Chapter 11

When Lynn awoke the next morning, it took her a long moment to recognize the room and figure out where she was, but as soon as she did she felt wonderful. On her way to the shower she discovered a slight soreness in the drawstring-muscles of her ass-hole. That Chris, she thought, turning the hot and cold knobs at the same time, could turn out to be a pain in the ass, and she was smiling happily at her own private joke as the spray first hit her.

She'd forgotten about the slight anal discomfort by the time she found the dining room, located on a sort of mezzanine floor a short flight of stairs up from the main lobby. She was relieved to find that she and Chris and Rita were not the only guests in the hotel. There was a goodly scattering of people eating breakfast. They were spread about in small clusters at tables all around the room.

She didn't see Rita and Chris among the breakfasters, and hesitated for a moment just inside the wide entrance to the big room, wondering where she ought to sit. There was no sign of a hostess or maitre d'.

A man sitting at one of the larger round tables stood up and pulled out a chair. He'd noticed her uncertainty in that small interval, she knew, and she thought the gesture was very kind of him. It didn't occur to her that her ass was not her only asset. She had discarded her horn-rimmed glasses, and her hair swung luxuriantly free.

"Please join us," the man said. "We need a fresh member in this jaded group." He was in his middle thirties, she guessed, with lean, somewhat saturnine features in strange contrast to his open, ingenuous smile. He looked to Lynn like a dissipated minister.

There were three girls at the table and one other man. The girls didn't look as if they needed or wanted a new presence at all.

"Well, thank you," Lynn said, stepping over to the table and sitting down as the man slid the chair under her lovely descending ass. "But this doesn't look like a jaded group at all."

"Larry and I," the man said, "are the jaded ones. Not the girls. I couldn't mean that."

He introduced them one at a time, taking some care, but Lynn didn't retain the names for a split second. She never did. The dissipated minister's name was Curt.

"Are you from New York, Lynn?" one of the girls asked, pouring cream into her coffee. "It seems that most of the people here are."

"A long way from it," she said, and laughed. "If you'd heard me say a few words, you wouldn't have to ask."

"Boston?" the man named Larry asked. He had a good ear.

"Neither New York nor Boston. I'm from a town called Delmont . . . "

"Newfoundland," Larry said. "Famous for its seal safaris."

"Vermont," she said. "And it's not famous for any-thing, except maybe maple syrup."

"You'll meet a lot of people here," Curt said. "But nobody from Vermont, I'm willing to bet. You're about as rare as a virgin in a lumber camp."

"I'm not . . . in a lumber camp," Lynn said, starting out strongly but trailing off lamely.

Everybody at the table laughed.

"You're a good girl, Lynn," Curt said. "But even so, you'll get along fine with this depraved bunch."

"Even if there's nobody here from Vermont," Larry said. "Curt and I are from New York."

"We're from Boston," one of the girls said.

"Maybe you've heard the cliché that girls from Boston are cold," Curt said, looking at the girls like a fond uncle. "But they're not, really. Only their noses."

"Fuck you, Curt," the girl said sweetly.

Curt beamed.

"You're a delight," he said. "So ethereal."

Ethereal, Lynn thought. Jesus, what a word, on top of 'fuck you.' She was going to enjoy the Casa del Sol, after all.

"If you're from Vermont," Larry . said, "maybe you could get us some of that maple syrup you mentioned at a discount?

"You're from New York all right," another of the girls said. "Always looking for something wholesale."

They seemed to indulge in the same kind of insulting banter as Chris and Rita, Lynn thought. She could learn to like it. Without any trouble, she could learn to like it.

As they were leaving the table, one of the girls said to Lynn, "We're in one o eight if you'd like to sit around and rap awhile. We can tell you what we've found out about this place."

"'Thanks, but not this morning. I want to get down to the beach and get some sun."

"The sun's out every day around here."

"With my luck, it'll probably start raining this afternoon and rain for forty days and forty nights."

"You plan to be here forty days and forty nights?"

"I don't know.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Curt glance at her quickly. "But I'm not taking any chances with this morning. One sun in the hand is worth two in the bush."

"Be very careful with that damned sun," Curt said. "It's almost tropical. Take more than twenty minutes at a time and you'll be a walking blister."

"And a terrible waste that would be," Larry said. She smiled at him.

"I'll be careful," she said. "And I have plenty of sun oil."

"Smear yourself up good," Curt said.

Larry looked at her and shook his head sadly. "That's a terrible waste, too," he said.

She waved a small good-bye to the group and found her way back to her room.

She'd never felt better in her life.