Larry Burlew was pacing when we walked into the shop.
"I don't feel good," he said. "I think I'm having a heart attack. My heart is racing1. And my eye is twitching2. I hate when my eye twitches3 like this. Maybe I need a cup of cof-fee to settle my nerves."
"Put a coat on him and walk him around outside in the cold," I told Diesel4. "See if you can get some of the caf-feine out of his system."
"Who'll take care of the shop?" Burlew asked. "I can't walk out on the shop."
"I'll take care of the shop," I told him. "No one comes in at this time of the day. Don't worry about it."
Five minutes later, a woman walked in and wanted a pork roast deboned and rolled.
"I'm just the assistant butcher," I told her. "I'm not al-lowed to debone. The real butcher will be back in an hour, but I'm not sure he'll be fit to use sharp tools. How about a nice roasting chicken?"
"I don't want a chicken," she said. "I need a pork roast."
"Okay, how about this. I'll give it to you for free if you'll take it with the bone in. It's a special promotional deal."
"I guess that would be okay," the woman said.
I took a roast out of the display case, wrapped it in white butcher paper, and gave it to the woman.
"Have a nice day," I told her.
Twenty minutes later, Diesel returned with Burlew.
"How's he doing?" I asked Diesel.
"He's stopped stuttering, and his eye has almost com-pletely stopped twitching. I had to bring him back be-cause I think his nose is frostbitten. This weather sucks. I'm putting in for an assignment in the Bahamas after this."
"Can you do that?"
"No. I go where I'm needed. There aren't a lot of people who can do my job."
"Were there any customers?" Burlew asked.
"No," I told him. "Nobody bought anything."
"The coffee delivery scheme isn't working," Diesel said. "We need to think of something else."
"The coffee delivery scheme is perfectly6 okay. It's Burlew we need to fix. He needs practice," I said. "I'm going to be the coffee person, and you be Larry. I'll walk in, and you start a conversation with me, so he can see how it's done."
I went outside, and then I came in again.
"Here's your coffee," I said to Diesel, pretending to hand him a cup of coffee.
"Thanks," Diesel said. And he grabbed me and kissed me.
I pushed away from him. "What the heck was that about?"
Diesel was rocked back on his heels, smiling. "I felt like kissing you. It was cold outside, and you're all nice and warm."
"Boy. I wish I could do that," Burlew said. "That was great."
"It wasn't great," I said to Burlew. "That was a bad ex-ample. Diesel's a nut. I'm going to go out and come in again, and this time I'm going to hand you the coffee."
I went outside and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, sucking in cold air. The kiss had actually been pretty damn terrific. Not that it was going to lead to anything, but it was terrific all the same. I pulled myself together and came back in and pretended to hand Burlew a cup of coffee.
Burlew took the coffee and looked at me blank-faced.
"What do you say?" I asked him.
"Thank you."
"What else?"
"Tell her your name," I said.
"Larry Burlew."
"My name is Jet," I told him.
Silence.
I jumped back in. "Tell her you think her name is un-usual. Ask her if it means something."
"That's stupid," Diesel said. "He'll sound like a dork."
"What would you suggest?"
"I'd get right to it. I'd tell her I was going to catch the Knicks game at the sports bar down the street, and I'd ask her if she wanted to join me."
"You can't just say 'Thanks for the coffee' and then ask her out to a bar. It's too abrupt8. And how do you know she's a Knicks fan?"
"It doesn't matter. It's a guy thing. It makes him look like a guy. If he says something dorky about her name, she'll think he's a pussy9. Anyway, if she wants to go out with him she'll say yes. If she doesn't say yes you know it's a lost cause and you move on."
"I don't like basketball," Burlew said.
"What do you like?"
"I like opera."
Diesel was hands on hips10. "You're shitting me."
Burlew fixed11 his attention on the display case. "There's a pork roast missing. Are you sure you didn't sell anything?"
"I gave it away. It was a charity thing. Girl Scouts12."
Diesel's attention wandered to the street. "Hey, get this," he said. "Coffee Girl must be off work for the day. She's got her coat on, and her purse over her shoulder, and it looks like she's coming over here. She's out of the coffee shop and crossing the street."
"Oh no," Burlew said. "She doesn't have more coffee, does she?"
"No," Diesel said. "No coffee."
The bell chimed on the front door, and Jet walked in. "Hi," she said to me. "Your cousin is going to make me employee of the month for selling so much coffee." Her attention turned to Diesel. "Hello," she said.
"He's gay," I told her. "Flaming."
Jet sighed. "I knew he was too good to be true." She looked over at Larry Burlew.
"Straight as an arrow," I said.
Jet nodded. "It's important to know stuff like that about your… butcher. Like, is he married?"
"Nope. Totally available."
"So I would be smart to buy meat here?"
"You wouldn't regret it," I said.
"Good. I feel like steak tonight."
Diesel slid a look at me. "Carnivore," he whispered.
Jet directed her attention to Burlew. "What looks tasty?"
"Do you want to grill13 it, or broil14 it, or pan-fry it?" Burlew asked.
"I don't know. Something healthy."
"I have a great recipe that I do with sirloin," Burlew said. "I marinate it and then I broil it with vegetables."
"That sounds terrific," Jet said. "Maybe you could show me how to do it."
"Sure," Burlew said. "It's real easy. I could do it tonight if you want. And I'll bring the steak and stuff with me."
Jet wrote her address on a scrap15 of butcher paper. "Come over whenever you're done with work. I'll get some wine." And she left.
Diesel and I looked at Burlew.
"What the hell was that?" Diesel asked.
"I'm good when it comes to meat," Burlew said.
It was twilight16 when we left the butcher shop. Streetlights were glowing behind swirling17 snow, and Trenton was look-ing cold but cozy18.
"We're hot at this relationship shit," Diesel said. "We do things all wrong, and it all turns out right."
We drove back to Beaner's neighborhood and cruised several blocks. Diesel stopped in front of Ernie's, and I ran in to take a fast look. No Beaner in sight, so I returned to the car.
"It's too early," Diesel said. "We should come back around eight."
"We need to get to my parents' house anyway," I told him. "I said we'd be there for dinner."
"We?"
"I didn't want you to feel left out."
"I remember your parents. They run a loony bin19."
"Okay. Fine. Drop me off at the door."
"No way," Diesel said. "I wouldn't miss this for any-thing."
"We just have to make a fast stop at my apartment to get Bob."
A half hour later, we opened my bathroom door, and Bob looked out at us, all droopy-eyed and drooling and panting.
He did some pathetic whimpering noises, opened his mouth, and said gak't And barfed up a roll of toilet paper.
"Better than a couch," Diesel said.
I cleaned up the toilet paper and put a new roll in the holder20. By the time I was done, Bob was completely perked21 up, affectionately rubbing against Diesel, spreading dog slime the length of his leg.
"Probably I should change clothes before we go to your parents' house," Diesel said.
For sure.
Diesel pulled a pair of jeans and a shirt out of his back-pack. They were exact duplicates of what he was wearing, minus the slime and pizza sauce. No better, no worse. He peeled his shirt off, unlaced his boots, and stepped out of his boots and jeans.
"Good God," I said and whirled around, so I wasn't fac-ing him. Not that it mattered. The image of Diesel in briefs was burned into my brain. Ranger22 and Morelli, the two men in my life, were physically23 perfect in very differ-ent ways.
Ranger was Cuban American with dark skin and dark eyes and sometimes dark intentions. He had a kickboxer's body and Special Forces skills. Morelli was hard and angular, his temperament24 Italian, his muscle and skill acquired on the street. Diesel was put together on a larger scale. And while I couldn't see details, I suspected he was larger everywhere.
My grandmother was setting the table when we arrived. The extension was in, and the kitchen chairs and a kid's high chair had been brought out to seat ten. Valerie and Albert were already there. Albert was watching television with my dad. I could hear Valerie in the kitchen talking to my mom. Her oldest girl, Angie, was on the floor in the living room coloring in a coloring book. The middle kid, Mary Alice, was galloping25 around the dining room table, pretending she was a horse. The baby was on Al-bert's lap.
All action stopped when Diesel walked in.
"Oh jeez," my father said.
"Nice to see you again, sir," Diesel said.
"I remember you," Mary Alice said. "You used to have a ponytail."
"I did," Diesel said, "but I thought it was time for a change."
"Sometimes I'm a reindeer26," Mary Alice said.
"Is it different from being a horse?" Diesel asked her.
"Yeah, 'cause when I'm a reindeer I got antlers, and I can fly like Rudolph."
"Can not," Angie said.
"Can, too."
"Can not."
"I can fly a little," Mary Alice said.
I cut my eyes to Diesel.
I let Bob off his leash28, left Diesel in the living room to charm my father, and went to the kitchen to check in with my mother. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked.
"You can spoon the red sauce into the gravy29 boat, and you can try to talk some sense into your grandmother. She won't listen to me."
"Now what?"
"Have you seen her?"
"She was setting the table."
"Did you take a good look?"
Grandma Mazur shuffled30 into the kitchen. She was in her seventies, and gravity hadn't been kind. She was all slack skin and dimpled flesh draped on a wiry frame. Her hair was steel gray and permed. Her teeth were bought. Her eyes didn't miss much. Her lips were horribly swollen31.
"We're oud a nakins," she said. "There's no ore in da china canet."
"Omigod," I said. "What happened to your mouth?"
"Sexy, hunh?" Grandma said.
"She had her lips plumped up," my mother said. "She went to some idiot doctor and had herself injected."
"An nex eek I'n gettin' ass5 inlans," Grandma said. "No ore saggy32 ass for ee."
"Ass implants33 are serious," I told her. "You might not want to do that."
"Ere's a sale on inlans nex eek," Grandma said. "I hade ta niss a sale."
"Yes, but implants have to be incredibly painful. You won't be able to sit. Why don't we just find a sale on shoes?
We can go to Macy's and then have lunch in the food court."
"Okay," Grandma said. "At sounds like un."
My mother took the lasagna and I took the red sauce and Grandma took a basket of bread to the table. Every-one seated themselves and dug in.
Grandma Mazur took some lasagna and poured herself a glass of red wine. She forked some lasagna into her mouth and took a sip34 of wine and everything fell out of her mouth, onto her lap.
Bob rushed over and ate the food off Grandmas lap, and then settled himself back under the table, ever alert.
"Ny lith are oo ig," she said. "Dey don ork."
My mother jumped up and returned with a straw for Grandma and a tumbler of booze for herself.
My father had his head bent35 over his lasagna. "Just shoot me," he said.
"I like lasagna," Albert Kloughn said. "It stays on your plate. And if you don't use too much red sauce, hardly any gets on your shirt."
Kloughn was a struggling lawyer who got his degree from the Acme36 School of Law in Barbados. He was a nice guy, but he was as soft as a fresh nuked dinner roll, and his upper lip broke out into a sweat when he got nervous… which was a lot.
"How's the law business?" I asked him.
"It's good. I even have a couple clients. Okay, one even-tually died, but that happens sometimes, right?"
"And hows the new house?"
"It's working out real good. It's a lot better than living with my mother."
"And what about getting married?"
Kloughn turned white, farted, and fell off his chair in a faint.
Diesel got up and dragged Kloughn to his feet and sat him back in his chair. "Take a deep breath," Diesel said to Kloughn.
"How embarrassing," Kloughn said.
"Dude," Diesel said, "everyone feels like that about marriage. Get over it."
"Poor snuggle uggums," Valerie said, spoon-feeding Kloughn some noodles. "Did him hurt himself?"
Diesel draped an arm across my shoulders and put his mouth to my ear. "We definitely want to go with the stun37 gun. In fact, I think we should stun-gun both of them."
"Maybe you can get Albert to take a walk with you after dinner, and you can talk to him. He got in touch with An-nie and asked for help, so he's obviously motivated."
"That would be high on the list of things I don't want to do. Second only to getting zapped by Beaner."
"About Beaner… just exactly what is it that happens when he zaps someone?"
"You don't want to know. And I don't want to tell you. Let's just leave it alone for now."
"I've been thinking about Beaner. Maybe we should talk to Mrs. Beaner. Does she live in the Trenton area?"
"She lives in Hamilton Township."
"Is she Unmentionable? Does she have scary, evil skills?"
"She's mildly Unmentionable. Doesn't do much with it. Mostly parlor38 tricks. Bending spoons and winning at rummy. I interviewed her when I got the Beaner assignment."
"And?"
"You know everything I know. She said she was tired of marriage. Wanted to try something else. She told me Beaner blamed it all on Annie Hart, but Annie didn't have anything to do with it. Annie was just a friend. She didn't know where Beaner was staying, but clearly it was in the Trenton area because he was determined39 to get even with Annie."
"That's it? Why didn't you ask her to lure40 Beaner over to discuss things, and then you could jump out of the closet and do your bounty41 hunter thing and capture Beaner?"
"She knows better than to be around when Beaner goes down. There'll be fallout, and she wants no part of it."
"What about you? Aren't you afraid of Beaner?"
"It takes a lot to damage me, and Beaner doesn't have that kind of power. The best he could do is make me mildly uncomfortable."
"Okay, how about this? We get Mrs. Beaner to lie to her husband. Set up a bogus meeting."
"Tried that. She wouldn't do it."
I mushed a piece of bread around in my leftover42 sauce. "You know what that means."
Diesel did a palms-up. He didn't know what it meant.
"She still cares about him," I said. "She doesn't want to betray him. She doesn't want him captured and neutral-ized or whatever it is that you do."
Diesel helped himself to a second chunk43 of lasagna. "Maybe. Or maybe she just doesn't want to get involved."
"I could talk to her."
"Probably not a bad idea," Diesel said. He looked at his watch. "Here's the plan. I get Albert out into the air and walk him around the block and try to figure out what the heck he wants to do about getting married. You talk to your sister and see if she's on board. And at eight, we try our luck at Ernie's Bar. If thing's don't work out, tomorrow you visit Mrs. Beaner."
收听单词发音 |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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twitches
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| n.（使）抽动， （使）颤动， （使）抽搐( twitch的名词复数 ) | |
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diesel
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| n.柴油发动机，内燃机 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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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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stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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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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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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12
scouts
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| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
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13
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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broil
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| v.烤，烧，争吵，怒骂；n.烤，烧，争吵，怒骂 | |
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scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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holder
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| n.持有者，占有者；(台，架等)支持物 | |
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perked
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| （使）活跃( perk的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）增值； 使更有趣 | |
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ranger
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| n.国家公园管理员，护林员；骑兵巡逻队员 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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25
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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reindeer
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| n.驯鹿 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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leash
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| n.牵狗的皮带，束缚；v.用皮带系住 | |
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gravy
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| n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快 | |
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shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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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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saggy
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| 松懈的，下垂的 | |
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implants
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| n.（植入身体中的）移植物( implant的名词复数 ) | |
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sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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acme
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| n.顶点，极点 | |
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stun
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| vt.打昏，使昏迷，使震惊，使惊叹 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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leftover
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| n.剩货，残留物，剩饭；adj.残余的 | |
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chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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