Moonlight Hotel (Electronic book text)

One
She was leaning on the balcony railing, staring into the night, and David saw how her bare arms shone white, like marble or bone, from the lights of the house. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, tossing her blond hair as she did so. She smiled.
"You must have the best view in Kutar," she said.
David set their drinks on the railing, leaned like her, gazed out at what she saw. "One of them, I guess," he said.
They were on the back balcony of the house. The land fell away abruptly at that point on the ridgeline, giving the illusion at night that one was perched on the edge of a steep cliff. The airport and northern suburbs were below them, and then the desert began, a great darkness broken only by an occasional vehicle coming over the national highway and a few bright lights in the far distance. During his first weeks in Kutar, David had thought those lights were of isolated homes, homes he could never make out during the day, until his telescope arrived and he discovered they were stars low on the horizon. He looked to her and told her this.
She was very pretty in a wholesome, middle-America kind of way: striking eyes somewhere between blue and gray, a pleasant mouth, the emerald-green sheath dress suited her pale skin. He had forgotten her name. Julia, possibly, or maybe Janine.
She took a perfunctory sip from her drink, glanced at her wristwatch. "I should probably get going. Corinne will get worried."
David knew this was the time for him to say something--really, most anything would do. Instead he looked back out at the desert.
An upland breeze brought sounds from the northern suburbs: car horns, the rhythmic clang of metal, the whine of atruck laboring over Gowarshad Pass. From somewhere down the ridge came the baying of a wolf. David had heard the coastal range was home to great packs of wolves--the small, tan-colored sort one found in this part of the world--but he had yet to see one personally.
It was her green dress that he had first noticed at the party; even now, in what passed for early autumn in Kutar, most foreigners wore shades of white on account of the heat. Corinne, the wife of the political attache, had waved David over and introduced her cousin, just in from Chicago for a visit, with a sly expression. Janine? Perhaps it was Jennifer.
At the balcony, he pointed into the dark, off to the east. "The sun comes up right over there. At first the desert is pink, then orange. Then it turns to gold." He lowered his arm, turned to her. "You should stay and watch the sunrise."
He saw the way her hand tightened on the railing, she gave a nervous little laugh. "I don't know," she said. "What would Corinne think?"
David smiled, as much to himself as to her. Corinne knew exactly what to think. Corinne would be far more surprised if her cousin from Chicago actually made the journey back down the mountain tonight. He didn't say this, though.
"You can call her," he said, "tell her you want to see the sunrise."
She reached for her glass again, but stopped, her lips quivering in an uncertain way. He leaned in to kiss her lightly on the jaw.
"You should stay," he whispered.
He kissed her again, a bit lower this time, on her throat, and he felt her sharp intake of breath, her tensing. She smelled of gardenia and rose and something astringent, and she tilted her head back to make room for him.
By the bed, he watched her undress, felt a tug of something almost like sadness at the careful way she removed the green dress and draped it over a chairback.
Afterward, with her sleeping beside him, David gazed up at his bedroom ceiling and listened. There were the usual sounds of the night: the low thrum of the city, the odd creaks of the house; the wolf was quiet now. He felt her breath, hot and reg