The One Up-Cont

She knew, without thinking, that she would take the last of her savings and make the twenty-hour trip to the shores of North Queensland to see where it all began--for her or her doppelganger--the place where she stared past the horizon line and beckoned others to follow, where she achieved nirvana in her lifetime, all while wearing crisp size-six clamdiggers and a navy cableknit sweater. She dreamed of telling her future temporary coworkers and fellow bar patrons at home about the breathtaking views of Dunk Island and the Coral Sea while she had modeled the smart cotton clothes made in a sweatshop in Indonesia, clothes that she herself did not wear because they were, well, just clothes.

The one-and-a-half coach ride from the airport to Mission Beach was hot and uncomfortable. A couple of middle-aged, middle-American tourists commented on every vista, rattling their fold-out brochures and wondering when they would see a koahla. Her own brochure, of the hotel, laid nealty on her lap, advertising 55 rooms spread through a rainforest, linked by elevated boardwalks through the trees and foliage. She wondered whether Pacific End or some other catalog-sales clothier was to perform any photo shoots while she was there. Her life in the outskirts of Philly became a footnote in the new, blue basin sky that illuminated her life. The possibilities danced in her mind, the snorkeling, the hiking, walks through the rainforest, whitewater rafting. During one of these intimate forays into the wilderness she, Emma Vyne, would grasp her purpose, her communion with humanity, but mostly her purpose. And she could come home, ex-model, and embark on the new tendril that sprouted out of her previously shallow foundation.