Mort drove back to Tashmore Lake with his hands clamped to the steering1 wheel, his spine2 as straight as a ruler, and his eyes fixed3 firmly on the road. He played the radio loud and concentrated ferociously5 on the music each time he sensed telltale signs of mental activity behind the center of his forehead. Before he had made forty miles, he felt a pressing sensation in his bladder. He welcomed this development and did not even consider stopping at a wayside comfort-station. The need to take a whizz was another excellent distraction6.
He arrived at the house around four-thirty and parked the Buick in its accustomed place around the side of the house. Eric Clapton was throttled7 in the middle of a full-tilt-boogie guitar solo when Mort shut off the motor, and quiet crashed down like a load of stones encased in foam8 rubber. There wasn't a single boat on the lake, not a single bug9 in the grass.
Pissing and thinking have a lot in common, he thought, climbing out of the car and unzipping his fly. You can put them both off... but not forever.
Mort Rainey stood there urinating and thought about secret windows and secret gardens; he thought about those who might own the latter and those who might look through the former. He thought about the fact that the magazine he needed to prove a certain fellow was either a lunatic or a con4 man had just happened to bum10 up on the very evening he had tried to get his hands on it. He thought about the fact that his ex-wife's lover, a man he cordially detested11, had come from a town called Shooter's Knob and that Shooter happened to be the pseudonym12 of the aforementioned loony-or-con-man who had come into Mort Rainey's life at the exact time when the aforementioned Mort Rainey was beginning to grasp his divorce not just as an academic concept but as a simple fact of his life forever after. He even thought about the fact that 'John Shooter' claimed to have discovered Mort Rainey's act of plagiarism13 at about the same time Mort Rainey had separated from his wife.
Question: Were all of these things coincidences?
Answer: It was technically14 possible.
Question: Did he believe all these things were coincidences?
Answer: No.
Question: Did he believe he was going mad, then?
'The answer is no,' Mort said. 'He does not. At least not yet.' He zipped up his fly and went back around the corner to the door.
1 steering | |
n.操舵装置 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 spine | |
n.脊柱,脊椎;(动植物的)刺;书脊 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 con | |
n.反对的观点,反对者,反对票,肺病;vt.精读,学习,默记;adv.反对地,从反面;adj.欺诈的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 ferociously | |
野蛮地,残忍地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 distraction | |
n.精神涣散,精神不集中,消遣,娱乐 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 throttled | |
v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 );勒死;使窒息;压制 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 foam | |
v./n.泡沫,起泡沫 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 bug | |
n.虫子;故障;窃听器;vt.纠缠;装窃听器 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 bum | |
n.臀部;流浪汉,乞丐;vt.乞求,乞讨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 detested | |
v.憎恶,嫌恶,痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 pseudonym | |
n.假名,笔名 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 plagiarism | |
n.剽窃,抄袭 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 technically | |
adv.专门地,技术上地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |