Midnight Champagne
Valentine's Day. Mid-afternoon. A crossroads thirty miles north of the Illinois state line, each highway straight as a stickpin holding fast a tidy seam. Who can't describe the American heartland, those glorious patchwork quilts of corn and wheat? But this is deep winter, the sun pale as ice. The winter fields are the featureless white of amnesia, of terror or forgiveness. Fence posts and wind breaks divide them like the clear, clean lines of desire. And right smack in the middle of it all, unexpected as a gold tooth in a child's ivory smile, sits the Great Lakes Chapel and Hideaway Lodge, mired in a pool of ploughed asphalt.
At a glance, the Chapel doesn't look so bad: big-shouldered old house with twin dormers overlooking the parking lot, redbrick chimney, lace curtains thick as cobwebs in the windows. After checking in at the lobby, guests zig and zag along an asphalt path until they reach the Hideaway Lodge, a long, low structure housing thirty-six suites--some with peekaboo views of Lake Michigan--divided by a shotgun hall. All are decorated according to theme: Caribbean Holiday, Night in Tunisia, Mountain Vista, Paradise. But locals still remember the Cha ... read full excerpt from Midnight Champagne ebook
