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.
EXCERPT
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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