Danielle Steel - Full circle

“Do you live nearby?” She shook her head. “I didn't think I'd seen you here before.”

“I usually hang out in the library. Third year law.”

“Man.” He looked impressed. “That's tough.”

“You?”

“The master's program in political science, what else?” They both laughed. He had chosen well anyway, and he followed her to the library where she left him regretfully. She liked his ideas and he was strikingly beautiful, and she knew instantly that Harry wouldn't approve of him. He had very square ideas these days, especially with Averil around. It was something Tana knew about them both and it didn't bother her. Harry could have grown ferns on his head and sprouted horns, and she would have loved him anyway. He was her brother by then, and Averil was a part of him, so she accepted that. Most of the time, she tried not to discuss politics with them. It made things easier.

And she was intrigued to see her new friend making a speech on campus a few days later, about the same issues they had discussed. It was an impassioned, brilliant confrontation of the mind and she told him as much when she saw him afterwards. She knew by then that his name was Yael McBee. It was a funny name, but he was not a funny man. He was brilliant and intense and his anger reached out almost like a lash to touch those he wished to reach She admired his skill in addressing crowds, and she went to see him several more times that fall, before he finally asked her out to dinner one night. They each paid their share, and went back to his apartment to talk afterwards. There were at least a dozen people living there, some of them on mattresses, and it didn't have the neat, well-polished air of the cottage which Harry and Tana and Averil shared. She would, in fact, have been embarrassed to bring Yael there. It was too bourgeois, too sweet, almost too foreign to him. And she liked visiting him where he lived. She felt uncomfortable at home anyway these days. Averil and Harry were always making love or hiding out, going in his room and closing the door. She wondered how he got any studying done at all, and yet she knew he did from the look of his grades, which were surprisingly good. But it was more fun being with Yael and his friends, and when Harry flew to Switzerland at Christmastime, and Averil flew home, Tana finally invited Yael to come and see her. And it was odd to see him in the tidy little house, without his strident friends around. He had worn a deep green turtle- neck and his well-worn jeans. He had military combat boots, although he had served a year in jail for refusing to be drafted and go to Vietnam. They sent him to a prison in the Southwest, and paroled him after a year.

“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.