Truths of the Heart Read Online Free Page A

sometime.”
    He yawned again.
    “Yawn, brawn.” She said.
    A warm evening, slight breeze, she toweled off and walked down the pier
to Percy Bysshe Shelly.
    T.S. raced down the steps and, in front of her, jumped on the bow.
Staring at her, he seemed to be saying, “What are you waiting for, let's go.”
    “Why not.”
    Calculating a light wind out of the northwest, Rachelle untied the bow
and stern lines, got on board, and hoisted the sail. Shimmering water, the sun
setting in ripples of gold, the breeze in T.S.'s face, they reached the south
end of the lake then turned and began running to the northwest and home.
    After securing Percy Bysshe Shelley to the dock, the evening
still warm, she decided to take another swim in the pool.
    T.S. watched her glide through ten laps of the tepid water. Finished, sitting
on the shallow end's underwater steps, she beckoned T.S.
    He twitched his tail and went toward the steps that led up to the deck.
    “You are such a snot,” Rachelle said, stepped from the pool, and began toweling
herself. She noted the sun setting in streaks of reds and grays against a
haunting purple sky. Unusually poignant, she thought.
    Inside, T.S. following, she made a note in her writing journal of the
sunset. Then, taking her journal with her, she climbed the spiral staircase,
took a leisurely hot shower and, for pajamas, put on one of Carl's silk dress
shirts. She opened the bedroom window. A pleasant breeze wafting the room, she
lay down on the bed and snapped on a lamp.
    T.S. Eliot curled up beside her, she checked the time: 8:30. She
thought to herself, What was that start time, 6:00 West Coast, 9:00 here,
have a half-hour before Carl's game begins.
    She flipped the Casablanca fan on slow, fluffed two large pillows, lay
back and, revisiting her father's favorite book W. Somerset Maugham's, Of
Human Bondage , she read:
    Cronshaw turned to Philip. “Have you ever been to the Cluny,the museum?
There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern
the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eyes. In them you will
see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup
of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the
meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days
the answer will come to you. ”
    She remembered, from a previous reading, the answer Philip had finally realized.
She turned to a dog-eared page and read his thoughts:
    The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of
a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of
conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a
beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there
would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come
not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment.
    She skimmed to an underlined passage:... then the sage gave him [an
Eastern King] the history of man in a single line, it was this: he was born, he
suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served
no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born ….
    She closed the book and stroked T.S. Is that what father had been
thinking?
    Her eyes drifted to, turning slowly, the blades of the Casablanca fan.

 
 

 
    CHAPTER FOUR

 
 
    The final gun sounded the game over, Carl Bostich crushed out his Kool and
Corky wrapped it up for the radio audience: “There you have it folks, final
score, San Francisco 42, Lions 10. Well Carl, with the regular season start
next Saturday, the big bad Chicago Bears in town, looks like our Lions pigskin boys
have some work to do.”
    “I'll say.”
    “But the really big event is at half time, huh babe, tying the knot.”
    “Yep, tying the knot.”
    “Whooo-eee, all you Lions fans back home in Michigan, if you just
landed on the