Read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for Free Online

sleepy waitress was serving both beer and coffee. There was no noise or conversation, for each person seemed to be alone. The mutual distrust between the men who were just awakened and those who were ending a long night gave everyone a feeling of estrangement.
    The bank building across the street was very pale in the dawn.
    Then gradually its white brick walls grew more distinct. When at last the first shafts of the rising sun began to brighten the street, Biff gave the place one last survey and went upstairs.
    Noisily he rattled the doorknob as he entered so that Alice would be disturbed. ‘Motherogod!’ he said. ‘What a night!’ Alice awoke with caution. She lay on the rumpled bed like a sulky cat and stretched herself. The room was drab in the fresh, hot morning sun, and a pair of silk stockings hung limp and withered from the cord of the window-shade.
    ‘Is that drunk fool still hanging around downstairs?’ she demanded.
    Biff took off his shirt and examined the collar to see if it were clean enough to be worn again. ‘Go down and see for yourself.’
    I told you nobody will hinder you from kicking him out.’
    Sleepily Alice reached down and picked up a Bible, the blank side of a menu, and a Sunday-School book from the floor beside the bed. She rustled through the tissue pages of the Bible until she reached a certain passage and began reading, pronouncing the words aloud with painful concentration. It was Sunday, and she was preparing the weekly lesson for her class of boys in the Junior Department of her church. Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
    And Jesus said unto them, ‘Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.’ And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.’ Biff went into the bathroom to wash himself. The silky murmuring continued as Alice studied aloud. He listened and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
    And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him.
    And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, ‘All men seek for Thee.’ She had finished. Biff let the words revolve again gently inside him. He tried to separate the actual words from the sound of Alice’s voice as she had spoken them. He wanted to remember the passage as his mother used to read it when he was a boy. With nostalgia he glanced down at the wedding ring on his fifth finger that had once been hers. He wondered again how she would have felt about his giving up church and religion.
    ‘The lesson for today is about the gathering of the disciples,’ Alice said to herself in preparation. ‘And the text is, ‘All men seek for Thee.’’ Abruptly Biff roused himself from meditation and turned on the water spigot at full force. He stripped off his undervest and began to wash himself. Always he was scrupulously clean from the belt upward. Every morning he soaped his chest and arms and neck and feet--and about twice during the season he got into the bathtub and cleaned all of his parts.
    Biff stood by the bed, waiting impatiently for Alice to get up.
    From the window he saw that the day would be windless and burning hot. Alice had finished reading the lesson. She still lay lazily across the bed, although she knew that he was waiting. A calm, sullen anger rose in him. He chuckled ironically. Then he said with bitterness: ‘If you like I can sit and read the paper awhile. But I wish you would let me sleep now.’
    Alice began dressing herself and Biff made up the bed. Deftly he reversed the sheets in all possible ways, putting the top one on the bottom, and turning them over and upside down. When the bed was smoothly made he waited until Alice had left the room before he slipped off his trousers and crawled inside.
    His feet jutted out from beneath the cover and his wiry-haired chest was very dark against the pillow. He