ManHeart ( Excerpts) - Boston Lee (novels for students txt) 📗

MANHEART

Boston Lee


Copyright © 2011 by Boston Lee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.


This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.


This book printed in the United States of America


ManHeart has been written to assist all those men and women of the world who are questioning and struggling to rebuild their lives after having undergone the pain of divorce and are searching for renewed love.


“But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you; and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind? Does not the ear test words and the mouth taste its food?”
(Job 12; 7-11)


CHAPTER ONE

Three angels stood before the thrown of God as the intense light of His august presence made them feel insignificant.
“Prajnapada,” God said with an authoritative flair, “I want you to go to earth to assist a man. His name is Clark Hern, who will experience problems with a woman whose spirit you well know.”
Prajnapada tried to view God’s form but the light was too intense. He shielded his “eyes” and said, “Why me? I am not ready to go to earth. I don’t want to go back there. It’s—”
“You will do as I say! Do I make myself clear?”
Prajnapada hesitated, thinking about the woman’s spirit God referred to. God waited for Prajnapada’s reply.
“Well,” Prajnapada said softly, after pondering the alternatives, “I may need some assistance. I—”
“You will get that,” God interrupted, viewing Maharama, the angel standing at Prajnapada’s left, “by the grace of your fellow angel. Maharama will assist you if you find yourself needing help.”
Prajnapada turned to view his fellow angel. Maharama sneered.
Bandama, the third angel present, the most demure of the three, dared to speak, “Sir, if I may ask, why am I here?”
“You,” God replied tersely, “will play the part of a little boy and you will remain on earth for the duration of what a person’s life would be. How long do you think you should stay?”
Bandama said with some trepidation, “In earth time, five years, Sir?”
“No,” God retorted, “I will not let you know how long you will be on earth. You will be there as long as is My wish and you will go by the name of Billy. Whatever you do, you are not to tell any human that you are an angel. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
Bandama bowed in obeisance. He knew the power of the almighty God and what would be his reward for lack of compliance. But, could he play the part of a boy?
The three angels, Prajnapada, Maharama, and Bandama, stood before their Lord for parting advice.

* * *

It was a normal spring morning with the buds of the trees beginning to effloresce and the birds—robins in particular—scouring the earth for any lazy worm to devour. There were crows cawing in the nearby oak. The grass, bedewed with droplets of rain—it had rained the night before— awakened to the warmth of the rising sun. The wind was calm. The clouds, what few there were, greeted the sun with their misty charm.
A cat, a minx by breed, a Garfield by inclination, predatiously eyed the few robins that it espied as it lay under a small evergreen tree. The robins detected the cat and not desiring to be this cat’s breakfast quit the search for their meal and took to flight. They landed on the roof of the house next door. The crows rankled the quiescent scene by swooping warlike down at this feline enemy with such cawing that the cat in all earnestness sped to the nearest car and hid behind the left front tire. It licked his left paw, the crows soon engaged in flight, and the sun with its morning calescence waved hello to the trees. The hands of time clenched 7 AM.
A woman, nude, arose from Clark’s bed, entered the shower as Clark hefted himself from his bed. He sauntered down the stairs to his kitchen noticing the sunlight mirroring off the hallway wall.
He heard the ticking of the kitchen clock as he ambled to the refrigerator. From habit he reached for the raisin bran on top of his fridge. He happened to be a raisin bran man. Some people enjoy toast and jelly; others munch on Sugar Frosted Flakes. Clark ate raisin bran, and a banana, and drank orange juice—a pedestrian breakfast but nonetheless satisfying. Like the robins and their worms, he tasted his meal.
The bran seemed flavorless. It may have been that Clark used skim milk in stead of whole or it may have been that Clark’s mind was on other things than a peaceful interlude with his spoon and bran. Whatever the case, he soon lost his appetite and with disgust poured the rest of the cereal into the sink and with a flick of a switch turned on the garbage disposal.
He watched and heard how his sink ate breakfast and wondered if his stomach ever complained when it digested some of the junk food he ate, like two-day-old pizza or pretzels and beer. He smiled. He could hear his fiancée prancing about upstairs in the bedroom, her footfalls like that of a prowling lioness. He saw her suppleness in the mirror of his mind.
The crows began anew their chorus of disharmonic cawing and a faint scuttling meow could be heard. Clark opened the refrigerator and brought out a cinnamon and raisin bagel. He was not hungry but ate just the same.
Clark, near the sink sipping some skim milk and munching at his bagel, heard his wife-to-be lounging down the stairway. Such a Junoesque form. Her hair was blonde; her eyes were an evergreen color—so deeply, serenely green that a man could believe that he was peering into emeralds when looking at them.
Her nose was aquiline in shape and her mouth, oh; her mouth portrayed the sexuality of her soul, so beautiful, so mesmerizing when she smiled. Her lips educed in many men the thought of a Circe’s kiss: sensuous, wet and warm.
Attractive did not describe her beauty. However, Clark portrayed indifference. He had learned that if a woman is allowed to lead she soon would depart. If treated, however, with a waning indifference, a woman would feel insecure and the more a woman felt insecure the more she would be attracted and stay. He never abused any woman. Not manly. He treated a female with loving indifference in a lofty and mansuetude way.
This woman, Janene, came down the stairway with the lithefulness and sprightliness of aging youth, a ripened twenty-seven. She strode into the kitchen regally. Nude, her breasts swayed musically as she approached Clark. Her hips soon slithered around Clark’s trousered hips. Her smile besought the heart of his soul. Fortunately or unfortunately, Clark was not in the mood for romance. He wanted to finish his bagel and contemplate where his life was leading. A man can not do that when he is near a woman who is nude, who is inviting, who sirenely is alluring, and who happens to have a figure of 38-26-35. Clark with preternatural effort and a sense of regret kissed her left breast and the hardened nipple of her right breast while gently pushing her away from him.
With tact and a scintillating eye Clark said: “Why don’t you go back upstairs, dress, and come down to eat breakfast?”
“What’s wrong Clark, don’t you like my body?” Janene asked. She did not go back upstairs. She opted for an eight ounce tub of yogurt eating it at the kitchen table, her nude body with her warm breasts touching the table top. Clark contemplated her nude form, sighed, and looked the other way into his living room.
Popeye (his parrot), now awake, blurted out: “I’M ONE SEXY BIRD, I’M ONE SEXY BIRD.” Clark, eyeing his parrot, remembered the women he had chatted with on his computer on-line service the night before. He turned and gazed at his naked fiancée with her breasts jiggling as she ate her yogurt and chortled to himself, thinking, “What a life, what a life!”
The grandfather clock in the living room struck eight. Outside the sun partially dried the grass and the clouds were all but dissipated. The crows evidently shied away from the cat because the minx was pampering itself by imbibing the warmth of the sun’s rays.
A blue bird sang its greeting as Clark opened the living room window; Popeye said his morning repertoire again and tested his wings. Clark thought, who knows why parrots and other birds test their wings yet go nowhere? Maybe it’s their way of worrying. After all, humans do the same thing mentally. We work our mind into a fash; yet in the end we arrive at where we started.
The telephone rang.
“Clark, will you come over and mow my lawn this afternoon?”
Clark mowed his mother’s lawn but not on Saturdays. Clark planned to take some time in the afternoon to stroll the beach (not too far from his home) to think. Besides, he did not like mowing his mother’s yard in the heat of the day because her lawn was near a patch of sinister weeds—he was plagued with an allergy problem.
“No, mom, I can’t do it this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow early evening . . . I’m glad to hear that you feel good today . . . See you tomorrow.” He heard the click on the other end of the line.
Clark held the phone receiver; his mind turned not to Janene but to death and dying. Clark many times contemplated death. Not in a morbid sense did he think in this way. He was curious, as we all are, about something we know someday we will have to face whether we want to or not. Is death the beginning of something divine or is it the end of something hellish? Why does one live later to die? What is life? Are life and death the mere opposites of the same coin—eternity? Could it be that in death there is life; and what we call life is the preamble to living?
After Clark placed the telephone receiver in its cradle he again glanced at his possible future wife