"Kate Wilhelm - Man On The Persian Carpet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

Kate Wilhelm - The Man On The Persian Carpet

CAROLYN HARLEY AND Drake Symes had fallen in and out of love ever since kindergarten when
he fought Billy Driscoll for hitting her and she declared her undying love for him. Two weeks later they
had fallen out of love when she saw him playing with Melanie Bosc. The next day she had fought Billy
herself.

When they were twelve they discovered sex together, and she said afterward, "Is that all? That's it?"

Drake, enraptured, exalted, ready to do battle with dragons or angels, had declared his undying love for
her.

"I didn't like it," she said. "It's silly and doesn't feel good, and I'm bleeding. Maybe I'm going to die and
go to hell now."

"We just need practice," he said desperately.

She shook her head. "I don't think so. Maybe I'll become a lesbian or a nun."

He didn't know what a lesbian was, and the following fall when he went to the public high school and she
went to St. Agnes Girls' School, he thought that was where girls were taught how to be lesbians or nuns.
She wouldn't let him touch her again until they were sixteen.

Now it was the summer following their graduations from high school and they were walking through her
father's apple orchard.

Her father was an orthopedic surgeon in Middletown, New York, and he owned a forty-acre apple
orchard. His father was a lineman for the telephone company. She was an only child; he had two sisters
and a brother.

"I got the job," he said.

"And I have to go to France," she said, as morose as he was, but also excited by the prospect of going
to Paris. "With Mother," she added, and he nodded in sympathy.

They walked in silence for a time, then she said, "Tell me about the job. You're going to work for a
publisher?"

"Yeah. Old man Broccoli knows this guy who's a publisher, Oracle Publications, and he needs someone
to read stuff that comes in. Broccoli recommended me. After the interview, the publisher gave me a load
of books to study, so I'll know what he's up to. It's all crazy stuff, astrology, Nostradamus revealed,
how to get in touch with the inner self.... Nutbooks."

"It sounds like fun," Carolyn said. "Can I see them?"

"Sure." He had taken the job because he could work his own hours all through college; if he didn't work
he couldn't go to college. He had been accepted by NYU, and Carolyn would go to Radcliffe.

"And the summer we both graduate," he said then, getting back to the topic, "we go to Europe. Right?
I'll save every cent I can, we'll be of age, and you'll have money by then from your grandmother. Deal?"