she left Kinneret, then, with no idea she was moving toward anything new. Mucho Maas, enigmatic, whis-tling "I Want to Kiss Your Feet," a new recording1 by Sick Dick and the Volkswagens (an English group he was fond of at that time but did not believe in), stood with hands in pockets while she explained about going down to San Narciso for a while to look into Pierce's books and records and confer with Metzger, the co-executor. Mucho was sad to see her go, but not desper-ate, so after telling him to hang up if Dr Hilarius called and look after the oregano in the garden, which had contracted a. strange mold, she went.
San Narciso lay further south, near L.A. Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts—census tracts2, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei3, all over-laid with access roads to its own freeway. But it had been Pierce's domicile, and headquarters: the place he'd begun his land speculating in ten years ago, and so put down the plinth course of capital on which everything afterward4 had been built, however rickety or grotesque5, toward the sky; and that, she supposed, would set the spot apart, give it an aura. But if there was any vital difference between it and the rest of Southern Califor-nia, it was invisible on first glance. She drove into San Narciso on a Sunday, in a rented Impala. Nothing was happening. She looked down a slope, needing to squint6 for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl7 of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor8 radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl9 of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both out-ward patterns a hieroglyphic10 sense of concealed11 mean-ing, of an intent to communicate. There'd seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the thresh-old of her understanding. Smog hung all round the horizon, the sun on the bright beige countryside was painful; she and the Chevy seemed parked at the centre of an odd, religious instant. As if, on some other
frequency, or out of the eye of some whirlwind rotating too slow for her heated skin even to feel the centrifugal coolness of, words were being spoken. She suspected that much. She thought of Mucho, her husband, trying to believe in his job. Was it something like this he felt, looking through the soundproof glass at one of his colleagues with a headset clamped on and cueing the next record with movements stylized as the handling of chrism, censer, chalice12 might be for a holy man, yet really tuned13 in to the voice, voices, the music, its message, surrounded by it, digging it, as were all the faithful it went out to; did Mucho stand outside Studio A looking in, knowing that even if he could hear it he couldn't believe in it?
She gave it up presently, as if a cloud had ap-proached the sun or the smog thickened, and so broken the "religious instant," whatever it might've been; started up and proceeded at maybe 70 mph along the singing blacktop, onto a highway she thought went toward Los Angeles, into a neighborhood that was little more than the road's skinny right-of-way, lined by auto14 lots, escrow services, drive-ins, small office buildings and factories whose address numbers were in the 70 and then 80,000's. She had never known numbers to run so high. It seemed unnatural15. To her left appeared a pro-longed scatter16 of wide, pink buildings, surrounded by miles of fence topped with barbed wire and interrupted now and then by guard towers: soon an entrance whizzed by, two sixty-foot missiles on either side and the name yoyodyne lettered conservatively on each nose cone17. This was San Narciso's big source of em-ployment, the Galactronics Division of Yoyodyne, Inc., one of the giants of the aerospace18 industry. Pierce, she happened to know, had owned a large block of shares, had been somehow involved in negotiating an under-standing with the county tax assessor to lure19 Yoyodyne here in the first place. It was part, he explained, of being a founding father.
Barbed wire again gave way to the familiar parade of more beige, prefab, cinderblock office machine dis-tributors, sealant makers20, bottled gas works, fastener factories, warehouses21, and whatever. Sunday had sent them all into silence and paralysis22, all but an occasional real estate office or truck stop. Oedipa resolved to pull in at the next motel she saw, however ugly, stillness and four walls having at some point become preferable to this illusion of speed, freedom, wind in your hair, unreeling landscape—it wasn't. What the road really was, she fancied, was this hypodermic needle, inserted somewhere ahead into the vein23 of a freeway, a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A., keeping it happy, co-herent, protected from pain, or whatever passes, with a city, for pain. But were Oedipa some single melted crystal of urban horse, L.A., really, would be no less turned on for her absence.
Still, when she got a look at the next motel, she hesitated a second. A representation in painted sheet metal of a nymph holding a white blossom towered thirty feet into the air; the sign, lit up despite the sun, said "Echo Courts." The face of the nymph was much like Oedipa's, which didn't startle her so much as a concealed blower system that kept the nymph's gauze chiton in constant agitation24, revealing enormous vermil-ion-tipped breasts and long pink thighs26 at each flap. She was smiling a lipsticked and public smile, not quite a hooker's but nowhere near that of any nymph pining away with love either. Oedipa pulled into the lot, got out and stood for a moment in the hot sun and the dead-still air, watching the artificial windstorm over-head toss gauze in five-foot excursions. Remembering her idea about a slow whirlwind, words she couldn't hear.
The room would be good enough for the time she had to stay. Its door opened on a long courtyard with a swimming pool, whose surface that day was flat, bril-liant with sunlight. At the far end stood a fountain, with another nymph. Nothing moved. If people lived behind the other doors or watched through the win-dows gagged each with its roaring air-conditioner, she couldn't see them. The manager, a drop-out named Miles, maybe 16 with a Beatle haircut and a lapelless, cuffless, one-button mohair suit, carried her bags and sang to himself, possibly to her:
miles's song Too fat to Frug,
That's what you tell me all the time,
When you really try'n' to put me down, But I'm hip27,
So close your big fat lip, Yeah, baby,
I may be too fat to Frug, But at least I ain't too slim to Swim.
"It's lovely," said Oedipa, "but why do you sing with an English accent when you don't talk that way?"
"It's this group I'm in," Miles explained, "the Paranoids. We're new yet. Our manager says we should sing like that. We watch English movies a lot, for the accent."
"My husband's a disk jockey," Oedipa trying to be helpful, "it's only a thousand-watt station, but if you had anything like a tape I could give it to him to plug." Miles closed the door behind them and started in with the shifty eye. "In return for what?" Moving in on her. "Do you want what I think you want? This is the Payola Kid here, you know." Oedipa picked up the nearest weapon, which happened to be the rabbit-ear antenna28 off the TV in the corner. "Oh," said Miles, stopping. "You hate me too." Eyes bright through his bangs.
"You are a paranoid," Oedipa said. "I have a smooth young body," said Miles, "I thought you older chicks went for that." He left after shaking her down for four bits for carrying the bags.
That night the lawyer Metzger showed up. He turned out to be so good-looking that Oedipa thought at first They, somebody up there, were putting her on. It had to be an actor. He stood at her door, behind him the oblong pool shimmering29 silent in a mild diffusion30 of light from the nighttime sky, saying, "Mrs Maas," like a reproach. His enormous eyes, lambent, extravagantly31 lashed32, smiled out at her wickedly; she looked around him for reflectors, microphones, camera cabling, but there was only himself and a debonair33 bottle of French Beaujolais, which he claimed to've smuggled34 last year into California, this rollicking lawbreaker, past the frontier guards.
"So hey," he murmured, "after scouring35 motels all day to find you, I can come in there, can't I?"
Oedipa had planned on nothing more involved that evening than watching Bonanza36 on the tube. She'd shifted into stretch denim37 slacks and a shaggy black sweater, and had her hair all the way down. She knew she looked pretty good. "Come in," she said, "but I only have one glass."
"I," the gallant38 Metzger let her know, "can drink out of the bottle." He came in and sat on the floor, in his suit. Opened the bottle, poured her a drink, began to talk. It presently came out that Oedipa hadn't been so far off, thinking it was an actor. Some twenty-odd years ago, Metzger had been one of those child movie stars, performing under the name of Baby Igor. "My mother," he announced bitterly, "was really out to kasher me, boy, like a piece of beef on the sink, she wanted me drained and white. Times I wonder," smoothing down the hair at the back of his head, "if she succeeded. It scares me. You know what mothers like that turn their male children into."
"You certainly don't look," Oedipa began, then had second thoughts.
Metzger flashed her a big wry39 couple rows of teeth. "Looks don't mean a thing any more," he said. "I live inside my looks, and I'm never sure. The possibility haunts me."
"And how often," Oedipa inquired, now aware it was all words, "has that line of approach worked for you, Baby Igor?"
"Do you know," Metzger said, "Inverarity only mentioned you to me once." "Were you close?" "No. I drew up his will. Don't you want to know what he said?"
"No," said Oedipa, and snapped on the television set. Onto the screen bloomed the image of a child of indeterminate sex, its bare legs pressed awkward together, its shoulder-length curls mingling40 with the shorter hair of a St Bernard, whose long tongue, as Oedipa watched, began to swipe at the child's rosy41 cheeks, making the child wrinkle up its nose appealingly and say, "Aw, Murray, come on, now, you're getting me all wet."
"That's me, that's me," cried Metzger, staring, "good God."
"Which one?" asked Oedipa. "That movie was called," Metzger snapped his fingers, "Cashiered."
"About you and your mother." "About this kid and his father, who's drummed out of the British Army for cowardice42, only he's covering up for a friend, see, and to redeem43 himself he and the kid follow the old regiment44 to Gallipoli, where the father somehow builds a midget submarine, and every week they slip through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmara and torpedo45 the Turkish merchantmen, the father, son, and St Bernard. The dog sits on periscope46 watch, and barks if he sees anything."
Oedipa was pouring wine. "You're kidding." "Listen, listen, here's where I sing." And sure enough, the child, and dog, and a merry old Greek fish-erman who had appeared from nowhere with a zither, now all stood in front of phony-Dodecanese process footage of a seashore at sunset, and the kid sang.
baby igor's song
'Gainst the Hun and the Turk, never once do -we shirk, My daddy, my doggie and me.
Through the perilous47 years, like the Three Musketeers, We will stick just as close as can be. Soon our sub's periscope'll aim for Constantinople, As again we set hopeful to sea;
Once more unto the breach48, for those boys on the beach,
Just my daddy, my doggie and me.
Then there was a musical bridge, featuring the fisher-man and his instrument, then the young Metzger took it from the top while his aging double, over Oedipa's protests, sang harmony.
Either he made up the whole thing, Oedipa thought suddenly, or he bribed49 the engineer over at the local station to run this, it's all part of a plot, an elaborate, seduction, plot. O Metzger. "You didn't sing along," he observed. "I didn't know," Oedipa smiled. On came a loud commercial for Fangoso Lagoons50, a new housing devel-opment west of here.
"One of Inverarity's interests," Metzger noted51. It was to be laced by canals with private landings for power boats, a floating social hall in the middle of an artificial lake, at the bottom of which lay restored galleons52, imported from the Bahamas; Atlantean frag-ments of columns and friezes53 from the Canaries; real human skeletons from Italy; giant clamshells from Indonesia-all for the entertainment of Scuba54 enthusi-asts. A map of the place flashed onto the screen, Oedipa drew a sharp breath, Metzger on the chance it might be for him looked over. But she'd only been reminded of her look downhill this noontime. Some immediacy was there again, some promise of hierophany: printed cir-cuit, gently curving streets, private access to the water, Book of the Dead. . . .
Before she was ready for it, back came Cashiered. The little submarine, named the "Justine" after the dead mother, was at the quai, singling up all lines. A small crowd was seeing it off, among them the old fisherman, and his daughter, a leggy, ringletted nymphet who, should there be a happy ending, would end up with Metzger; an English missionary55 nurse with a nice build on her, who would end up with Metzger's father; and even a female sheepdog with eyes for Mur-ray the St Bernard.
"Oh, yeah," Metzger said, "this is where we have trouble in the Narrows. It's a bitch because of the Kephez minefields, but Jerry has also recently hung this net, this gigantic net, woven out of cable 2 l/2 inches thick."
Oedipa refilled her wine glass. They lay now, staring at the screen, flanks just lightly touching56. There came from the TV set a terrific explosion. "Mines!" cried Metzger, covering his head and rolling away from her. "Daddy," blubbered the Metzger in the tube, "I'm scared." The inside of the midget sub was chaotic57, the dog galloping58 to and fro scattering59 saliva60 that mingled61 with the spray from a leak in the bulkhead, which the father was now plugging with his shirt. "One thing we can do," announced the father, "go to the bottom, try to get under the net."
"Ridiculous," said Metzger. "They'd built a gate init, so German U-boats could get through to attack the British fleet. All our E class subs simply used that gate."
"How do you know that?"
"Wasn't I there?"
"But," began Oedipa, then saw how they were suddenly out of wine.
"Aha," said Metzger, from an inside coat pocket producing a bottle of tequila.
"No lemons?" she asked, with movie-gaiety. "No salt?"
"A tourist thing. Did Inverarity use lemons when you were there?"
"How did you know we were there?" She watched him fill her glass, growing more anti-Metzger as the
level rose.
"He wrote it off that year as a business expense. I did his tax stuff."
"A cash nexus," brooded Oedipa, "you and Perry Mason, two of a kind, it's all you know about, you
shysters."
"But our beauty lies," explained Metzger, "in this extended capacity for convolution. A lawyer in a court-room, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor. Me, I'm a former actor who became a lawyer. They've done the pilot film of a TV series, in fact, based loosely on my career, starring my friend Manny Di Presso, a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to become an actor. Who in this pilot plays me, an actor become a lawyer reverting62 periodically to being an actor. The film is in an air-conditioned vault63 at one of the Hollywood studios, light can't fatigue64 it, it can be repeated endlessly."
"You're in trouble," Oedipa told him, staring at the tube, conscious of his thigh25, warm through his suit and her slacks. Presently:
"The Turks are up there with searchlights," he said, pouring more tequila, watching the little sub-marine fill up, "patrol boats, and machine guns. You want to bet on what'll happen?"
"Of course not," said Oedipa, "the movie's made." He only smiled back. "One of your endless repeti-tions."
"But you still don't know," Metzger said. "You haven't seen it." Into the commercial break now roared a deafening65 ad for Beaconsfield Cigarettes, whose at-tractiveness lay in their filter's use of bone charcoal66, the very best kind.
"Bones of what?" wondered Oedipa.
"Inverarity knew. He owned 51% of the filter process."
"Tell me."
"Someday. Right now it's your last chance to place your bet. Are they going to get out of it, or not?"
She felt drunk. It occurred to her, for no reason, that the plucky67 trio might not get out after all. She had no way to tell how long the movie had to run. She looked at her watch, but it had stopped. "This is absurd," she said, "of course they'll get out."
"How do you know?"
"All those movies had happy endings."
"All?"
"Most."
"That cuts down the probability," he told her, smug.
She squinted68 at him through her glass. "Then give me odds69."
"Odds would give it away."
"So," she yelled, maybe a bit rattled70, "I bet a bottle of something. Tequila, all right? That you didn't make it." Feeling the words had been conned71 out of her.
'That I didn't make it." He pondered. "Another bottle tonight would put you to sleep," he decided72. "No."
"What do you want to bet, then?" She knew. Stubborn, they watched each other's eyes for what seemed five minutes. She heard commercials chasing one another into and out of the speaker of the TV. She grew more and more angry, perhaps juiced, perhaps only impatient for the movie to come back on.
"Fine then," she gave in at last, trying for a brittle73 voice, "it's a bet. Whatever you'd like. That you don't make it. That you all turn to carrion74 for the fish at the bottom of the Dardanelles, your daddy, your doggie, and you."
"Fair enough," drawled Metzger, taking her hand as if to shake on the bet and kissing its palm instead, sending the dry end of his tongue to graze briefly75 among her fate's furrows76, the changeless salt hatchings of her identity. She wondered then if this were really happen-ing in the same way as, say, her first time in bed with Pierce, the dead man. But then the movie came back.
The father was huddled77 in a shell hole on the steep cliffs of the Anzac beachhead, Turkish shrapnel flying all over the place. Neither Baby Igor nor Murray the dog were in evidence. "Now what the hell," said Oedipa.
"Golly," Metzger said, "they must have got the reels screwed up."
"Is this before or after?" she asked, reaching for the tequila bottle, a move that put her left breast in the region of Metzger's nose. The irrepressibly comic Metzger made cross-eyes before replying, "That would be telling."
"Come on." She nudged his nose with the padded tip of her bra cup and poured booze. "Or the bet's off."
"Nope," Metzger said.
"At least tell me if that's his old regiment, there."
"Go ahead," said Metzger, "ask questions. But for each answer, you'll have to take something off. We'll call it Strip Botticelli."
Oedipa had a marvelous idea: "Fine," she told him, "but first I'll just slip into the bathroom for a second. Close your eyes, turn around, don't peek78." On the screen the "River Clyde," a collier carrying 2000 men, beached at Sedd-el-Bahr in an unearthly silence. "This is it, men," a phony British accent was heard to whisper. Suddenly a host of Turkish rifles on shore opened up all together, and the massacre79 began.
"I know this part," Metzger told her, his eyes squeezed shut, head away from the set. "For fifty yards out the sea was red with blood. They don't show that." Oedipa skipped into the bathroom, which happened also to have a walk-in closet, quickly undressed and began putting on as much as she could of the clothing she'd brought with her: six pairs of panties in assorted80 colors, girdle, three pairs of nylons, three brassieres, two pairs stretch slacks, four half-slips, one black sheath, two summer dresses, half dozen A-line skirts, three sweaters, two blouses, quilted wrapper, baby blue peignoir and old Orion muu-muu. Bracelets82 then, scatter pins, ear-rings, a pendant. It all seemed to take hours to put on and she could hardly walk when she was finished. She made the mistake of looking at herself in the full-length mirror, saw a beach ball with feet, and laughed so violently she fell over, taking a can of hair spray on the sink with her. The can hit the floor, something broke, and with a great outsurge of pressure the stuff com-
menced atomizing, propelling the can swiftly about the bathroom. Metzger rushed in to find Oedipa rolling around, trying to get back on her feet, amid a great sticky miasma83 of fragrant84 lacquer. "Oh, for Pete's sake," he said in his Baby Igor voice. The can, hissing85 malig-nantly, bounced off the toilet and whizzed by Metzger's right ear, missing by maybe a quarter of an inch. Metzger hit the deck and cowered86 with Oedipa as the can continued its high-speed caroming; from the other room came a slow, deep crescendo87 of naval88 bombard-ment, machine-gun, howitzer and small-arms fire, screams and chopped-off prayers of dying infantry89. She looked up past his eyelids90, into the staring ceiling light, her field of vision cut across by wild, flashing over-flights of the can, whose pressure seemed inexhaustible. She was scared but nowhere near sober. The can knew where it was going, she sensed, or something fast enough, God or a digital machine, might have com-puted in advance the complex web of its travel; but she wasn't fast enough, and knew only that it might hit them at any moment, at whatever clip it was doing, a hundred miles an hour. "Metzger," she moaned, and sank her teeth into his upper arm, through the shark-skin. Everything smelled like hair spray. The can col-lided with a mirror and bounced away, leaving a silvery, reticulated bloom of glass to hang a second before it all fell jingling91 into the sink; zoomed92 over to the enclosed shower, where it crashed into and totally destroyed a panel of frosted glass; thence around the three tile walls, up to the ceiling, past the light, over the two prostrate93 bodies, amid its own whoosh94 and the buzzing, distorted uproar95 from the TV set. She could imagine no end to it; yet presently the can did give up in mid-flight and fall to the floor, about a foot from Oedipa's nose. She lay watching it.
"Blimey," somebody remarked. "Coo." Oedipa took her teeth out of Metzger, looked around and saw in the doorway96 Miles, the kid with the bangs and mohair suit, now multiplied by four. It seemed to be the group he'd mentioned, the Paranoids. She couldn't tell them apart, three of them were carrying electric guitars, they all had their mouth open. There also appeared a number of girls' faces, gazing through armpits and around angles of knees. "That's kinky," said one of the girls.
"Are you from London?" another wanted to know: "Is that a London thing you're doing?" Hair spray hung like fog, glass twinkled all over the floor. "Lord love a duck," summarized a boy holding a passkey, and Oedipa decided this was Miles. Deferent, he began to narrate97 for their entertainment a surfer orgy he had been to the week before, involving a five-gallon can of kidney suet, a small automobile98 with a sun roof, and a trained seal.
"I'm sure this pales by comparison," said Oedipa, who'd succeeded in rolling over, "so why don't you all just, you know, go outside. And sing. None of this works without mood music. Serenade us."
"Maybe later," invited one of the other Paranoids shyly, "you could join us in the pool."
"Depends how hot it gets in here, gang," winked99 jolly Oedipa. The kids filed out, after plugging exten-sion cords into all available outlets100 in the other room and leading them in a bundle out a window.
Metzger helped her stagger to her feet. "Anyone for Strip Botticelli?" In the other room the TV was
blaring a commercial for a Turkish bath in downtown San Narciso, wherever downtown was, called Hogan's Seraglio. "Inverarity owned that too," Metzger said. "Did you know that?"
"Sadist," Oedipa yelled, "say it once more, I'll wrap the TV tube around your head,"
"You're really mad," he smiled.
She wasn't, really. She said, "What the hell didn't he own?"
Metzger cocked an eyebrow101 at her. "You tell me."
If she was going to she got no chance, for outside, all in a shuddering102 deluge103 of thick guitar chords, the Paranoids had broken into song. Their drummer had set up precariously104 on the diving board, the others were invisible. Metzger came up behind her with some idea of cupping his hands around her breasts, but couldn't immediately find them because of all the clothes. They stood at the window and heard the Paranoids singing.
serenade
As I lie and watch the moon On the lonely sea, Watch it tug105 the lonely tide Like a comforter over me, The still and faceless moon Fills the beach tonight With only a ghost of day, All shadow gray, and moonbeam white. And you lie alone tonight, As alone as I;
Lonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that's where it's at, So hush106 your lonely cry.
How can I come to you, put out the moon, send back the tide?
The night has gone so gray, I'd lose the way, and it's
dark inside. No, I must lie alone, Till it comes for me; Till it takes the sky, the sand, the moon, and the
lonely sea. And the lonely sea . . . etc. [fade out.]
"Now then," Oedipa shivered brightly.
"First question," Metzger reminded her. From the TV set the St Bernard was barking. Oedipa looked and saw Baby Igor, disguised as a Turkish beggar lad, skulking107 with the dog around a set she took to be Constantinople.
"Another early reel," she said hopefully.
"I can't allow that question," Metzger said. On the doorsill the Paranoids, as we leave milk to propitiate108 the leprechaun, had set a fifth of Jack109 Daniels.
"Oboy," said Oedipa. She poured a drink. "Did Baby Igor get to Constantinople in the good submarine 'Justine'?"
"No," said Metzger. Oedipa took off an earring110. "Did he get there in, what did you call them, in an E Class submarine."
"No," said Metzger. Oedipa took off another ear-ring.
"Did he get there overland, maybe through Asia Minor111?"
"Maybe," said Metzger. Oedipa took off another earring.
"Another earring?" said Metzger. "If I answer that, will you take something off?" "I'll do it without an answer," roared Metzger, shucking out of his coat. Oedipa refilled her glass, Metzger had another snort from the bottle. Oedipa then sat five minutes watching the tube, forgetting she was supposed to ask questions. Metzger took his trou-sers off, earnestly. The father seemed to be up before a court-martial, now.
"So," she said, "an early reel. This is where he gets cashiered, ha, ha."
"Maybe it's a flashback," Metzger said. "Or maybe he gets it twice." Oedipa removed a bracelet81. So it went: the succession of film fragments on the tube, the pro-gressive removal of clothing that seemed to bring her no nearer nudity, the boozing, the tireless shivaree, of voices and guitars from out by the pool. Now and then a commercial would come in, each time Metzger would say, "Inverarity's," or "Big block of shares," and later settled for nodding and smiling. Oedipa would scowl112 back, growing more and more certain, while a head-ache began to flower behind her eyes, that they among all possible combinations of new lovers had found a way to make time itself slow down. Things grew less and less clear. At some point she went into the bath-room, tried to find her image in the mirror and couldn't. She had a moment of nearly pure terror. Then remembered that the mirror had broken and fallen in sink. "Seven years' bad luck," she said aloud. "I'll be 35." She shut the door behind her and took the occasion to blunder, almost absently, into another slip and skirt, as well as a long-leg girdle and a couple pairs of knee socks. It struck her that if the sun ever came up Metzger would disappear. She wasn't sure if she wanted him to. She came back in to find Metzger wearing only a pair of boxer113 shorts and fast asleep with a harden and his head under the couch. She noticed also a fat stomach the suit had hidden. On the screen New Zealanders and Turks were impaling114 one another on bayonets. With a cry Oedipa rushed to him, fell on him, began kissing him to wake him up. His radiant eyes flew open, pierced her, as if she could feel the sharpness somewhere vague between her breasts. She sank with an enormous sigh that carried all rigidity115 like a mythical116 fluid from her, down next to him; so weak she couldn't help him undress her; it took him 20 minutes, rolling, arranging her this way and that, as if she thought, he were some scaled-up, short-haired, poker-faced little girl with a Barbie doll. She may have fallen asleep once or twice. She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she'd come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera's already moving. Outside a fugue of guitars had begun, and she counted each electronic voice as it came in, till she reached six or so and recalled only three of the Paranoids played guitars; so others must be plugging in.
Which indeed they were. Her climax117 and Metzger's, when it came, coincided with every light in the place, including the TV tube, suddenly going out, dead, black. It was a curious experience. The Paranoids had blown a fuse. When the lights came on again, and she and Metzger lay twined amid a wall-to-wall scatter of clothing and spilled bourbon, the TV tube revealed the father, dog and Baby Igor trapped inside the darken-ing "Justine," as the water level inexorably rose. The dog was first to drown, in a great crowd of bubbles. The camera came in for a close-up of Baby Igor crying, one hand on the control board. Something short-circuited then and the grounded Baby Igor was electrocuted,
thrashing back and forth118 and screaming horribly. Through one of those Hollywood distortions in proba-bility, the father was spared electrocution so he could make a farewell speech, apologizing to Baby Igor and the dog for getting them into this and regretting that they wouldn't be meeting in heaven: "Your little eyes have seen your daddy for the last time. You are for salvation119; I am for the Pit." At the end his suffering eyes filled the screen, the sound of incoming water grew deafening, up swelled120 that strange 30's movie music with the massive sax section, in faded the legend the
end.
Oedipa had leaped to her feet and run across to the other wall to turn and glare at Metzger. "They didn't make it!" she yelled. "You bastard121, I won."
"You won me," Metzger smiled.
"What did Inverarity tell you about me," she asked
finally.
"That you wouldn't be easy."
She began to cry.
"Come back," said Metzger. "Come on."
After awhile she said, "I will." And she did.
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1
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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nuclei
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| n.核 | |
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4
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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7
sprawl
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| vi.躺卧，扩张，蔓延；vt.使蔓延；n.躺卧，蔓延 | |
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8
transistor
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| n.晶体管，晶体管收音机 | |
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9
swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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10
hieroglyphic
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| n.象形文字 | |
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11
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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12
chalice
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| n.圣餐杯；金杯毒酒 | |
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13
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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14
auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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15
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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16
scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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17
cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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18
aerospace
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| adj.航空的，宇宙航行的 | |
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19
lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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20
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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21
warehouses
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| 仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 ) | |
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22
paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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23
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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24
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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25
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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26
thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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27
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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28
antenna
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| n.触角，触须；天线 | |
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29
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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30
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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31
extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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32
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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33
debonair
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| adj.殷勤的，快乐的 | |
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34
smuggled
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| 水货 | |
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35
scouring
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| 擦[洗]净，冲刷，洗涤 | |
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36
bonanza
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| n.富矿带，幸运，带来好运的事 | |
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37
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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38
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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39
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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40
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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41
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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42
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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43
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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44
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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45
torpedo
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| n.水雷，地雷；v.用鱼雷破坏 | |
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46
periscope
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| n. 潜望镜 | |
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47
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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48
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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49
bribed
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| v.贿赂( bribe的过去式和过去分词 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂 | |
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50
lagoons
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| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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51
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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52
galleons
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| n.大型帆船( galleon的名词复数 ) | |
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53
friezes
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| n.（柱顶过梁和挑檐间的）雕带，（墙顶的）饰带( frieze的名词复数 ) | |
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54
scuba
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| n.水中呼吸器 | |
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55
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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56
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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57
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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58
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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59
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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60
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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61
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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62
reverting
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| 恢复( revert的现在分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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63
vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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64
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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65
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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66
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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67
plucky
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| adj.勇敢的 | |
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68
squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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69
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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70
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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71
conned
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| adj.被骗了v.指挥操舵( conn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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73
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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74
carrion
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| n.腐肉 | |
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75
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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76
furrows
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| n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 )；（脸上的）皱纹v.犁田，开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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77
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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78
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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79
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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80
assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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81
bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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82
bracelets
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| n.手镯，臂镯( bracelet的名词复数 ) | |
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83
miasma
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| n.毒气；不良气氛 | |
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84
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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85
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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86
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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87
crescendo
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| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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88
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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89
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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90
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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91
jingling
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| 叮当声 | |
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92
zoomed
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| v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去式 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨 | |
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93
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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94
whoosh
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| v.飞快地移动，呼 | |
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95
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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96
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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97
narrate
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| v.讲，叙述 | |
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98
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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99
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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100
outlets
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| n.出口( outlet的名词复数 )；经销店；插座；廉价经销店 | |
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101
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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102
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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103
deluge
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| n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥 | |
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104
precariously
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| adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地 | |
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105
tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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106
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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107
skulking
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| v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 ) | |
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108
propitiate
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| v.慰解，劝解 | |
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109
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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110
earring
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| n.耳环，耳饰 | |
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111
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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112
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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113
boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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114
impaling
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| 钉在尖桩上( impale的现在分词 ) | |
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115
rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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116
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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117
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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118
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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119
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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120
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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121
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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