Banjo Man Read Free Page A

meant
how!
I’d never pry, or ask anything like that!”
    “Why not? Everyone else would.” He narrowed his dark eyes and looked at her for a long moment. Then he added with calculated sarcasm, “I mean … you did find me in her bed.”
    “Stop it! I didn’t think … think anything of it even for a moment. And I’d never make insinuations like that anyway; it’s none of my business. Ellen is a good friend, and I care about her. As long as she’s happy, well, that’s all that matters.”
    Rick thought for a second that she was puttinghim on, but no, nobody was that good an actress. This kid was sincere.
    “Sorry.” He grinned, too pleased with his discovery to sound totally repentant. “You know, that’s nice, really nice. I told you this was my lucky night! Now I’m gonna get you that invigorating, rejuvenating one-hundred-percent-natural, high-energy, low-calorie, mid-octave whippersnapper of a Westin special. Stay where you are!”
    He left Laurie seesawing silently between anger and amazement.
    When he had disappeared safely into the kitchen, and could be heard clanking noisily through cabinets and drawers, Laurie dropped back onto the pillow in exhaustion. She lay still for a moment, her arms limp at her sides, her hands curled on the sheet like pink shells on white sand.
    Slowly, she became aware of a disturbingly earthy, intoxicating scent. Furrowing her brow, she breathed in deeply, letting the smell fill her head and lungs. With surprise she realized it hadn’t drifted in from the kitchen, as she had assumed, but rose around her from the bed and pillow where she lay. It was vaguely familiar, but alien, too, and elusively avoided every label she tried to pin on it.
    She closed her eyes, and drew another heady breath … and suddenly an image flashed on the dark screen of her closed lids: It was herself, so young—sixteen, maybe, or seventeen—curled half-asleep in bed, her own bed in her own bedroom back in the big white frame house in Pittsburgh, the bed with the canopy, and the faded roses climbing the wallpaper … and she was hugging something in her arms, something redolent of that same musky, arousing scent. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Laurie concentrated on the memory, willing it into focus.
    And there it was. She was hugging a sweater! Some boy’s letter sweater, white wool with a navy band at hem and cuff, and a big, proud B for the Bulldogs. The scent that filled her head then, and now, was a male smell, of after-shave and sweat and that secret, undeniably foreign and exciting scent of … sex!
    Laurie leaped upright in bed, her body damp with the cold sweat of fear. For she remembered well what had happened next: her father’s footsteps in the hall and the bright glare of light, and his anger as he pulled the sweater away and crushed it in his hands. “That is all right for your sister; Katy doesn’t have your potential, Laurie, so she might as well waste herself on being boy-crazy. But not you! You are my gift, my brightest daughter. And I’m ashamed of you.
You
must save yourself for greater things.”
    That was all.
    The sweater was hanging on a hook by the front door the next morning, and Laurie picked it up and took it back to the boy at school without a word of explanation. Joe, that was his name, Joe Holzpath. A nice boy … And when she graduated, she left home and joined the convent, and her father and mother and all the aunts were so very proud.
    Tears filled her eyes and spilled suddenly down Laurie’s cheeks. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she buried her face against her skirt and cried as she had not cried since that night years before. Her narrow shoulders shook with sobs, and her chest ached with their stifled force. Oh, what had happened to her life? All those days and years gone. But not wasted, oh, please,
no.
She had tried, she had been a good person, a good teacher, there was certainly meaning to it all, to what restedin the past.