Full Circle (30 page)

“That's incredible.” She was awed by him, by his remarkable, almost Rasputin-like eyes, his courage in going against every current imaginable, there was something outstanding about the man, and she wasn't surprised that he had been fascinated by communism as a child. Everything about him was intriguing and unusual, and when he gently took her in his arms and made love to her on Christmas Eve, that seemed intriguing too. Only once did she have to force Harrison Winslow from her mind. And in a peculiar way he had readied her for this. Not that he had anything in common with Yael Mc-Bee. Yael managed to unleash her flesh in a way she had never dreamed could happen to her, reaching deep into her, into all she had wanted and denied herself for so long. He reached into her very soul, and pulled out a passion and desire she had never suspected in herself, and gave her something she had never dreamed a man could give, until she felt addicted to everything he gave to her. She was almost his slave by the time Harry and Averil came home, and more often than not, she slept at Yael's apartment now, on a mattress with him, curled up, cold, until he laid a hand on her, and then suddenly life was exotic and tropical, there were brilliant hues everywhere. She couldn't live without him now, and after dinner, they would sit around the living room with the others, talking politics and smoking dope, and Tana suddenly felt like a woman now, a woman in full bloom, living daringly at the feet of her man.

“Where the hell are you all the time, Tan? We never see you anymore.” Harry questioned her.

“I have a lot of work to do at the library for exams.” She had five months of law school left before finals came up, and then the bar to face, and in some ways it panicked her, but actually most of the time she was with Yael, and she had still said nothing about him to Harry or Averil. She didn't know what to say. They lived in such different worlds that it was impossible to conceive of them in the same place, same house, same school.

“You have a romance going on or something, Tan?” He was suspicious of her now, in addition to her absences. She was looking strange to him, numb almost, glazed, as though she had joined a Hindu cult, or smoked dope all the time, which he suspected too. But it wasn't until Easter that he saw her with Yael, and when he did he was horrified. He waited for her after class, and like an irate parent, he berated her. “What the hell are you doing with that creep? Do you know who he is?”

“Of course I do … I've known him all year.…” She had known he wouldn't understand and she told him as much.

“Do you know what kind of reputation he has? He is a violent radical, a Communist, a troublemaker of the worst sort. I watched him get arrested last year, and someone told me he's served time in prison before this … for chrissake, Tan, wake up!”

“You fucking jerk!” They were screaming at each other outside the main library, and now and then someone turned around but neither of them cared. “He served time for evading the draft, which I'm sure you think is worse than Murder One, but as it so happens, I don't.”

“I'm well aware of that. But you better watch your goddamn fucking ass, or you won't have to worry about taking the bar in June. He'll get you arrested and kicked out of school so fast your head will spin.”

“You don't know what you're talking about!” But the next week, over Easter holiday, he arranged a major demonstration outside the administration building, and two dozen students were carted off to jail.

“See what I mean?” Harry had been quick to rub it in and she had slammed out of the house again. Harry didn't understand anything. Mostly, he didn't understand what Yael meant to her. Fortunately, he had managed not to get arrested himself, and she stayed with him for the following week. Everything about him excited her. Every sense was aroused when he walked into the room, and things were pretty interesting at his place these days. Everyone seemed to be getting more wound up for demonstrations set up for the end of the school year, but she was so panicked about exams that she had to stay at her own house more than once just to get some studying done. And it was there that Harry tried to reason with her, gently this time, he was terrified that something would happen to her, and he'd do anything to stop it if he could, before it was too late. “Please, Tan, please … listen to me … you're going to get in trouble with him … are you in love with him?” He looked heartbroken at the thought, not because he was still in love with her himself, but because he considered it a hideous fate for her. He hated the guy, he was a rude, boorish, uncivilized, selfish creep, and Harry had heard plenty about him around the school in the last six months. The guy was violent and sooner or later there was going to be serious trouble involving him. Harry just didn't want him to pull Tana down with him when he went. And he thought there was a good chance he might. If she let him. And she looked as though she would. She had a blind passion for the man. Even his politics excited her, and the thought of that made Harry sick.

She insisted that she wasn't in love with him, but he knew that it wasn't that simple for her, that this was the first man she had willingly given herself to, and she had been so chaste for so long that in some ways her judgment was impaired. He knew that if the right man, or the wrong one as it were, came along and aroused her in a way she'd never known before, she might fall prey to him, and in this instance she had. She was mesmerized by Yael, and his unorthodox life and friends. She was fascinated by something she had never seen before, and at the same time he played her body like a violin. It was a difficult combination to defeat. And then, just before her final exams, six months into their relationship, Yael took matters in his own hands, and put her to the test.

“I need you next week, Tan.”

“What for?” She looked over her shoulder distractedly. She had two hundred pages more to read that night.

“Just a meeting, sort of.…” He was vague, smoking his fifth joint of the night. Usually, it didn't affect him visibly, but lately he was tired.

“What kind of meeting?”

“We want to make a point with the people who count.”

She smiled at him. “Who's that?”

“I think it's time we took things directly to government. We're going to the mayor's house.”

“Christ, you'll get busted for sure.” But it didn't seem to faze her much. She was used to that by now, not that she'd gotten arrested with him yet, although all the others had.

“So what?” He was unconcerned.

“If I'm with you, and I go, and no one bails me out, I'll miss my exams.”

“Oh, for chrissake, Tan, so what? What are you going to be after all? Some two-bit lawyer to defend society as it exists? It sucks, get rid of it first, then go to work. You can wait a year to take your exams, Tan. This is more important.” She looked at him, horrified at what she had just heard him say to her. He didn't understand her at all if he could say something like that. Who was this man?

“Do you know how hard I've worked for this, Yael?”

“Don't you realize how meaningless it is?”

It was the first fight they had ever had, and he pressured her for days, but in the end she did not go. She went back to her own house to study for exams, and when she watched the news that night, her eyes almost fell out of her head. The mayor's house had been bombed, and two of his children had almost been killed. As it turned out, they were going to be all right, but an entire side of the house had been destroyed, his wife was badly burned by a bomb that had exploded nearby. “And a radical student group at UC Berkeley had taken credit for it.” Seven students had been arrested on charges of attempted murder, assault, assorted weaponry charges, and sundry other things, and among them Yael McBee … and if she had listened to him, she realized with trembling knees, her whole life would have been over … not just law school, but her freedom for many, many years. She was deathly pale as she sat watching them being loaded into police wagons on TV and Harry watched her face and said nothing at all. She stood up after a long moment and looked down at him, grateful that he hadn't said anything. In one second, everything she had felt for Yael exploded into nothingness, like one of his bombs.

“He wanted me to be there tonight, Harry…” She started to cry. “You were right.” She felt sick. He had almost destroyed her life, and she had been completely under his spell. And for what? A piece of ass? How sick was she? She felt sick thinking of it. She had never realized how deeply committed they were to their ideals, and it terrified her now to have known them at all. She was afraid that she might be taken in for questioning. And eventually she was, but nothing ever came of it. She was a student who had slept with Yael McBee. She wasn't the only one. She took her exams. She passed the bar. She was offered a job in the district attorney's office, as a prosecutor, and grown-up life began then and there. The radical days were past, along with student life, and living with Harry and Averil in their little house. She rented an apartment in San Francisco, and slowly packed up her things. Everything was suddenly painful to her, everything was over, finished, done.

“You look like a picture of cheer.” Harry wheeled slowly into her room, as she threw another stack of law books into a box. “I guess I should call you Madam Prosecutor now.” She smiled and looked at him. She was still shocked at what had happened to Yael McBee, and almost to her through him. And she was still depressed at the thought of what she had felt for him. Now it had all begun to seem unreal. They hadn't come to trial yet, but she knew that he and his friends would be sent away for a long, long time.

“I feel like I'm running away from home.”

“You can always come back, you know, we'll still be here.” And then he suddenly looked sheepishly at her. Tana laughed as she looked at him. They had known each other for too long to be able to get away with anything.

“Now what does that look like? What mischief are you up to now?”

“Me? Nothing.”

“Harry…” She advanced on him menacingly and he wheeled away as he laughed.

“Honest, Tan … oh shit!” He ran smack into her desk and she carefully put her hands around his handsome throat. He looked more like his father every day, and she still missed him sometimes. It would have been a lot healthier having an affair with him than Yael McBee. “All right … all right … Ave and I are getting married.” For a moment, Tana looked shocked. Ann Durning had just gotten married for the third time, to a big movie producer in L.A. He had given her a Rolls Royce as a wedding present and a twenty-carat diamond ring, which Tana had heard a lot about from Jean. But that was something people like Ann Durning did. Somehow she had never thought about Harry getting married.

“You are?”

He smiled. “I thought after all this time … she's a terrific girl, Tan…”

“I know that, you dummy,” Tana grinned, “I've been living with her too. That just seems like such a grown-up thing to do.” They were all twenty-five years old, but she didn't feel old enough to get married yet, she wondered why they did. Maybe they had had more sex, she laughed to herself, and then she smiled at him and bent to kiss his cheek. “Congratulations. When?”

“Pretty soon.” And then suddenly Tana saw something funny in his eye. It was, at the same time, both embarrassment and pride.

“Harry Winslow … do you mean to tell me that … you didn't…” She was laughing now, and Harry was actually blushing for one of the few times in his life.

“I did. She's knocked up.”

“Oh, for chrissake.” And then her face sobered suddenly. “You don't have to get married, you know. Is she forcing you to?”

He laughed and Tana thought she'd never seen him look so happy in his life. “No, I forced her. I told her I'd kill her if she got rid of it. It's our kid, and I want it, and so does she.”

“My God,” Tana sat down hard on the bed, “marriage
and
a family. Jesus, you guys don't mess around.”

“Nope.” He looked about to burst with pride and his intended walked into the room with a shy smile.

“Is Harry telling you what I think he is?” Tana nodded, watching their eyes. There was something so peaceful and satisfied there. She wondered what it felt like to feel like that, and for a moment she almost envied them. “He has a big mouth.” But she bent and kissed his lips and he patted her behind, and a little while later he wheeled out of the room. They were getting married in Australia, where Averil was from, and Tana was invited to the wedding, of course, and after that they would come back to the same little house, but Harry was starting to look for a nice place in Piedmont for them to live until he finished school, it was time for the Winslow funds to come into play a little bit. He wanted Averil living decently now. And he turned to Tana later that night.

“You know, if it weren't for you, Tan, I wouldn't be here at all.” He had told that to Averil ten thousand times at least in the past year, and he believed it with all his heart.

“That's not true, Harry, you know that. You did it yourself.”

But he grabbed her arm. “I couldn't have made it without you. Give yourself credit for that, Tan. The hospital, law school, all of it … I wouldn't even know Ave, if it weren't for you…”

She was smiling gently at him and she was touched. “What about the baby, is that my doing too?”

“Oh, you jerk.…” He tugged at the long blond hair and went back to his future wife, sound asleep in the bed where their baby had been conceived. His “creativity” had paid off, and Tana smiled to herself wistfully that night as she fell asleep. She was happy for him, for them both. But she suddenly felt so alone. She had lived with him for two years, with Averil for half of that, it would be strange living alone without them, and they would have their own life … it all seemed so strange … why did everyone want to get married … Harry … her mother … Ann … what was the magic about that? All Tana had wanted was to get through law school, and when she had finally had an affair with someone, he had turned out to be some wild nut, and had wound up in jail for the rest of his life … it was mystifying as she fell asleep … she didn't have any of the answers, not then or when she moved out.