Читать книгу Over the Spiked Picket Fence - Angela Aloisio Sander & Denvil Buchanan - Страница 20

will self-destruct!”

I recalled how impressed this girl had been as she had warmed the bench beside me. She had soaked up my foolish wisdom, like a fly entering into the web of the spider. Yes, I had been a man in command, thumbing my nose at those who stared at my Kate, at those who dared to challenge my brashness in choosing to hang out with whomever I had wanted. I had been a man on a mission and I would settle for only the best that this land had to offer. Why would anyone not sample the complete feast at the table than settle for the same old menu? Yes, I had arrived in the land of hope and glory. This would be the Promised Land indeed.

It had been then, sitting on the college bench on that warm September day when she said had noticed my eyes.

“Your eyes are very beautiful, mysterious and haunting.”

What if her mother were to see her now! Is this what she had been raised for? This girl knew how to make a man’s heart flutter. I recalled how I had wormed my way into her life, re-fusing to take no for an answer, believing as I did the nonsense that if a girl said no, that always meant a kind of yes. All that I had to do was to persevere, to break her down - to get her to

change the no to yes.

I remembered how she had accepted my advances which were like sweet, sweet music to my ears.

“I’m Kate. Okay Dan, one drink after class.”

She had clearly suspended the timeless wisdom passed on at the supper table in the great house of her parents, that there was an invisible line never to cross, or there could be a point of no return. Imagine the catastrophe, and the shame and the anger that were bound to result in excommunication. She would be cut off from family, given up for dead, disowned forever to wander in the wilderness with the many strange and nomadic people who were passing through Hog-town. What a high price to pay for straying away from the fold in a land fraught with booby-traps set by those who hated tradition, by those who hated the timeless wisdom that people should stick to their own.

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