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Show Acting Alone Page 7 There was apparently no question in Shannon's sweet mind that her comp instructor had seen her giving his home and office numbers and addresses to Bouncy. She assumed Sam had watched her whispering up into the hideous cauliflower ear. Here this close to Dodge City, this soon after the senate's shift right, it was assumed that when one big man flipped another big man some stuff, it was a challenge to a showdown. Shannon hadn't been being mean or bloodthirsty (Sam kept telling himself this): she'd just been helping to speed along the process of deep tradition. So Sam took advantage of his heroic position and took her out on an aimless car cruise. He pretended that a communion with Nature was his orientally disciplined way to prepare for a fight. He was eight years older than the little freshperson, but she was the native, and the female, so Sam let her tell him which way to turn. And she showed him the Western Kansas that non-natives never see: the flat, unfamous, unhip far-Western Kansas, as far removed from jazzy Kansas City as from chic Aspen and Boulder; the desolate Kansas that might as well be equally forlorn, unhip far-Eastern Colorado. They cut across fields by way of gravel country roads to a strange ancient willowy graveyard where casualties of the Oregan Trail were ostensibly buried. "Cholera," said Shannon, "and if we dug them up even today we'd catch cholera, too, because cholera germs don't die. Eeeew, gross, huh?" And she wrinkled her nose. She obviously knew how effective that wrinkling could be on Sam. She seemed to sense that her giant comp instructor didn't require much more sexual sophistication that what could be seen on "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. |