Boundaries Read Online Free PDF Page B

you, then how can I understand anyone?"
    David said, "What is there to understand? There is this world. And there is another. And, regardless of what you believe or understand, I went from here to there." He looked apologetically at Karen. "It’s true, Karen. Everything I’ve told you and Christian is true."
    "Yes," she said, "I know that, I understand that." But she was clearly at sea. She shook her head a little, gave him a small, nervous grin, looked at Christian, who was stone-faced, then back at David. "I believe that you believe it, David. That’s important, I think."
    He sighed. "Yes, well thank you for that," he said. "Now, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you both to leave. They’re coming to give me some damned shot in a couple of minutes, and I’d like some privacy."
    "Of course," Karen said, and got her coat from the back of a chair nearby.
    Christian said, still stone-faced, his voice crisp and knowing, "You’ll have to talk to us sooner or later, David. We’re your friends. You can turn your back on us, but we’ll still be here."
    David gave him a long, studied look. He saw the man smile once more, the same kind of smile he’d seen on him a few minutes earlier, and again he wondered about it. He decided that it was not a nervous smile—the kind that one friend gives another when he doesn’t know what to say, or what to think. It was the kind of smile that has guilt and satisfaction in it. And secrecy. The kind that is little more than a twitch. He said, "Yes, Christian, I’ll talk to you. I’ll have a lot to say, in fact."
    "Good," Christian said. "It’s best for everyone. Come to grips with it David. This is a heinous thing you’ve done. It’s a crime against yourself. It’s appalling and unnatural."
    David said nothing. He had never before seen Christian so archly judgmental and he wasn’t sure how to react to it.
    "Good," Christian repeated, and a moment later he and Karen left the room.
    ~ * ~
    The martins that had gotten closed up in Anne Case’s empty house had found their way to the third floor ballroom and were going after the spiders that lived there. There were audacious jumping spiders, daddy longlegs, a brown recluse; and there were far more spiders than the martins could eat in a day. Most of the audacious jumping spiders—whose eyes were much better than the eyes of other spiders—had seen the martins and were busy finding hiding places.
    There were many places for the spiders to hide. There was a set of tall cupboards in four of the room’s six corners. These cupboards were for towels or clothes or dancing shoes, all of which were items that, at one time or another in the house’s one hundred-year history, had been in use in the room. There were also built-in bookcases whose shelves did not all fit flush with the wall, and some of the spiders hid on the back edges of these shelves. A half dozen of the spiders also hid in the tall lace curtains at the bay windows, although the martins spotted two of these spiders easily and made quick work of them.
    The martins called to each other as they flew about the room. Their song was high-pitched, but musical, and the martins liked the way it echoed from the walls of the huge room; in fact, the younger of the two birds was convinced for a moment that there were other birds in the room.
    In the basement of the house, there was a tiny gas leak. It was not a potentially explosive leak, but on still days, when a breeze could not push through the cold air vents and into the basement, the leak built up and smelled bad. Creatures that lived in the basement had died because of the leak. The newborns of a dormouse, which had made its nest in a corner of the basement near the leak, were now struggling mightily to stay alive while their mother rushed frantically about, with no idea what was happening. Eventually, using an instinct that was far more useful to it than naked intelligence, it would relocate the nest, and its children would