The Constant Heart Read Online Free

don’t.”
    â€œOh, my junior astronomer,” she said. “So, you want to deal in facts. Well, what about my mother and father. Did they feel it?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said.
    â€œSo, you want more facts?” she said. “What about . . . ”
    She put her hand down on Joseph Conrad, and I wondered if Heart of Darkness was in there, in that collection, the book being warmed by her rear end. Down the row, in front of us, between the stacks of dusty books, leading out to the jury table, was that long, polished linoleum, like ice on a dirty pond. She felt it, and here’s how I knew: She was going to ask about my mother and father and what had happened the other night, but she didn’t want to do that. So, instead, she squeezed my hand.
    â€œThat’s why we stopped before getting into bed,” she said.
    â€œI didn’t want to be tricked. By this illusion, this caring, this fucking romance. I don’t see what it got anyone anything but grief. See?”
    â€œIt’s not a trick,” I said.
    â€œYeah?” she said. “Tell it to my father.”
    The traffic went by outside, that sad tooting of horns, the cars that needed new mufflers but were obviously driven by people who didn’t have the money to buy them, who would soon get a ticket for not having that money.
    â€œCome on,” she said.
    From the pile of books, the prison seemed more like a warehouse than ever, the bricks dusty and the roof flat, and inside, through the windows, the shapes of women, filled with
desire, swept back and forth, like shadows looking for a person to cast them.
    â€œSo here’s the bet, Jake,” she said. “You think you care about me, right? You think there’s something special that runs through us, right?”
    â€œYeah,” I said.
    â€œAnd you read all that crap, Yeats and stuff, white man’s stuff,” she said.
    â€œI’m not a white man,” I said. “I’m a human being. When you use that word you are calling me a nigger, a wop, a spick, a redskin, a fag, a wog, a jigaboo . . . ”
    â€œTouchy,” she said. “You are trying to raise my consciousness, aren’t you?”
    â€œI’m telling you something,” I said.
    â€œSure, sure,” she said. “Here’s the bet that will fix your ideas about romance. I’ll get you in there, overnight, and then after they’ve passed you from cell to cell, we’ll talk about how you feel about things. Me included.”
    â€œYou don’t want me to care about you?” I said.
    â€œOh, Jake,” she said. “Just take the bet.”
    She turned and ran her fingers along the titles of books, seventeenth-century verse and prose, Donne, Lovelace, etc., and then down farther to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater . Cognitive dissonance in a nutshell: If she hurt me, she guessed, she wouldn’t hurt herself. She had a practical existence, and what she wanted to believe and what she felt weren’t the same. The prison would fix all that.
    â€œSo, it’s a deal,” she said. “We’ll bet. It’ll change the way you feel.”
    â€œWhat would they want with someone who’s seventeen?”

    â€œDon’t kid yourself,” she said. “I bet I can find a way to get you in there. Let me work on it.”
    â€œYou’re kidding,” I said.
    â€œI never kid,” she said. “I’ll get you in through the back. That’s where the trash goes out. That ought to be about right. Maybe that woman I’ve thrown a joint to will help. They’ll have to give you a shower with that soap they have in the school bathroom to get the smell of garbage off you. Or maybe you should bring a bar of soap. I’ll have to think about it.”
    Sara nodded to the woman who stood at the end of the cell block. The woman put a hand to her blond hair, which looked like she had slept under a