The Man With The Glass Heart

Chapter 5

I still believed in the inherent superiority of the woman with the breeding.

She was smarter, sleeker, more beautiful, and much classier than I.

But I was no longer in awe of her.

I shook the dust off my pride and threw it around my shoulders like a super hero's cape. I wasn't rich. I wasn't fine. I was less than well bred. My personal history, what there was of it, was obscured by a happy-go-lucky father who alternately adored and abandoned me. I was young and probably not beautiful, but I had eyes whose laughter a man could trust.

Particularly a man with a glass heart.

I swallowed my anger and obeyed an instinct not to interfere. At least, not yet. Not until I was absolutely sure of what I now so strongly suspected.

What I suspected was in her suitcase.

Her neglected silver suitcase.

It hid the secret of why she lusted so fervently after the shimmering glass heart that she was leaning against now, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, her neck curved up like an archer's bow, and her voice, soft and pleading, revealing a dark and dangerous personal need.

I studied the woman with the breeding.

As I contemplated her perfections, it seemed inconceivable to me that the words and intent of anyone so utterly exquisite could be anything but innocent.

Then I remembered her cynical laughter.

And I remembered my father's uncle who, long ago, had warned me that what a person distrusts in others, he usually gives others reasons to distrust in himself.

"...but even a castle on an island..." Her voice was like chamber music dissolving in mist, "is a prison if one has no one to love. No one with whom he can watch a sunset or exult in the expectations of the coming day. Dear man. My dear, dear soul mate. I have always been so completely and unutterably alone."

She was lying.

I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it, all right.

I took a step towards her silver suitcase.

"I have always longed for someone to alleviate my loneliness, to save me from my solitary state. I have always longed for one whose heart is so pure and flawless that, challenged by its perfections, I might find in myself large strengths and little nobilities I had never before known. Until you, there has been no one. And..."

She opened her eyes and leaned forward.

"Until you, I've always preferred it that way. Now, I know differently. Now, I want differently. With your heart, and my..."

I reached down.

The woman with the breeding heard me move. She turned, uttered a cry of dismay, and leaped forward. But she wasn't fast enough.

I lifted the lid off her suitcase.

"No!" she shrieked. "Keep your filthy hands off-"

She was too late.

I had already flung open the lid, and in my haste to see what was inside, I spilled the contents of the small silver suitcase all over the road.

The contents. The contents.

The poor, sad, heart-breakingly sad contents.