Michele Bravo in the Hall of the Mountain King, ch 9

I.

Pete nodded, and took her hand as they walked out of the store. “Okay.”

Michele Bravo finished typing the last sentence, then saved the file and closed her word processing program. She still had another chapter to go in the opening story of the new erotica series which she had just conceived, which she was cleverly calling Dighton & Forrest (Dighton & Forrest being the murderers in Shakespeare’s play, Richard III) but she was feeling tired and the creative muse was leaving her. Not to mention, she always felt horny after writing the climax portion of her erotic stories, and she wanted to save that for the next night, too!

She switched off her laptop and placed it on the night table.

“Night, Fitz.”

Fitz, still engrossed in Lace Making Through the Images, gave her a smile. Michele turned on her side and slithered down under the covers until she reached a comfortable spot. Seconds later she was asleep.

II.

The next day, Michele and Fitz bade Front Royal and its environs farewell and drove the 30 odd miles to Luray, where they found and checked into another Bed and Breakfast. Then they visited the Luray Caverns.

Unlike the Skyline Caverns, the tour of the Luray Caverns was self-directed – they were given headsets and little digital tape recorders and sent on their way.

“Wow…” said Michele as they walked along. “Just…wow.”

The Skyline Caverns had had hardly any stalactites and stalagmites…one or two. The Luray Caverns were full of them, as well as plenty of “draperies,” and a very large mirror lake…twice as large as the one at Skyline. The caverns were more impressive in every way. The only thing the Skyline Caverns had that Luray didn’t were the anthodites.

Fitz nodded. “Now, this is a cavern,” he pointed out.

But there was more. The cost of admission included entrance to the adjacent Car and Carriage Caravan Museum, with over two-dozen ancient cars, from a Model T to a Stanley Steamer to a Black Maria to a Franklin to a Bugatti. Fitz, a car lover, looked over each of the exhibits avidly. Michele, more interested in history, was fascinated by how the car designs changed over time, until she got to the Rolls Royce 1925 Silver Ghost town car, with which she fell in love. It had once belonged to Rudolph Valentino and had a faux-alligator paint job that looked absolutely gorgeous.

After they were through with the caverns, Fitz and Michele wandered around the town of Luray. Michele snapped photos, and they wandered into a few antique stores. In one of these antique stores, Michele’s eye was caught by a poster on a community message board by the front door.

HELP SAVE OUR BATTLEFIELD! ran the headline.

The gist of the poster was that the owners of Cooper Farm, in a town near New Market, were holding an ice cream social that weekend to raise money to fund their bid to save their land. A huge chain store wanted to buy their property to put up a store, and the local government was threatening to use eminent domain to seize it. A store would bring in more tax revenue than their farm…never mind the fact that the farm had been in the Cooper family since the early 1800s. But they had recently come across some Civil War artifacts – a few rifles, a cannon ball, and some bones, on their property, which led them to believe some battle…or more likely a skirmish, had taken place on their land. They were hoping that that historical significance might be enough to save their land, but they needed to conduct research and that was going to take time, more time than the town fathers were prepared to give them.

“Well, isn’t that just a kick in the butt,” said Michele. “I hate this eminent domain crap. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen in the US of A.”

Fitz shrugged. “They’re fighting a losing battle. When it comes to taxes, what the government wants the government gets.”

“Yes…well, since we’re not going to be here this weekend, let’s stop in there tomorrow on our way to the next cavern on our list, okay? I’ll interview them, give a little publicity to their plight…”

“Sure,” said Fitz.

“In the meantime…speaking of ice cream…wasn’t there an ice cream parlor across the street?”

III.

That evening, Fitz and Michele once more assumed their positions – sitting up in bed, laptops on bellies. Michele was again was watching The Thin Man – the sequel this time After the Thin Man, and working on the second chapter of her first Dighton & Forrest story.

Fitz had moved on from a documentary on lace making to one on the Mayan calendar.

And tomorrow…New Market and Endless Caverns.