in the night I passed people trooping home with their newspapers, bearers of a weight that went beyond simple pounds and ounces. They headed up a street still blistered2 with neon and other watery3 sores, men and women almost single file, leaning into the wind, mountain guides trained against complaint, hired to carry home this swollen4 load and undress it section by section until the only thing left was the blur5 of faint print on their fingers. Against the moral obligations of their Saturday night, only yards from the newsstand, they had to walk around a man burning wooden crates6, standing7 almost in the fire, looking at no one, a man dressed in a black coat with pockets torn away, leaving streaks8 of white lining9 at his hips10. I held my hands for a moment over the flames. The man's own hands were furled in each other, held high on his chest, fingernails of rust11 and chiseled12 silver, half-moon scar, shredded13 skin at the knuckles14, luxuriant gash15 the length of one thumb. Easy to imagine a hundred miles of lines crosshatching his palms. Covering the man's head was a football helmet, Miami Dolphins, complete with face mask.
"Retractable16 ball points," he said. "Thirty-five cents."
Down Second Avenue, darker here in its plodding17 Ukrainian sleep, I saw a small woman about to cross the street. She pointed18 at the opposite corner, holding her right arm perfectly19 straight, index finger extended. Then she lowered the arm and walked swiftly across the street in the direction she'd indicated. Here she made a sharp left turn, raised her arm, pointed over the speckled concrete to the end of the block and walked in that direction. Turn, point, march. I watched her stop at the far corner, turn to the right and point again. A Good Humor truck, stripped and gutted20, sat in a lot near the Bowery. I walked slowly west. For a second nothing moved. There were no people in sight and traffic was nonexistent. I stopped on the corner and looked all around me. The wind took papers and boxes. Then, finally, about two blocks south, I saw men with rags go out into the middle of the street to await the next cycle of traffic, men with rags to clean the windshields, going out slowly from doorways21 and side streets, clean the windshields for a fee, men limping into the street, about a dozen of them, and then the first car came into view, moving north from one of the bridges or from Chinatown or Little Italy or the bank buildings, the first car followed by others, their lights rising over humps in the street, scores of cars coming up the Bowery toward the wild men with rags.
Micklewhite's door was open. The frame and edge of the door had been splintered. I looked into the room. She was sitting on a sofa watching television. I knocked on the door frame and she looked up.
"I told them go scratch your ass1 with a broken bottle. Go scratch your heinie, I told them. I wasn't afraid of them. Them or nobody else. Breaking in my door like that and coming in here to smack23 me around. I don't take that. Don't come in here and give me that. I ain't afraid of you punks and bums24. I told them, mister. I don't take smacking25 around. You want to rob me, one thing. Smack me around, whole different thing. My husband was here, they'd see. He'd of cut them up good. I'm telling you, mister. Good thing for them he's dead and buried."
"How many?" I said.
"There was four come in here and some more out in the hall that never even made it in. Smash, they come right through the door. Then when they got out of here they went upstairs, the whole bunch. I heard them on three, making noise with the mister up on three. Breaking through the door, smash. Crazy people. Say nothing, do nothing, take nothing. Crumbums, I told them, go scratch your heinie."
"Did they hurt you?"
"It was him that stopped them," she said. "They seen him there and that stopped them cold. He was right there on the chair and when they seen that, they went charging upstairs, taking over the whole building. They came in here to smack me around. Then they seen him on the chair and they went flying out. Good thing for them I got no more husband. He was good and sneaky in a fight. He was just a skinny-melink but he made up for it with sneaki-ness. Little as he was he'd sneak-fight bigger men right into the crash ward22. He'd jap them when they weren't ready. He'd go for the family jewels. That was the only thing in the world he was good at. Japping bigger men. He put many a bigger man out of commission. Sneakiest s.o.b. you'd ever want to meet."
I stepped into the room. Her son was on a chair in the corner. His own special chair, it seemed. No upholstery. Wood frame, binding26, springs, two bed pillows. He wasn't sitting or reclining; he was stored there, his head slowly rolling side to side, arms and legs stunted27. Because of his disfigurement, everything about him was pervasively28 real and I was struck by a panic that went far beyond what my eyes had registered. His face seemed to have the consistency29 of pounded mud. The head was full of bulges30 and incurvatures, scant31 of hair, a soft curious object that seemed to belong in a greenish jar. Useless pair of club-hands. Arms about three-quarters normal size. Legs perhaps less than that. The boy was unforgettable in the sheer organic power of his presence. Standing before him was like witnessing the progress of some impossible mutation32, bird to brown worm, but of course he'd been merely deposited there, wet, white and unchanging, completely stagnant33, and I began to feel that I myself was the other point of the progression. The sense of shock and panic hadn't left me yet and I understood why the marauders were not eager to browse34 in this particular room. One felt nearly displaced by the hint of structural35 transposition; he was what we'd always feared, ourselves in radical36 divestment, scrawled37 across the dark. Instead of leaving I went closer, drawn38 into what I felt was his ascendancy39, the helpless strength of his entrapment40 in tepid41 flesh, in the reductions of being. I lowered myself to one knee and sought to trace some sightline or bearing in his pale stare. With my left hand I raised his head, finding nothing in the eyes beyond a rhythmic42 blink. I must have seemed a shadow to him, thin liquid, incidental to the block of light he lived in. For the first time I began to note his embryonic43 beauty. The blank eyes ticked. The mouth opened slightly, closing on loomed44 mucus. I'd thought the fear of being peeled to this limp circumstance had caused my panic, the astonishment45 of blood pausing in the body. But maybe it was something else as well, the possibility that such a circumstance concludes in beauty. There was a lure46 to the boy, an unsettling lunar pull, and I moved my hand over the moist surface of his face. Beauty is dangerous in narrow times, a knife in the slender neck of the rational man, and only those who live between the layers of these strange days can know its name and shape. When I took my hand from his face, the head resumed its metronomic roll. I was still afraid of him, more than ever in fact, but willing now to breathe his air, to smell the bland47 gases coming off him, to work myself into his consciousness, whatever there was of that. It would have been better (and even cheering) to think of him as some kind of super-crustacean or diabolic boiled vegetable. But he was too human for that, adhering to me as though by suction or sticky filaments48. Mouth opened and closed. Eyes blinked at precise intervals49. Head moved from side to side. Micklewhite adjusted the sound on her TV set.
"Careful, he bites," she said.
I went upstairs to see Fenig. The door was almost off, leaning from the lower hinge. He was seated at his typewriter, looking into the keys. Bandages, tape and gauze were all over the floor. He tapped out a few characters, then turned toward the door and gave me a small wave. His face was full of bruises50. There were bloodstains all over his clothes. Both brows were puffed51 up, his lower lip cut open, thick with dried blood. He hadn't applied52 bandages or gauze to his wounds, at least not in exposed areas. I stood there watching him type a line or two, very slowly, his fingers merely pecking at the keys prior to each actual assault, the moment in which the words moved through his hands and found the page. He looked my way a second time.
"Magazines keep folding. It's not so good. I've spent a lot of time lately worrying about whether or not I've lost the essential spark. It's not me I should have been concerned about. It's the market. The market is getting smaller every day. The bright lights are dimming. The sounds and echoes are fading. The great elliptical arc is spinning ever slower."
"Did they take anything?" I said.
"They just cuffed53 me around and stomped54 me a little bit. I was lucky. They were in the room probably only sixty seconds. They made a lot of noise coming up the stairs and a lot of noise going back down the stairs. I think that was the biggest part of their operation. The idea of taking over a building. The idea of breaking and entering. The idea of domination. It could have been a whole lot worse. I was lucky. I can't get over how lucky I was. I know people who'd give almost anything to be as lucky as I was."
"Do you want me to help you clean up this mess?"
"You mean the bandages and stuff. I'm the one who flung the bandages and stuff. They didn't do that. I'm the one who did that. After they left I got all this stuff out of my medicine chest. The Band-Aid plastic strips. The safety gauze. The nonstick sterile55 pads. The first-aid tape. The absorbent cotton. I got it all out. I laid it out on the table and looked at it. I looked especially hard at the tan bandages with the clever little air vents56. Then I swept the whole thing right off the table. What good's gauze and cotton against the idea of domination? What good's a sterile compress against the idea of domination? So I'll bleed. So I'll experience discomfort57 for a few days. I don't think about that because right now, as I sit in this chair talking to you, I'm in the midst of work on a whole new genre58. Fi-nance. Financial writing. Books and articles for millionaires and potential millionaires. The floodgates are opened and the words are pouring out. Financial literature. Handled right it's a goddamn gold mine, relatively59 speaking."
My own door had not been touched. I went inside and turned on the radio. It was cold in the room. There was an airline bag near the door, accidentally left behind by Watney's manservant. The phone rang. It was Azarian in Los Angeles, saying his people were very anxious to bid. I hung up. On the radio several men were conversing60 in an unfamiliar61 language. I looked in the trunk for an extra blanket. The package containing the mountain tapes was gone. I had to work my way up and down several mental steps before I arrived at this conclusion. I knew at once that something was missing from the trunk. I realized it was the brown package. I thought the package contained the drug. Then I remembered Hanes had the package with the drug. The second package contained the tapes. The second package was gone. I stood in a corner of the room, near the window, crossing and uncrossing my arms, finally wedging my hands in my armpits for warmth. I knew I'd never be able to reproduce the complex emotional content of those tapes, or remember a single lyric62.
After a while I went over to the door, picked up Watney's airline bag and unzippered it. Inside were several hundred bubble gum cards. Watney's picture was on each one of them. A funny enough sight. But not what I needed at the moment.
There was no extra blanket. I put Opel's coat over my shoulders, placed the one available blanket over the coat and then settled into a chair and waited for the first line of light to appear across the window, bringing sleep with no dreams.
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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crates
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| n. 板条箱, 篓子, 旧汽车 vt. 装进纸条箱 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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chiseled
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| adj.凿刻的，轮廓分明的v.凿，雕，镌( chisel的过去式 ) | |
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shredded
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| shred的过去式和过去分词 | |
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knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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gash
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| v.深切，划开；n.(深长的)切(伤)口；裂缝 | |
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retractable
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| adj.可收回的；可撤消的；可缩回的；可缩进的 | |
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plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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gutted
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| adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏 | |
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doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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smacking
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| 活泼的，发出响声的，精力充沛的 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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pervasively
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| adv.无处不在地，遍布地 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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bulges
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| 膨胀( bulge的名词复数 )； 鼓起； （身体的）肥胖部位； 暂时的激增 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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mutation
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| n.变化，变异，转变 | |
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stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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browse
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| vi.随意翻阅，浏览；(牛、羊等)吃草 | |
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structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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ascendancy
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| n.统治权，支配力量 | |
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entrapment
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| n.（非法）诱捕，诱人犯罪；诱使犯罪 | |
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tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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embryonic
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| adj.胚胎的 | |
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44
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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46
lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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filaments
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| n.（电灯泡的）灯丝( filament的名词复数 )；丝极；细丝；丝状物 | |
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49
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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50
bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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51
puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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52
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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cuffed
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| v.掌打，拳打( cuff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stomped
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| v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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57
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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genre
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| n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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60
conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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61
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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lyric
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| n.抒情诗，歌词；adj.抒情的 | |
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