africa
and India. Soon, I will follow you up to
Cambridge and join you there. After a
few years, I will have my law degree, and you will be a licensed medical
doctor. We can then get married and have
a huge wedding in California.”
“What kind of wedding will it be?”
“It will be the most beautiful, lavish, and expensive wedding
the state of California has ever seen.
All the most important government people will be there, maybe even the
President and the First Lady, if their schedule permits. You will be brought into one of the great
remaining American families. You, an
Aspen of Vermont. Can you imagine it? The joining of two wonderfully open-hearted
families? The wedding will be covered by
the press and put on all the celebrity TV shows. We’ll be American celebrities, because your
dress will be the most beautiful wedding dress ever made.”
“All of those stars and important people?”
“Yes. They are already
friends of the family. They would die to
be invited. It will be like Truman
Capote’s party at the Plaza Hotel in the 1950s, because that’s what my Mom and
Dad want.”
“But my family isn’t known at all. Won’t people think I’m not good enough?”
“You will be the star who is born right in front of the
world’s eyes. It doesn’t matter whether
or not your family is known. You will be
a part of our family.”
“But my family is middle class.”
“Not that bad off.”
“Compared to yours, mine is poor.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that ever again,
okay? Myself and my family will always
have your family covered.”
“We’re a simple farming family,” she said.
“I know, dear, but my family will always take care of your
family. I promise. We’ll have no problems. Not a worry in the world.”
“I will pay you back for medical school. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I do. You will
pull your own weight, like you insist on doing.
But until that time, I’ll be paying for your medical school, and we’ll
soon be living in Cambridge together until we’re both done. And then we’ll return to DC and work,
traveling to California and back when we need to. This is when I’m a Senator and you’re a
doctor taking care of all those sick children and infants.”
“It sounds so wonderful.”
“That’s because it is wonderful, Sherry,” he said, caressing
her cheek. “I just don’t know why you’re
so worried all the time. As long as I’m
around, nothing will ever happen to you.
You’re with me. Sometimes you act
like you’re a lost little girl in the forest looking for shelter, and you think
that every shelter you find is a temporary one.
You’ve got to relax. You’re with
me. So kiss me, okay?”
She leaned over his hairless chest and kissed his open lips,
her mouth taking in his tongue, and together they locked lips, tongues, and
bodies. His free hand moved beneath her
prairie night gown and traveled along one of her buttermilk thighs. She liked his hand there, and just when he
moved it between her legs and up towards the middle, she stopped him.
“What? What’s the
matter?” he asked.
“I’m not feeling it,” she said.
“Not feeling it? We
used to make love all the time, and lately you just stop like there’s something
wrong. Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Maybe it’s something about me?”
“No, there is nothing wrong about you, or me, or us, or our
future, or anything like that.”
“Then why can’t we make love, Sherry? Something must be wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong,”
“Then? Have you been
seeing your therapist? What does she
say?”
“Why is sex so important to you? Why do we have to have sex all the time? It’s like you want it every night.”
“We haven’t made love in a very long time, Sherry. I just need it. I just do, okay? I need to be inside of you as much as I can,
because I have to make sure that you are mine.”
“But I am yours. And
you’re inside my heart. You don’t
literally have to be inside of me. We
have a connection far beyond that.”
“Sometimes, Sherry, we need to feel it, our two bodies
touching, my skin on yours, my body inside yours. We used to do that all the time. And if we do it now, then we’ll be connecting
with all of that other stuff you talk about.
We will connect emotionally, spiritually, and all of that other stuff.”
“It’s not ‘other stuff.’,” she said, climbing off his
body. “See, that’s the problem. It’s just ‘stuff’ to you. That ‘stuff’ is all we should need.”
“So what are you saying?
We shouldn’t sleep together ever again?”
“I’m not saying that,” as she got up and paced with her arms
folded near the foot of the bed. “Let’s
just take our time, because I want that connection, all three of them burning
at once – physical, spiritual, emotional.”
“We’re going to be married.
I love you. Can’t you see that?”
“I know. But just stop
pushing me all the time. Just get out of
bed, get on your Chilly’s and pour yourself a cup of coffee. The lifts start spinning in a couple of
hours.”
“I’m getting sick of this,” he said, throwing off the
covers. “I don’t know how long I can
stand this shit.”
“Are you saying you won’t wait for me?”
“I have no idea what we’re waiting for. What are we waiting for? Tell me.”
“I want to wait.
That’s all. I want you that
badly.”
“You already have me.
What’s the problem?”
“Not yet,” she said.
“There’s a piece that’s missing.”
“What?!”
She smiled sympathetically, returned to the kitchen, and
resumed staring into the Green Mountains that surrounded the chalet.
“What!” he yelled from the bedroom.
She smiled again and just kept staring out the window. She knew she had him, but she would make him
wait until she broke him like a wild stag.
A man had to be broken and whipped into shape. Sure, when they first met, she doled it
out. That’s how she kept him coming
back. And for the past year she closed
it off, a twist of the spigot of necessary ecstasy until that screw in her mind
that had rattled around remained in one place.
She needed more of him. His soul,
perhaps?
His family had already guaranteed her medical school tuition
and the townhouse next to campus. His
beautiful noble parents just waited to hear of their engagement. Yet nothing had happened officially. These were just useless rumors and plans in a
sea of other useless rumors and plans.
He could have repeated the story of their lives a thousand times over,
and she still wouldn’t have been convinced of such a farfetched fairy tale of
love and endless happiness. That one
screw that rattled around her head like a mouse running from wall to wall in
the attic of her skull plunged her into insecurities that sometimes kept her
awake at night. At those times, when the
world was dead, she often needed a drink or a sedative prescribed to her by her
therapist to help her sleep. It was
early in the morning again, and she felt as though she had been up all
night. Not sleepy, but exhausted.
Another couple from Georgetown had joined them on their ski
trip. They lodged in the chalet next
door on her boyfriend’s dime. She
figured it would be better if she weren’t so isolated all the time, if only to
avoid awkward silences, fighting off his libido, and getting on one another’s
nerves. His libido was ferocious at
times, and she worried about his getting hot and bothered enough to force her
down on the bed and do whatever he willed with her. She knew he wanted her badly enough that
morning but not badly enough to force her down on the bed as she had frequently
imagined. Good Georgetown gentlemen just
didn’t do that to the women they would one day wed.
From what her sorority sisters had told her, men commit far
greater sins than women. But they also
said that men like theirs were simply unlike other men. They had reputations for being true,
honorable gents. Sherry and her
boyfriend stood out from that flock.
They were the King and Queen of the Prom, the star quarterback and the
head cheerleader, Ken and Barbie, however her sisters frivolously described
them – like Charles and Diana, Jack Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier, Bogie and
Bacall, Princess Grace and King Alfred.
Such comparisons went on and on, and they thrilled her, even though she
never let it show.
She wanted to be a part of something much larger than her own
small New England self, ever since her humble rural parents told her that she
would one day marry a prince just like the girl in the children’s books they
read to her before bedtime, these same children’s books that never explained
anything about the human condition but presented a life that avoided tragic
endings. They taught her to expect the
fairy tale, not simply dream about them.
That expectation had been based solely on her beauty.
Sure, she had brains too, but her beauty always came
first. Brains were for the basement,
while beauty was for the penthouse. It
was that simple. She could have had a
thousand brains, but it was more important that she breed more blonde children
if only to balance out the population, so that she could be presentable at the
places she would one day travel, if only to prove that there was a certain
class of people within her great society who would never be bored or lonely,
tired or ugly – especially the lonely part, because God didn’t make beautiful
women lonely for too long. Beautiful
women always had someone to go out with or visit at night, friends who
flattered them and guys who kept them occupied with possibilities of ultimate
happiness, even beyond the grave where she sits next to the heavenly Father and
rules over the souls of the damned, if only to gain the good Lord’s sympathy
for them and rescue her craven flock from the purgatory of never-ending
masturbation when no one’s looking.
She forgave them of such a sin, because she already knew what
they wanted, and what they wanted was she.
Men didn’t want anything else.
But it was far too late. She
would wed the Georgetown gent - this young, athletic thoroughbred ready to lead
the political classes without even lifting a finger. Sure, they still felt pain, because only
their pain was broadcasted over every airwave, newspaper, website, and
bubble-gum pop song, and not anyone else’s.
And together, their pains would be the pains of all, as though everyone
shared the same pain – from the starving man in the gutter, the leper who falls
in love with the jogger wearing tight yoga pants in the park showing off her
ass on a nice sunny day, and finally, to the wealthiest men and women on earth.
Because we all feel pain, and princes and princesses were no
exceptions, and because of this, they ought to be excused for not doing too
much and succeeding at whatever they did, such that even their simplest
mistakes had been rewritten by some fortunate historian who explained them away
with the rationale of the great philosophers and sages who haunt the stacks of
our most cherished libraries. Sherry and
her boyfriend were not meant to fail no matter what they did. Her beauty saved her, and together their
happiness, beneficence, and power in a land of bewildered mongrels and feeble
minds had been cemented.
By the time they ate a light breakfast and donned their ski
clothes, the chairlifts spun, and a few early risers had already dotted the
dove-white trails that led from the mountain peaks to the base lodges
below. Sherry wore a tight pair of
racing pants that clung to her body like a latex condom. She didn’t wear anything woolen like the
others, but rather let her blonde hair fall behind her and her body stand out. Out of the four of them, she looked like she
belonged on a ski magazine cover and not the icy and rocky East Coast slopes
where the snow fell heavy and wet.
Her boyfriend dressed more traditionally and so did her
friends from Georgetown, her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend. The two guys were fraternity brothers, and
the two girls were sorority sisters. Their
fraternities and sororities had been paired together ever since their early
foundings, and this foursome represented the ideal pairing of traditionally
aligned organizations that could only dissolve if another country nuked the
university and all of the fair-skinned people who attended it. Only the beautiful women went to the sorority
she had rushed. And the favorable,
handsome stags went to the fraternity he had pledged, a tribal and ethnic
affair that cast its shadow over the undesirables who only wanted a taste of
what had been branded into their minds.
Both of their chalets were connected by a slope that led
straight to a chairlift at the base of the mountain. Rays of bright sunshine
had broken through a partly cloudy sky, and even though it was still very early
in the season, there was still enough snow on the ground to have a solid day
without the burden of the crowds that would surely populate the area later that
season. They even had to take their
final exams in a couple of days. Despite
this, exam week didn’t stop them from the pleasure of their truancy from the
august lecture halls and the classrooms of the university. They never had any reason to worry. The classes were easy once they got in, as
college was no longer a place to learn but more like an amusement park, the
buildings and dorms and events as interesting and anticipated as late-night keg
parties and one-night stands. Unless a
student wanted to become a professor one day, academics didn’t matter. Once the name of the place and the degree
that came with it had been embroidered into a student’s identity, no one had to
worry about academics anymore. A student
could read a single book or all the books in all the libraries on campus, and
he or she would still graduate with a ‘B’.
The name of the place counted, but not much else. One could easily get the same education from
a public library but without the benefits of getting drunk and laid every
weekend. If the tuition could be paid,
then a diploma could be issued, as the diploma was that slip of fancy paper
that put the student in the running for an entry-level job, if he or she were
lucky enough. Otherwise, the kid moves
back in with his parents and gets on their nerves.
The group that went skiing right before exam week, however,
had nothing to worry about. Their exams
would be multiple choice, their scores scanned by machine, their classes a
series of gut courses meant to ensure a breezy ride through the time of their
lives. It was no big deal. But perhaps they had it tough due to the
burdens of privilege. They had the task
of navigating the social scene of the university. Since they lived and breathed in the center
of all things, they had to play their parts without stuttering their
words. They were on display wherever
they went. They avoided the parties and
courses that compromised their social rank.
They also made sure to avoid the people who did not look or act like
they did. The beautiful went with the
beautiful, the stupid with the stupid, the ugly with the ugly, the damned with
the damned.
Sherry had different ideas, though, and this made her even
more beautiful in the eyes of the younger students who beheld her on
campus. Her beauty was a kind of charity
in itself, as though the sight of her visage made the crops grow. She cared about the poor, especially the
children, as any future First Lady ought to have cared, but she had little idea
how to solve the problem of poverty. Her
solution was to become a doctor, but without getting her hands bloody at the
same time. She wanted it both ways – to
be rich and be poor, she supposed. Blood
and guts were not things she was used to.
At this time in her life, however, being a pediatrician and the example
it would set in a senatorial family fascinated her more than the work it
entailed. But because she had to choose
Biology to become a medical doctor, she didn’t have it as easy as her sorority sisters.
First of all, the sciences had always been tougher than the
humanities, as anything with numbers or organisms turned the in-crowd off, but
secondly, a major like Biology required more class time, lab work, and heavier
books that she lugged around campus in a Tibetan rucksack that was all the rage
in Colorado when they skied there last season.
Her decision to become a doctor had been seen as a sacrifice
for those poor children who needed her blessings just to survive. Sherry would soon become the doctor that the
children would rather go home with than their own mothers, and consequently,
they would long to remain with her than in their own tenement houses on their graffitied
city streets at their Cream of Wheat dinners.
On that brisk, early Vermont morning, however, their first order of
business was breakfast.
An exclusive restaurant abutted the chalet, and the foursome
had met there the night before for apres-ski and dinner. A waiter seated them at a large window with a
view of the ski mountain. The foursome
looked like they had been skiing together since childhood. To the guests, they looked like they belonged
in such a place. They ordered eggs,
bacon, toast, and coffee, but Sherry made sure to watch her weight too. She left the bacon for her boyfriend, and
she ate her egg whites with plain wheat toast, even though she wished it were
buttered.
“You’re not eating any more than that?” asked her boyfriend.
“I’m not that hungry this morning. Plus, I ate before you woke up.”
“God, it’s like you don’t watch your figure enough already,”
said her best friend on the other side of her, her auburn hair towel-dry in the
sunshine. She had just taken a shower,
even though she would soon spend several hours sweating on the slopes.
“Sherry has to watch her figure,” said Sherry’s best friend’s
boyfriend. “Otherwise, the gossip around
campus would snowball. Isn’t that right,
Sherry?”
“Honestly, I’m really not that hungry,” she said.
“Don’t be so dour, honey,” said her boyfriend. “You’ll have no problem passing that
ridiculous Poly-Sci exam. It won’t be
that hard. It’s not like you really need
to pass anyway.”
“I’m not worried about exam week,” said Sherry.
“Then what’s bothering you?” asked her best friend. “Are you trying to lose weight?”
Sherry said nothing for a few moments and then said,
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Sorry. I guess I am just worried about exam
week.”
Her best friend suddenly summoned the waiter.
“Mamosas all around,” she called.
“No, I couldn’t,” said Sherry.
“Yes!” said her boyfriend.
“Great idea.”
“This occasion definitely calls for high spirits,” said the
fraternity brother.
When the flutes of orange juice and champagne arrived at
their table, they toasted their ill-timed vacation and downed the Mamosas in
one shot. Sherry felt a little better,
now that the atmosphere had become cheery and festive.
“That was a fine idea,” said her boyfriend. “Feel better?”
“Yes, darling,” said Sherry, “I do. I really do.
I think I’ll finish the rest of my breakfast. I don’t want to be tipsy on the mountain.”
“That a girl,” said her boyfriend, massaging her back and
kissing her on the cheek. “Sometimes she
needs a little push.”
She smiled a little and ate her breakfast in tiny bites.
“I wonder what they’re doing back in Washington?” said her
best friend.
“Studying. What else?”
“I mean our people.”
“Drinking,” smiled her boyfriend.
“Y’know they’re partying,” said her best friend. “I wonder who hooked up as we slept last
night.”
“You can bet a lot of them did,” said her boyfriend. “We don’t let exam week stop us.”
“Can we talk about something else, please?” asked
Sherry.
They all had a good laugh over this.
“Seriously, it’s just sex and partying all the time,” said
Sherry. “College should be about
something more than that, don’t you think?”
The three of them looked at each other quietly and then burst
out laughing again. Her best friend
threw a napkin at her.
“I’m not joking,” laughed Sherry.
“God, won’t she make a great wife of a Sentor someday?” said
her boyfriend.
“Someday?” said Sherry.
They again burst out laughing.
The slopes awaited them, and after she fit her boots on and
dipped them into her bindings next to an outside hearth on the restaurant’s
patio, she followed her boyfriend to the chairlift near the base. The temperature had warmed considerably since
early morning. The other couple followed
in the chair behind them as they moved forward high above a barren trail of
large boulders, thinly covered mud, and blackened snow.
“What kind of wedding will it be again?” she asked him.
He lowered his ski mask and leaned into her.
“It will be the finest wedding the Capital has ever
seen. Even the President will be there.”
“Ha!”
“You think I’m joking?”
“Yeah, right. I don’t
expect you to pull that one off.”
“My father was a sophomore at Yale when he was senior. You know that? They knew each other well.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not! There’s a
good chance that the President, or at least a representative of his family,
will be there.”
“But aren’t we on the other side?”
“Honey, it doesn’t matter.
We’re all part of the same team.
It doesn’t matter if we’re liberal or they’re conservative. We all manage the government no matter what
direction the country turns. All that
conflict everyone else sees on television is just meant to confuse people. Everyone gets along. Even though my father is a liberal Democrat,
he is still close friends with the Bush’s.
So, in all likelihood, he will be there at our wedding. You’ll see.”
“If you ever ask me to marry you.”
“If you ever accept.”
“What?”
“To marry me.”
He kissed her as the chair approached the summit of the
mountain. When the four met at the top,
they skated along a flat primer of the mountain’s many trails until they dove
down a black diamond towards the bottom, her skis parallel and her arms poking
into the snow with her poles. She looked
as elegant as a figure skater. She
careened across the face of the trail in splendor, her boyfriend behind her,
followed by the two others. As she was a
natural Vermonter, her skiing bested the others, even though her friends also
knew how to ski well and were no strangers to the sport. Sherry had been taught to ski at
kindergarten, and her friends had learned during third or fourth grade. As a bright youngster, she raced on the ski
team, winning award after award for the fastest times. She made the greatest contribution to her
team. She also trained for the Olympics
and wanted to join but chose to immerse herself in academics instead.
She won a much-coveted scholarship to Georgetown, not an
athletic one, but a merit scholarship based on her grade point average and high
standardized test scores. She was the
first member of her family to have attended such a prestigious school, as her
parents had attended the University of Vermont, which was not so bad
either. She was an only child, and as a
result, her parents sunk their hopes and dreams into this one promising product
of their love. By the time she entered
high school, she was already the most beautiful girl in a state of dairy farms,
antiques, ski resorts, rolling hills, mountain bikes, transplants from New York
City, white women with soft skin, red lips, long limbs, sky-blue eyes, and
long, thin sun-bleached hair.
Her milk-over-teeth beauty went far beyond what most of the
New England well-to-do expected of their suburban daughters. And yes, all the boys wanted to date her, and
the bad boys wanted to get into her pants, as that was what the whole student
body waited for, but she refused all of them until she successfully completed
her coursework in exemplary fashion and moved to DC to become a freshman at
Georgetown, a school she could have only dreamt of going to. She had the pick of the Ivy League lot, but
Georgetown offered her much more than the others, and so her parents leapt at
the chance and enrolled her as soon as the dollar amount of her scholarship arrived
in the mail.
About the Author
Harvey Havel has been a short-story writer and novelist for over thirty years. His first novel, Noble McCloud, A Novel, about a young, struggling musician was published in November of 1999. He now has nineteen books which include novels, short stories, and two collections of essays on current affairs and political matters. His latest book is a serialized novel, The Queen of Intelligence: A 9/11 Novel, has just been released through Kindle Vella on Amazon.com in 2021.
Havel is formerly a Lecturer in English at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. He also taught writing and literature at SUNY Albany and the College of Saint Rose, also in Albany, New York.
He currently lives there with his pet cat, Marty, and has many more books in store for his many fans in future.
His readers are encouraged to leave their honest comments about his work anywhere his fine books are sold.
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