CHAPTER 1
Close-cropped blond Gene Gunter rode on a bus into the city, travel-weary and half-amused that despite decades of big funded campaigns to get the city renamed more conservatively they continued to fail because some citizens, possibly a very large number, were rather pleased to be living in the oddest-named city in the county... Rangoon Falls.
He amused himself thinking of the way the city had spluttered into existence. The original settlement had been called Pearly Gates, shortened to Gates in the face of a protest led by clergy and followers, but it became a ghost town during the 1930s depression and with a growing water shortage. People just kept on drifting away, schools closed, stores closed. Little was left operating apart a small general store and Bill Bryant's mechanical engineering workshop. He survived because he was the best repairer of farm machinery for 150 miles in any direction.
Bill was Gene's grandfather.
Gene's grandmother Lily Thu, a former Anglo-Burmese refugee escaping tyranny, arrived in the country as a widow and became naturalized. She has a small amount of money to invest and travelling across country looking for an opportunity decided she'd found it and opened an abandoned small store in Gates. She eked out a living selling sandwiches, coffee, sodas and ice creams and home-made crafts she purchased from artistically-gifted drifters to on-sell to people from inter-city buses making the traditional comfort stop because of Gates' strategic position between cities. It was just the right location to allow passengers to stretch their legs.
Over time Bill and Lily decided they ought to eat together and then that extended into sleeping together and they produced a daughter they named Crystal.
Crystal was born a little early because of a big shock to Lily who learned that Rangoon (now more widely known as Yangon) had fallen to the Japanese a few days earlier in March 1942. Lily feared for her relatives she'd left behind and all night she and Bill talked about Rangoon falling, repeating the enormity of that event over and over again.
Lily entered labor three weeks early and Bill rushed her sixty miles to the nearest doctor and from there she was taken another fifty miles to proper medical care.
When Bill brought Lily and Crystal home he proudly pointed to the change of name for the ghost town he'd renamed with signposts as Rangoon Falls. Lily thought that was a touching tribute and several years later they succeeded with unanimous local support for a deputation led by Mayor Bryant to have that name change officially recognized. Apparently the authorities considered it a one-horse town that would soon expire permanently, unaware Mayor Bryant had secured a big loan to drill for deep water.
In time the wild, slim and beautiful Crystal met a guy who virtually knocked her socks off. Star-struck she married Archie Gunter and their third child Gene was born seven years before their marriage failed and they parted.
* * *
Gene walked over to the city's oldest hotel, simply named Lily's. The hotel was owned and kept up to date by his mother Crystal Gunter, now sixty-one, who'd been Mayor of Rangoon Falls for the last twenty-seven years. He handed across the letter from his mother on her personal letterhead, authorizing him to have the Lily Bryant Suite for four weeks.
"Thank you Mr Gunter. Your mother made the reservation as soon as she learned of your arrival date from Melbourne."
"Thank you Annie," he said, reading the receptionists name tag. "Would you like to join me in my suite for a drink in a couple of hours. You'll finish at eight won't you?"
"Yes," Annie smiled, "but I'm also assistant general manager and such a nocturnal visit could cost me my job."
Gene leaned forward and whispered, "Your little secret will be my little secret so what's to lose?"
Annie whispered, "We'll have at least eight unmarried female staff off duty and in hotel residential accommodation. I'll see what I can do for you."
"Eight is too many for me, although I'm only thirty-eight," Gene whispered and laughed.
Annie blushed into a giggle.
Continuing to whisper he said, "Don't bother with anyone else Annie. It's either you or no one and it's only for a drink, a meal if you wish to join me and nothing else unless you decided to pull off your panties and pass them to me."
"Mr Gunter," Annie said hoarsely, looking a little stressed.
Gene signed in, winked at her and left for the elevator.
The room was basically as he remembered it. Obviously his mother had wanted her mother's touch to remain. He wondered if Annie at the desk would be thinking about this wonderful four-poster bed, he sighed, dropped on to it and hauled out his phone.
"Hi mom."
"Hi darling, welcome home. Come to City Hall in the morning at 10:30 for coffee and we'll catch up then. I have a finance committee meeting in ten minutes."
"Okay thanks. Mom what can you tell me about Annie working front desk?"
"She's Podge and Tim Watson's youngest daughter with a masters in hotel management, very bright and capable. If you're looking for a slut you best bypass her but if you disregard your mother's advice and wish to waste you time trying it on with her just be discreet."
"Well said mom. Oh you're looking great."
"You were cheeky as a child and that's never left you Gene. I find it endearing. Good night."
Gene had expected Crystal wouldn't use that brief telephone encounter to say how disappointed she was that he'd broken up with Deborah after living with her for eight of the ten years he'd operated in Australia as a property developer. His mom would bring it up though. Crystal had married an Australian and Gene had been born there when the family lived in Sydney for seven years until his mom said it was time to return home and begin to put the kids through college.
Crystal and Arhcie had fought over that and their marriaged failed.
At 8:10 Annie called. "I'm in my suite having a bath. Come to Suite 5-015 in fifteen minutes. It's on the opposite corner of the frontage to you, same floor."
"I'm on my way to scrub your back."
"Very well."
He raced to change and to get over there to administer to his hostess in the bath but Annie answered the door, dressed and with fresh makeup on. Hell she must have moved! He grinned and she grinned, kissing him lightly.
"Questions are raised if I visit rooms alone after 8:00 not only because I'm deputy general manager but because I'm female. It's against hotel policy for its female personnel to do that and security cameras are used to detect breaches. What I do in my own apartment is my business because it's my home that just happens to be in the hotel."
"Oh so we are going to do it?"
"Settle down Gene. I was speaking figuratively."
"Speaking of figures," Gene said, running his eyes up and down her trim body with boobs just a little too large for perfection.
"Please settle down Gene. Now what drinks and what food may I order for you? Make no effort to conceal yourself when hotel personnel enter."
An hour later Annie used an infrared control to lower the lights and commented she'd draped a scarf over the sole security camera. "Would you like to join me on this sofa for a little grope to see how far you'll get?"
Gene was over beside her in three bounds.
"Are you married?"
He replied without hesitation, turning his blue eyes on to her seductively, "My divorce came through seven months ago. There is no one else."
"I have three guys to go with occasionally, all three are married and that avoids complications for me in living and working in the same building. I was at college with all three of them."
"Well that's one of the reasons we go to college for isn't it?"
She giggled. "You don't mind me having multiple casual partners, although I hasten to say singularly?"
"No, and I'm impressed you bothered to tell me."
