STANDING1 amid the tan, excited post?Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's float-ing in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in?law Pru and their two children but something more ominous2 and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely3 like an airplane. The sensation chills him, above and beyond the terminal air-conditioning. But, then, facing Nelson has made him feel uneasy for thirty years.
The airport is relatively4 new. You drive to it of Exit 21 of Interstate 75 down three miles of divided highway that for all the skinny palms in rows and groomed5 too?green flat?bladed grass at its sides seems to lead nowhere. There are no billboards7 or self-advertising8 roadside enterprises or those low houses with cooling white?tile roofs that are built by the acre down here. You think you've made a mistake. An anxious red Camaro convertible9 is pushing in the rearview mirror.
"Harry10, there's no need to speed. We're early if anything."
Janice, Rabbit's wife, said this to him on the way in. What rankled11 was the tolerant, careful tone she has lately adopted, as if he's prematurely12 senile. He looked over and watched her tuck back a stubborn fluttering wisp of half?gray hair from her sun-toughened little brown nut of a face. "Honey, I'm being tail-gated," he explained, and eased back into the right lane and let the speedometer needle quiver back below sixty?five. The Camaro convertible passed in a rush, a .cocoa?brown black chick in a gray felt stewardess's cap at the wheel, her chin and lips pushing for-ward, not giving him so much as a sideways glance. This rankled, too. From the back, the way they've designed the trunk and bumper13, a Camaro seems to have a mouth, two fat metal lips parted as if to hiss14. So maybe Harry's being spooked began then.
The terminal when it shows up at last is a long low white building like a bigger version of the sunstruck clinics ? dental, chiropractic, arthritic16, cardiac, legal, legal?medical ? that line the boulevards of this state dedicated17 to the old. You park at a lot only a few steps away from the door of sliding brown glass: the whole state babies you. Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings18, no vocals19, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death. These long low tasteful spaces, as little cluttered20 by advertisements as the highway, remind Rabbit of something. Air?conditioning ducts, he thinks at first, and then crypts. These are futuristic spaces like those square tunnels in movies that a trick of the camera accelerates into spacewarp to show we're going from one star to the next. 2001, will he be alive? He touches Janice at his side, the sweated white cotton of her tennis dress at the waist, to relieve his sudden sense of doom21. Her waist is thicker, has less of a dip, as she grows into that barrel body of women in late middle age, their legs getting skinny, their arms getting loose like cooked chicken coming off the bone. She wears over the sweaty tennis dress an open?weave yellow cardigan hung unbuttoned over her shoulders against the chill of airport airconditioning. He is innocently proud that she looks, in her dress and tan, even to the rings of pallor that sunglasses have left around her eyes, like these other American grandmothers who can afford to be here in this land of constant sunshine and eternal youth.
"Gate A5," Janice says, as if his touch had been a technical question. "From Cleveland by way of Newark," she says, with that businesswoman efficiency she has taken on in middle age, especially since her mother died seven years ago, leaving her the lot, Springer Motors and its assets, one of only two Toyota agencies in the Brewer23, Pennsylvania, area: the family all still speak of it as "the lot," since it began as a used?car lot owned and run by Fred Springer, dead Fred Springer, who is reincarnated24, his widow Bessie and daughter Janice have the fantasy, in Nelson, both being wiry shrimps25 with something shifty about them. Which is why Harry and Janice spend half the year in Florida ? so Nelson can have free run of the lot. Harry, Chief Sales Representative for over ten years, with him and Charlie Stavros managing it all between them, wasn't even mentioned in Ma Springer's will, for all the years he lived with her in her gloomy big house on Joseph Street and listened to her guff about what a saint Fred was and her complaining about her swollen27 ankles. Everything went to Janice, as if he was an unmentionable incident in the Springer dynasty. The house on Joseph Street, that Nelson and his family get to live in just for covering the upkeep and taxes, must be worth three hundred thousand now that the yuppies are moving across the mountain from northeast Brewer into the town of Mt. Judge, not to mention the cottage ?in the Poconos where even the shacks28 in the woods have skyrocketed, and the lot land alone, four acres along Route 111 west of the river, might bring close to a million from one of the hi?tech companies that have come into the Brewer area this last decade, to take advantage of the empty factories, the skilled but depressed29 laboring30 force, and the old?fashionedly cheap living. Janice is rich. Rabbit would like to share with her the sudden chill he had felt, the shadow of some celestial31 airplane, but a shell she has grown repels32 him. The dress at her waist when he touched it felt thick and unresponsive, a damp hide. He is alone with his premonition.
A crowd of welcomers has collected this Tuesday after Christmas in this last year of Ronald Reagan's reign33. A little man with that hunched34 back and awkward swiftness Jews often seem to have dodges35 around them and shouts behind him to his wife, as if the Angstroms weren't there, "Come on, Grace!"
Grace, Harry thinks. A strange name for a Jewish woman. Or maybe not. Biblical names, Rachel, Esther, but not always: Barbra, Bette. He is still getting used to the Jews down here, learning from them, trying to assimilate the philosophy that gives them such a grip on the world. That humpbacked old guy in his pink checked shirt and lipstick36?red slacks racing37 as if the plane coming in was the last train out of Warsaw. When Harry and Janice were planning the move down here their advisers38 on Florida, mostly Charlie Stavros and Webb Murkett, told them the Gulf39 side was the Christian40 coast as opposed to the Jewish Atlantic side but Harry hasn't noticed that really; as far as his acquaintanceship goes all Florida is as Jewish as New York and Hollywood and Tel Aviv. In their condo building in fact he and Janice are pets of a sort, being gentiles: they're considered cute. Watching that little guy, seventy if he's a day, breaking into a run, hopping42 zigzag43 through the padded pedestal chairs so he won't be beaten out at the arrival gate, Harry remorsefully44 feels the bulk, two hundred thirty pounds the kindest scales say, that has enwrapped him at the age of fiftyfive like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one. His doctor down here keeps telling him to cut out the beer and munchies and each night after brushing his teeth he vows45 to but in the sunshine of the next day he's hungry again, for anything salty and easy to chew. What did his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero, tell him toward the end of his life, about how when you get old you eat and eat and it's never the right food? Sometimes Rabbit's spirit feels as if it might faint from lugging46 all this body around. Little squeezy pains tease his ribs47, reaching into his upper left arm. He has spells of feeling short of breath and mysteriously full in the chest, fill of some pressing essence. When he was a kid and had growing pains he would be worried and the grownups around him laughed them off on his behalf; now he is unmistakably a grownup and must do his own laughing off.
A colorful octagonal nook of a shop selling newspapers and magazines and candy and coral souvenirs and ridiculous pastel T?shirts saying what bliss48 southwestern Florida is interrupts the severe gray spaces of the airport. Janice halts and says, "Could you wait here a sec till I see if they have the new Elle ? And maybe I should go back and use the Ladies while I have the chance, the traffic going home might be terrible what with the weather continuing so beachy."
"Now you think of it," he says. "Well, do it if you're going to do it." The little Mamie Eisenhower bangs she still wears have grown skimpy with the years and curly with the humidity and saltwater and make her look childish and stubborn and cute, actually, along with the sun wrinkles.
"We still have ten minutes at least, I don't know what that jerk was in such a hurry about."
"He was just in love with life," Harry tells her, and obediently waits. While she's in the Ladies he cannot resist going into the shop and buying something to nibble49, a Planter's Peanutbrittle bar for forty?five cents. Planter's Original Peanut Bar, the wrapper says. It was broken in two somewhere in transit51 and he thinks of saving one half to offer his two grandchildren when they're all together in the car heading home. It would make a small hit. But the first half is so good he eats the second and even dumps the sweet crumbs52 out of the wrapper into his palm and with his tongue licks them all up like an anteater. Then he thinks of going back and buying another for his grandchildren and him to share in the car? "Look what Grandpa has!" as they turn onto Interstate 75 ? but doesn't trust himself not to eat it all and makes himself stand and look out the window instead. This airport has been 'designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding53 twirl, shedding its wings. As he tries with his tongue to clean the sticky brittle50 stuff, the caramelized sugar and corn syrup54, from between his teeth ? all his still, thank God, and the front ones not even crowned ? Rabbit stares out through the glass at the wide blank afternoon. The runway tapering55 to a triangle, the Florida flatness turning brown as thatch56 beyond the green reach of a watering system. Winter, the shadow of it that falls down here, hasn't hit yet. Every day the temperature has been in the eighties. After four winters in Florida he knows how the wind off the Gulf can cut into you on the first tee ifyou have an early starting time and the sweaters can be shed only as the sun climbs toward noon, but this December except for that one cold snap in the middle of the month has been like early September in Pennsylvania ? hot, and only the horse chestnuts57 turning and only a certain weary dryness in the air and the buzz of cicadas to suggest that summer is over.
As the candy settles in his stomach a sense of doom regrows its claws around his heart: little prongs like those that hold fast a diamond solitaire. There has been a lot of death in the newspapers lately. Max Robinson the nation's first and only black national anchorman and Roy Orbison who always wore black and black sunglasses and sang "Pretty Woman" in that voice that could go high as a woman's and then before Christmas that Pan Am Flight 103 ripping open like a rotten melon five miles above Scotland and dropping all these bodies and flaming wreckage58 all over the golf course and the streets of this little town like Glockamorra, what was its real name, Lockerbie. Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled59 by the hum of the big Rolls?Royce engines and the stewardesses60 bringing the clinking drinks caddy and the feeling of having caught the plane and nothing to do now but relax and then with a roar and giant ripping noise and scattered61 screams this whole cozy62 world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurized hold, when you unpack63 your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them. Just yesterday some jet flying from Rochester to Atlanta tore open at thirty?one thousand feet, a fourteen?inch hole the newspaper said, and was lucky to land in West Virginia. Everything falling apart, airplanes, bridges, eight years under Reagan of nobody minding the store, making money out of nothing, running up debt, trusting in God.
Harry has flown in his life to dealers65' conferences here and there and that great time nine years ago with two other couples to the Caribbean, but to Florida he and Janice always drive, so they have the car there. Nelson will probably bitch because there's only one, though it's a Camry station wagon66 that takes six comfortably; Nelson likes to do his own thing, going off on mysterious errands that take hours. Nelson. A real sore spot. Harry's tongue begins to sting, so he stops working at a jagged bit of corn?syrup sweetness stuck behind an eye tooth.
And also in the Fort Myers News?Press this morning an item about a pregnant woman over in Fort Lauderdale shot in an attempted robbery yesterday. Must have been black but the paper didn't say so, they don't now. She died but they saved the baby by Caesarean section. And then there was also on the front page this interview with a guy convicted of picking up a twelve?year?old girl and getting her to smoke dope and raping67 her and then burning her alive somehow and now complaining about the cockroaches68 and rats in the cell on death row and telling the reporter, "I've always tried to do the best I can, but I'm no angel. And I'm no killer69 either." His saying this made Harry laugh, it rang a kind of bell with him. No angel yet no killer either. Not like this guy Bundy who murdered dozens of women in dozens of states and has been stalling his execution for ten years in Tallahassee down here. And Hirohito too is taking his time. Harry can remember when Hirohito was right up there with Hitler and Mussolini in the war propaganda.
And he has never forgot how, thirty years ago it will be this June, his baby daughter Rebecca June drowned and when he went back to the apartment alone there was still this tubful of tepid70 gray water that had killed her. God hadn't pulled the plug. It would have been so easy for Him, Who set the stars in place. To have it unhappen. Or to delete from the universe whatever it was that exploded that Pan Am 747 over Scotland. Those bodies with hearts pumping tumbling down in the dark. How much did they know as they fell, through air dense71 like tepid water, tepid gray like this terminal where people blow through like dust in an air duct, to the airline we're all just numbers on the computer, one more or less, who cares? A blip on the screen, then no blip on the screen. Those bodies tumbling down like wet melon seeds.
A star has appeared in the daytime sky, in the blue beneath the streaks72 of stratocirrus, an airplane glinting, lowering, heading straight toward them. This glint, he thinks, holds his near and dear: Nelson his son, his left?handed daughter?in?law called Pru though she was christened Teresa, Judy his eight?year?old granddaughter, and Roy his four?year?old grandson, born the same fall Harry and Janice began to spend half the year in Florida. The baby actually was named after both fathers, Harold Roy, but everybody calls him Roy, something Harry could resent since Roy Lubell is a sorehead laid?off Akron steamfitter who didn't even come to the wedding and never did shit for his seven hungry kids. Pru still seems hungry and in that she reminds Harry of himself. The star grows, has become a saucer shape glinting in a number of points, a winged aluminum73 machine aglide and enlarging above the sulky flat scrubland and horizon thready with palms. He imagines the plane exploding as it touches down, ignited by one of its glints, in a ball of red flame shadowed in black like you see on TV all the time, and he is shocked to find within himself, imagining this, not much emotion, just a cold thrill at being a witness, a kind of bleak74 wonder at the fury of chemicals, and relief that he hadn't been on the plane himself but was instead safe on this side of the glass, with his faint pronged sense of doom.
Janice is at his side again. She is breathless, excited. "Harry, hurry," she says. "They're here, ten minutes early, there must have been a tail wind from Newark. I came out of the Ladies and went down to the gate and couldn't find you, you weren't there. Where were you?"
"Nowhere. Just standing here by the window." That plane he had mentally exploded hadn't been their plane at all.
Heart thumping75, his breath annoyingly short, he strides after his little wife down the wide gray carpeting. Her pleated tennis skirt flicks76 at the brown backs of her thighs77 and her multilayered white Nikes look absurdly big at the end of her skinny legs, like Minnie Mouse in her roomy shoes, but Janice's getup is no more absurd than many in this crowd of greeters: men with bankers' trim white haircuts and bankers' long grave withholding78 faces wearing Day?Glo yellow?green tank tops stencilled79 CORAL POINT or CAPTIVA ISLAND and tomato?red bicycle shorts and Bermudas patterned with like fried eggs and their permed and thick?middled women in these ridiculous one?piece exercise outfits81 like long flannel82 underwear in pink or blue, baby colors on Kewpie?doll shapes, their costumes advertising the eternal youth they have found like those skiers and tennis players and golfers now who appear on television laden83 with logos like walking billboards. The hunchbacked little Jewish guy in such a hurry has already met his loved one, a tall grinning woman, a Rachel or Esther with frizzedout hair and a big pale profile, carrying over one arm her parka from Newark, her plump dumpy mother on the other side of her, Grace was her name, while the old man with angry choppy gestures is giving the women the latest version of his spiel, they listening with half an ear each to this newest little thing he feels very strongly about. Rabbit is curious to see that this grown daughter, a head taller than her parents, appears to have no mate. A tall black man, slick?looking in a three?piece gray suit, but nothing of a dude, carrying himself with a businesslike Waspy indifference84 to his appearance and lugging one of those floppy85 big bags that smart travellers use and that hog86 all the overhead rack space, is trailing unnaturally87 close behind. But he can't be a relation, he must be just trying to pass, like that black chick in the red Camaro coming in off 75. Everybody tailgating, that's the way we move along now.
Harry and Janice reach Gate A5. People get off of airplanes in clots88, one self?important fusspot with three bags or some doddery old dame89 with a cane90 bunching those behind them. You wonder if we haven't gone overboard in catering91 to cripples. "There they are," Janice pronounces at last, adding under her breath to Harry quickly, "Nelson looks exhausted92."
Not so much exhausted, Rabbit thinks, as shifty. His son is carrying his own son on his left arm, and Nelson's right eye squints93, the lid seeming to quiver, as if a blow might come from that unprotected side. Roy must have fallen asleep on the flight, for his head leans against his father's neck seeking a pillow there, his eyes open with that liquid childish darkness but his plump mouth mute, gleaming with saliva94, in shock. Harry goes forward as soon as the ropes allow to lift the burden from his son, but Nelson seems reluctant to let go, as if the child's own grandfather is a kidnapper95; Roy, too, clings. With a shrug96 of exasperation97 Harry gives up and leans in close and kisses Roy's velvety99 cheek, finer than velvet98, still feverish100 with sleep, and shakes his own son's small and clammy hand. In recent years Nelson has grown a mustache, a tufty brown smudge not much wider than his nose. His delicate lips underneath101 it never seem to smile. Harry looks in vain into this fearful brown?eyed face for a trace of his blue?eyed own. Nelson has inherited Janice's tense neatness of feature, with her blur102 of evasion103 or confusion in the eyes; the puzzled look sits better on a woman than a man. Worse, Janice's high forehead and skimpy fine hair have become in Nelson a distinctly growing baldness. His receding104 temples have between them a transparent105 triangle of remaining hair soon to become an island, a patch, and at the back of his head, when he turns to kiss his mother, a swath of skin is expanding. He has chosen to wear a worn blue denim106 jacket down on the plane, over a crisp dressy shirt, though, pink stripes with white collar and cuffs107, so he seems half cocked, like a married rock star or a weekend gangster108. One earlobe bears a tiny gold earring109.
"Mmmm?wah!"Janice says to cap her hello kiss; she has learned to make such noises down here, among the overexpressive Jewish women.
Harry carefully greets Judith and Pru. Going to be nine in less than a month, the skinny girl is a sketch110 of a woman, less than lifesize and not filled in. A redhead like her mother. Lovely complexion111, cheeks rosy112 under the freckles113, and the details of her face lashes114, eyebrows115, ears, nostril116?wings, lips quick to lift up on her teeth ? frighteningly perfect, as if too easy to smash. When he bends to kiss her he sees in front ofher ear the sheen of childhood's invisible down. She has Pru's clear green eyes and carrot?colored hair but nothing as yet in her frail118 straight frame and longish calm face of the twist that life at some point gave Pru, making her beauty even when she was twenty?four slightly awkward, limping as it were, a look that has become more wry119 and cumbersome120 with the nine years of marriage to Nelson. She likes Harry and he likes her though they have never found a way around all these others to express it. "What a pair of beauties," he says now, of the mother and daughter.
Little Judy wrinkles her nose and says, "Grandpa's been eating candy again, for shame on him. I could smell it, something with peanuts in it, I can tell. He even has some little pieces stuck between his teeth. For shame."
He had to laugh at this attack, at the accuracy of it, and the Pennsylvania?Dutch way the little girl said, "for shame." Local accents are dying out, but slowly, children so precisely121 imitate their elders. Judy must have overheard in her house Nelson and Pru and maybe Janice talking about his weight problem and rotten diet. If they were talking, his health problems might be worse than he knows. He must look bad.
"Shit," he says, in some embarrassment122. "I can't get away with anything any more. Pru, how's the world treating you?"
His daughter?in?law surprises him by, as he bends dutifully forward to kiss her cheek, kissing him flush on the mouth. Her lips have a wry regretful shy downward twist but are warm, warm and soft and big as cushions in the kiss's aftermath within him. Since he first met her in the shadows of Ma Springer's house that longago summer ? a slender slouching shape thrust into the midst of their lives, Nelson's pregnant Roman Catholic girlfriend from Ohio, a Kent State University secretary named Teresa Lubell, suddenly become the carrier of Harry's genes123 into eternity124 – Pru has broadened without growing heavy in that suety Pennsylvania way. As if invisible pry125 bars have slightly spread her bones and new calcium126 been wedged in and the flesh gently stretched to fit, she now presents more front. Her face, once narrow like Judy's, at moments looks like a flattened127 mask. Always tall, she has in the years of becoming a hardened wife and matron allowed her long straight hair to be cut and teased out into bushy wings a little like the hairdo of the Sphinx. Her hips128 and shoulders too have widened, beneath the busy pattern ? brown and white and black squares and diamond?shapes arranged to look three?dimensional of the checked suit she put on for the airplane, a lightweight suit wrinkled by the three hours of sitting and babysitting. A stuffed blue shoulder bag is slung129 across one shoulder and her arms and hands clutch a gray wool topcoat, two children's jackets, several slippery children's books based on morning television shows, a Cabbage Patch doll with its bunchy beige face, and an inflated130 plastic dinosaur131. She has big hands, with pink, cracked knuckles132. Harry's mother had hands like that, from washing clothes and dishes. How did Pru get them, in this age of appliances? He stands gazing at her in a half?second's post?kiss daze133. Having a wife and children soon palled134 for him, but he never fails to be excited by having, in the flesh, a daughter?in?law.
She says, slangily, to mask the initial awkwardness when they meet, "You're lookin' good, Harry. The sunny South agrees with you."
What did that frontal kiss mean? Its slight urgency. Some sad message there. She and Nelson never did quite fit.
"Nobody else thinks so," he says, and grabs at her shoulder bag. "Lemme help you carry some of this stuff I'll take the bag." He begins to pull it off.
Pru shifts the coat and toys to extend her arm to let him take it but at the same time asks him, "Should you?"
Harry asks, "Why does everybody treat me like some Goddamn kind of invalid135?" but he is asking the air; Pru and Janice are hugging with brisk false enthusiasm and Nelson is plodding136 ahead down the long gray corridor with Roy back to sleep on his shoulder. Harry is irritated to see that though Nelson has a careful haircut that looks only a few days old the barber left one of those tails, like a rat's tail, uncut and hanging down over the boy's collar, under the spreading bald spot. How old does he think he is, seventeen? Little Judy trails her father but Nelson is not waiting or looking back. The girl is just old enough to sense that in her nice proper airplane outfit80 she should not sacrifice all dignity and run to catch up. She wears a navy?blue winter coat over a pink summer dress; its pink hem26 shows below the coat, and then her bare legs, which look long, longer than when he saw her last in early November. But it is the back of her head that kills him, her shiny carrot?colored hair braided into a pigtail caught into a showy stiff white ribbon. Something of her mother's Catholic upbringing in that ribbon, decking out the Virgin64 or the baby Jesus or Whoever to go on parade, to go on a ride in the sky. The sleek137 back of Judy's head, the pigtail bouncing as she tries not to run, so docilely138, so unthinkingly wears the showy ribbon her mother put there that Harry smiles. Hurrying his stride, he catches up and reaches down and says, "Hey there, good?lookin'," and takes the hand she with a child's reflex lifts to be taken. Her hand is as surprisingly moist as her mother's lips were warm. Her head with its bone?white parting is higher than his waist. She complains to her mother, Harry has heard from Janice, about being the tallest girl in her section of the third grade. The mean boys tease her.
"How's school going?" he asks.
"I hate it,"Judy tells him. "There are all these kids think they're big shots. The girls are the absolute worst."
"Do you ever think you're a big shot?"
She ponders this. "Some boys are always getting after me but I tell them to fuck off."
He clucks his tongue. "That's pretty rough language for the third grade."
"Not really," she says. "Even the teacher says `damn' sometimes when we get her going."
"How do you get her going?"
Judy smiles upward, her mother's quick wide?mouthed smile without the crimp. "Sometimes we all hum so she can't see our mouths move. A couple weeks ago when she tried to make us all sing Christmas carols one of these big?shot boys I told you about said it was against his parents' religion and his father was a lawyer and would sue everybody."
"He sounds like a pain in the ass6," Rabbit says.
"Grandpa. Don't talk dirty."
"That's not dirty, that's just saying where it hurts. If you say somebody's a pain in the bottom it sounds dirtier. Hey. Here's the place I bought that peanut candy you smelled. Want some?"
"You better ask Mom first."
Harry turns and lets the two mothers, walking hip41 to hip and heads bowed in consultation139, catch up. "Pru," he says, "will it rot any teeth if I buy Judy a candy bar?"
She looks up, distracted, but remembers to smile at him. "I guess it won't kill her this once, though Nelson and I try to discourage junk in their diet."
"Whatever you get her, Harry," Janice adds, "you ought to get Roy."
"But Roy's asleep and half her size."
"He'll know, though," Pru says, "ifyou play favorites. He's just now coming out from under her shadow."
Little Judy, casting a shadow? Did he cast a shadow over Mim? Mim certainly got far enough away from Diamond County, if that was a statement. Got into the fast lane in Las Vegas and stayed.
"Don't be forever," Janice tells Harry. "Or else give me the keys so we can get into the car. They have two more bags they made them check in Newark. Nelson's probably down there already."
"Yeah, what's his idea, rushing on ahead like that? Who's he sore at?"
"Probably me," Pru says. "I've given up trying to figure out why."
Harry digs into one pocket of his plaid golf slacks, comes up with only a few tees and a plastic ball marker with two blue Vs on it, for Valhalla Village, and then into the other to find the knobbly notched140 bunch of keys on the ring. Saying "Heads up," he tosses them toward Janice. Her hands jump together in a womanly panic and the keys sail past them and hit her in the stomach. Just this little effort, the search and the toss, leaves him weary, as if the arm he lifted was soggy wash. The spontaneity and fun have been taken out of buying his granddaughter a treat. She chooses not a Planter's Peanut Bar as he had envisioned but a Sky Bar, which he thinks might be truly bad for her teeth, those five different gooey fillings in the five humped segments of pure chocolate. He digs into the hip pocket of his pants, so old their plaid is sun?faded and the hem of each pocket is darkened by the sweat off his hands over the years, and pulls out his wallet and hangs for a while over the candy rack, uncertain whether or not to get himself another sugary rectangle of stuck?together nuts, wondering if this time he would be lucky enough to get one not broken in the wrapper, deciding against it because he eats too much, too much junk as Pru said, Pru and his doctor down here, old Dr. Morris, and then at the last possible split?second, with the black woman at the counter within the octagonal shop already counting out his change from a dollar for the Sky Bar, deciding to buy the peanut brittle after all. It is not so much the swallowing and ingesting he loves as the gritty?edgy141 feeling of the first corner in his mouth, the first right?angled fragment, slowly dissolving. To his surprise and indignation not only does he now receive no change from the dollar but owes the black woman ? a severe matte undiluted color you rarely see in the U.S., dull as slate142, must be a Haitian or Dominican, Florida is full of these boat people ? a nickel more, for the state tax. Airport prices, they nail you where there's no competition. Without competition, you get socialism and everybody free?loading and economies like they have in Cuba and Haiti. He pauses to glance at the magazines on the rack. The top row holds the skin mags, sealed in plastic, pieces of printed paper hiding details of the open?mouthed girls, open?mouthed as if perpetually astonished by their own tangible143 assets, Hustler, Gallery, Club, Penthouse, Oui, Live, Fox. He imagines himself buying one, braving the Haitian woman's disapproval144 ? all these Caribbean types are evangelical fundamentalists, tin?roofed churches where they shout for the world to end now ? and sneaking145 the magazine home and while Janice is asleep or cooking or out with one of her groups studying to satiety146 the spread shots and pink labia and boosted tits and buttocks tipped up from behind so the shaved cunt shows, with its sad little anatomy147 like some oyster148, and sadly foreseeing that he will not be enough aroused, boredom149 will become his main feeling, and embarrassment at the expenditure150. Four dollars twenty?five they are asking these days, promising151 Sexy Sirens in the Sauna and Cara Lott Gets Hot and Oral Sex: A Gourmet's Guide. How disgusting we are, when you think about it ? disposable meat, but hell?bent152 on gratification.
"Come on, Grandpa ? what's taking so long?"
They hurry after the others, who have vanished. Judy's shiny beribboned head makes him nervous, popping up first on one side of him and then the other, like the car keys he was a little slow to find, Janice calls him doddery when she can't even catch, the clumsy mutt. If their granddaughter gets kidnapped from his side she'll really call him doddery. "Easy does it," he tells Judy at the top of the escalator, "pick a step and stay on it. Don't get on a crack," and at the bottom, "O.K., step off, but not too soon, don't panic, it'll happen, O.K., good."
"I go on escalators all the time at the malls," she tells him, making up at him a little pinched rebuking153 mouth with beads154 of melted chocolate at the corners.
"Where the hell is everybody?" he asks her, for amid all the tan loud presences that throng155 the lower, higher?ceilinged floor of the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, less ductlike and cryptlike but still echoing with a muffled156 steely doom that worries at his stomach, there is nobody he knows, strangers as total as if he has descended157 into Hell.
"Are we lost, Grandpa?"
"We can't be," he tells her.
In their sudden small plight158 he is newly aware of her preciousness, the jewel?cut of her eyes and eyelashes, the downy glaze159 in front of her ears and the gleam of each filament160 of her luxuriant hair, pulled taut161 into a thick pigtail adomed with an unreal stiff white ribbon. For the first time he sees she is also wearing symmetrical white barrettes, shaped like butterflies. Judy looks up toward his face and fights crying at the vagueness she sees there. "This coat is too hot," she complains.
"I'll carry it," he says. He folds its cloth weight over his arm and she is like a butterfly herself now, in her pink dress. Her green eyes have gone wide in this gray airport's bustling162 limbo163, under reddish?brown eyebrows one of which near the flat bulge164 of her little freckled165 nose has a little cowlick fanning the hairs the wrong way; Nelson has that cowlick, and inherited it from Harry, who used to lick his middle finger and try to slick it down in the highschool boys' lavatory166 mirror. Amazing, that a thing so tiny could pass on. Maybe the only immortality167 we get, a little genetic168 quirk169 going on and on like a computerized number in your monthly bank statement. Ghostly empty shapes, people he doesn't know, push and stream past the two of them. They are an island surrounded by jokes and noisy news and embraces; people tanned that deep settled mahogany that comes only from months and months of Florida embrace newcomers the color of wallpaper paste. Harry says, so Judy will hear her grandfather say something and not just stand there numbly170, "They must be over at the baggage."
He looks up and sees above their heads the sign saying BAGGAGE and takes her moist little hand and tugs171 her toward the crowd around the baggage belt, which is already moving. But neither Pru nor Janice nor Nelson nor Roy is there, as far as they can see. Face after face refuses to cohere172 into a known face. His eyes, always good, trouble him now in artificially lit places. The blue shoulder bag Pru let him carry for her is heavier than he would have thought; she must have packed bricks. His shoulder and eyes burn.
"I guess," he ventures, though it seems unlikely, "they're already at the car." He taps his pocket for the lump of keys, doesn't feel it, begins to panic, then remembers how he tossed them to Janice. Of course. Confidently now he approaches the brown glass exit doors, but the wrong one pops its seal and slides open when his body trips the electric eye. The wrong one as far as he is concerned; Judy was pulling him in the right direction, where a slice of hot outdoor air swiftly widens. Sun has broken through the milky173 stratocirrus. It bounces off the waxy174 leaves of the nameless tropical plants flourishing near his knees. It winks175 blindingly from a mass of moving cars, a brutal176 river of them rushing along the access strip just beyond the curb177. He holds Judy's hand tighter, in case she decides to jump off the curb, we're all full of crazy impulses. They cross to a lake of shimmering178 cars, the lot where he parked. Where, exactly? He finds he's forgotten. He is utterly179 empty of the car's location.
A Camry Deluxe180 wagon, pearl?gray metallic181, with the more potent182 24?valve 2.5?liter V?6 engine. He was still so sore at being tailgated by that red Camaro and at Janice criticizing his driving that he wasn't paying any attention to where they parked. He remembers the zebra crosswalk, and the little landscaped mound183 of center strip where some sun?starved college kid had propped184 his knapsack and pillowed his head on it to soak up a few rays, and the fussy185 old guy who thought he was in charge gesturing at you which way the exit and the booth where you pay was, putting too much into it like that husband at the airport gabbing186 at his wife, Grace, as if she had no sense, meeting that frizzy?haired longtoothed smiling Jewish princess taller than either of them, but he doesn't remember which of these rows he parked the car in. He parked it in the patch of dead blank brain cells like all of our brains will be when we're dead unless the universe has cooked up some truly elaborate surprise. The National Enquirer187 which Janice sometimes brings home from the Winn Dixie keeps reporting people's near?death experiences, but for Harry they're too close to the little green men in the UFOs. Even if they're true it's not much comfort. Judy's hand has slipped out of his as he stands puzzling on the strip of grass on the edge of the parking lot, that broad?bladed grass that grows everywhere down here, watered by sprinklers, they call it St. Augustine. It doesn't feel like real grass to him, too matted and broad, kind of crunchy underfoot. His chest begins to hurt. A sly broad pain, a kind of band under the skin, tightly sewn there.
Judy's voice floats up to him like a thin lifeline. "What color is the car, Grandpa?"
"Oh, you know," he says, keeping his sentences short, so as not to stir up his pain. "Pale gray. Metallic finish. The same color as about half the cars in the world. Don't you panic. It'll come to me where I left it."
The poor kid is losing it, in her fight not to cry. "Daddy'll drive off!" she blurts188 out.
"Leaving you and me? Why would he do that? He won't do that, Judy."
"He gets real mad sometimes, for no real reason."
"He probably has some reason he doesn't tell you. How about you? You ever get mad?"
"Not like Daddy. Mom says he should see a doctor."
"I guess we all should, now and then." Rabbit's sense of doom is trickling189 like cold water through his stomach. Doctors. His own doctor is bringing his son into the practice, so if he drops dead the kid will take right over, won't miss a Medicare form. You fill a slot for a time and then move out; that's the decent thing to do: make room. He scans the ranks of glinting metal in their slots for a strip of gray that will ring a bell, and wonders if he is misremembering the color ? he has owned so many cars in his life, and sold so many more. He announces, "I think I left it over on the left. In about the third row. What happened, Judy, was there was this old guy kind of directing things, waving which way everybody should go, and the bastard190 distracted me. Don't you hate bossy191 people like that, who know everything better than you do?"
The little girl's glossy192 red head mutely nods at his side, too worried for words.
Rabbit rattles193 on, to chase their clouds away, "Whenever somebody tells me to do something my instinct's always to do the opposite. It's got me into a lot of trouble, but I've had a lot of fun. This bossy old guy was pointing one direction so I went the other and found a space." And for a second, in a kind of window between two tightenings of the band across his chest, he sees the space: next to a cream?colored van, a Ford22 Bivouac with those watery194?blue Minnesota plates, parked sloppily195 over the white line, another cause for irritation196. He had to ease in carefully so as to leave Janice room enough to open her door on the right and not rub fenders with the maroon197 Galaxy198 on the left. And now he sees from far off in the shimmering Florida heat a strip of cream risen above the other metallic rooftops. Third row, about a wedge shot in. He says in triumph, "Judy, I see it. Let's go," and takes her hand again, lest her small perfection be crushed by one of the automobiles199 cruising the rows looking for a spot. In some of these big white Caddys and Oldses the tiny old driver can hardly see over the hood117 out the windshield, just clinging to the wheel, body all shrunk and bent by osteoporosis; it hasn't got him yet, he's still six feet three as far as he knows, at least his pants don't drag on the floor, but he hears Janice talk about it, it's been on TV a fair amount, that commercial with the two women on the train, it affects women more than men, their smaller bones, she takes calcium pills along with all the other vitamin pills next to her orange juice at breakfast. God, is she healthy. She'll live forever just to spite him.
He and little Judith arrive across the hazardous200 hot asphalt at the pearl?gray Camry, which is his, he knows, from Janice's tennis racket and cover on the back seat, flung in there separately the dumb mutt, what's the use of a cover if you don't put the racket in it? But nobody is here and the car is locked and Harry threw away the keys. The little girl begins to cry. Luckily he has a handkerchief in the hip pocket of his faded plaid golf pants. He lowers Pru's blue bag with its load of bricks to the asphalt and puts the little winter coat he has been carrying on top of the car roof, as if to stake a claim, and kneels down and wipes the bits of melted Sky Bar from Judy's lips and then the tears from her cheeks. He too wouldn't mind having a cry, squatting201 here next to the car's sunstruck metallic flank, his knees complaining on top of everything else, and the small girl's hot panicked breath adding to the heat. In her distress202 her freckled nose has begun to run and her mouth taken on a hardness, a stiffness in the upper lip he associates with Nelson when the boy is frightened or angry.
"We can either stay here and let the others find us," Harry explains to his granddaughter, "or we can go back and look for them. Maybe we're too tired and hot to do anything but stay here. We could play a game seeing how many different states' license203 plates we can find."
This breaks her sniffling into a wet little laugh. "Then we'd get lost again." Her eyelids204 are reddened by the friction205 of tears and tiny flakes206 of light shine in her green irises207 like the microscopic208 facets209 that give metallic paint its tinselly quality.
"Look," he tells her. "Here's Minnesota, with its little clump210 of pine trees. Ten Thousand Lakes, it says. Score one for Grandpa."
Judy merely smiles this time, not granting him a laugh, she knows he's trying to get her to forgive his mistake in losing the others.
"It's not us who are lost, we know where we are," he says. "It's them." He stops crouching211 beside her, the hoity?toity little snip212, and stands up, to uncreak his knees, and also to ease the crowded feeling in his chest.
He sees them. Just this side of the zebra crossing, coming this way, struggling with suitcases. He first sees Nelson, carrying Roy on his shoulders like a two?headed monster, and then Pru's head of red hair puffed213 out like the Sphinx, and Janice's white tennis dress. Harry, up to his chest in car roofs, waves his arm back and forth214 like a man on a desert island. Janice waves back, a quick toss of her hand as if he's far from what they're talking about.
But when they're all reunited Nelson is furious. His face is pale and his upper lip stiff and bristling215. "Jesus Christ, Dad, where did you disappear to? We went all the way back upstairs to that stupid candy store when you didn't show up in the baggage area."
"We were there, weren't we, Judy?" Harry says, marvelling216 at his son's growing baldness, exposed mercilessly by the Florida sunlight beating down through the thinned strands217, and at his mustache, a mouse?colored stray blur like those fuzzballs that collect under furniture. He has noticed these developments before in recent years but they still have the power to astonish him, along with the crow's feet and bitter cheek lines time has etched in his child's face, sharp in the sunlight. "We didn't take more than a minute in the candy store and came right down the escalator to the baggage place," Rabbit says, pleased to be remembering so exactly, exactly visualizing218 the two candy bars, the extra nickel he had to fish up for the black counter woman's upturned silver?polish?colored palm, the skin magazines with the girls' open mouths, the interleaved teeth of the escalator steps he was afraid Judy might catch her foot on. "We must have slipped by each other in the crowd," he adds, trying to be helpful and innocuous. His son frightens him.
Janice unlocks the Canny219. The baking heat of its interior, released like a ghost, brushes past their faces. They put the suitcases in the way?back. Pru lifts the groggy220 boy off Nelson's shoulders and arranges him in the shadows of the back seat; Roy's thumb is stuck in his mouth and his dark eyes open for an unseeing second. Nelson, his hands at last freed, slaps the top of the Camry and cries in his agony of irritation, "God damn it, Dad, we've been frantic221, because of you! We thought you might have lost her!" There is a look Nelson gets when he's angry or frightened that Harry has always thought of as "white around the gills" ? a tension draining color from the child's face and pulling his eyes back into his head. He gets the look from his mother, and Janice got it from hers, dark plump old Bessie, who was a hot?tempered Koerner, she liked to tell them.
"We stuck right together," Rabbit says calmly. "And don't dent15 my fucking car. You've damaged enough cars in your life."
"Yeah, and you've damaged enough lives in yours. Now you're kidnapping my goddamn daughter!"
"I can't believe this," Harry begins. A cold arrow of pain suddenly heads down his left arm, through the armpit. He blinks. "My own granddaughter" is all he can organize himself to say.
Janice, looking at his face, asks, "What's the matter, Harry?"
"Nothing," he tells her sharply. "Just this crazy kid. Something's bugging222 him and I can't believe it's me." A curious gaseous223 weight, enveloping224 his head and chest, has descended in the wake of the sudden arrow. He slumps225 down behind the wheel, feeling faintly disoriented but determined226 to drive. When you're retired227, you get into your routines and other people, even socalled loved ones, become a strain. This entire other family loads itself into place behind him. Pru swings her nice wide ass in her three?dimensional checked suit into the back seat next to sleeping Roy, and Nelson climbs in on the other side, right behind Harry, so he can feel the kid's breath on the back of his neck. He turns his head as far as he can and says to Nelson, in the corner of his eye, "I resent the word `kidnap."'
"Resent it, then. That's what it felt like. Suddenly we looked around and you weren't there."
Like Pan Am 103 on the radar228 screen. "We knew where we were, didn't we, Judy?" Harry calls backward. The girl has slithered over her parents and brother into the way?back with the luggage. Harry can see the silhouette229 of her head with its pigtail and angular ribbon in the rearview mirror.
"I didn't know where I was but I knew you did," she answers loyally, casting forward the thin thread of her voice.
Nelson tries to apologize. "I didn't mean to get so pissed," he says, "but if you knew what a hassle it is to have two children, the hassle of travelling all day, and then to have your own father steal one of them -"
"I didn't steal her, for Chnssake," Harry says. "I bought her a Sky Bar." He can feel his heart racing, a kind of gallop230 with an extra kick in one of the legs. He starts up the Camry and puts it in drive and then brakes when the car jerks forward and puts it into reverse, trying not to make contact, as he eases out, with the side of the Minnesota Bivouac, its protruding231 side mirror and its racing stripe in three tones of brown.
"Harry, would you like me to drive?" Janice asks.
"No," he says. "Why would I?"
She hesitates; without looking, he can see, in the hesitation232, her little pointed233 tongue poke234 out of her mouth and touch her upper lip in that way she has when she tries to think, he knows her so well. He knows her so well that making conversation with her is like having a struggle with himself. "You just had a look on your face a minute ago," she says. "You looked -"
"White around the gills," he supplies.
"Something like that."
The old guy who thinks he's directing the show directs them down the arrows painted on the asphalt toward the tollbooth. The car ahead of theirs in line, a tan Honda Accord with New Jersey235 plates, GARDEN STATE, has backs of the head in it that look familiar: it's that jumpy little guy who hopped236 through the chairs back in the waiting room, good old Grace up beside him, and in the back seat the frizzy?headed daughter and another passenger, a head even taller and the frizz even tighter ? the black guy in the Waspy business suit Harry had assumed had nothing to do with them. The old guy is gabbing and gesturing and the black guy is nodding just like Harry used to do with Fred Springer. It's bad enough even when your father?in?law is the same color. Harry is so interested he nearly coasts into the back of the Honda. "Honey, brake," Janice says, and out of the blur of her white tennis dress in the corner of his eye she holds out to him fifty cents for the parking?lot charge. An Oriental kid stone?deaf inside his Walkman earmuffs takes the two quarters with a hand jumping along with some beat only he can hear, and the striped bar goes up, and they are free, free to go home.
"Well," Harry says, back on the weird237 brief highway, "it's a helluva thing, to have your own son accuse you of kidnapping. And as to the big deal ofhaving two children, it can't be that much worse than having one. Either way, your freedom's gone."
Actually Nelson has, unwittingly or not, touched a sore point, for Harry and Janice did have two children. Their dead child lives on with them as a silent glue of guilt238 and shame, an inexpungeable sourness at the bottom of things. And Rabbit suspects himself of having an illegitimate daughter, three years younger than Nelson, by a woman called Ruth, who wouldn't admit it the last time Harry saw her.
Nelson goes on, helpless in the grip of his hardened resentments239, "You go run off with Judy all palsy?walsy and haven't said boo to little Roy."
"Say boo? ? I'd wake him up, saying boo, he's been asleep all the time, it's like he's drugged. And how much longer you gonna let him suck his thumb? Shouldn't he be outgrowing241 it by now?"
"What does it matter to you if he sucks his thumb? How is it hurting you?"
"Dad, that's an old wives' tale. Pru asked our pediatrician and he said you don't suck your thumb with your teeth."
Pru says quietly, "He did say he should outgrow240 it soon."
"What makes you so down on everything, Dad?" Nelson whines243, unable it seems to find another pitch. The kid is itching244 and his voice can't stop scratching. "You used to be a pretty laidback hombre; now everything you say is kind of negative."
Rabbit wants to lead the boy on, to see how bad he can make him look in front of the women. "Rigid," he smilingly agrees. "The older you get, the more you get set in your ways. Nobody at Valhalla Village sucks their thumb. There may even be a rule against it, like swimming in the pool without a bathing cap. Like swimming with an earring on. Tell me something. What's the significance of an earring when you're married with two children?"
Nelson ignores the question in dignified245 silence, making his father look bad.
They are breezing along, between shoulders of unreal grass, the palms clicking by like telephone poles. Pru says from the back seat, to change the subject, "I can never get over how flat Florida is."
"It gets a little rolling," Harry tells her, "away from the coasts. Ranch246 and orange?grove247 country. Rednecks and a lot of Mexicans. We could all go for a drive inland some day. See the real Florida."
"Judy and Roy are dying to see Disney World," Nelson says, trying to become reasonable.
"Too far," his father swiftly tells him. "It'd be like driving to Pittsburgh from Brewer. This is a big state. You need reservations to stay overnight and this time of year there aren't any. Absolutely impossible."
This flat statement renders them all wordless. Through the rushing noise of the air?conditioning fan and the humming of the tires Harry hears from the way?back that for a second time in this first half?hour he has made his granddaughter cry. Pru turns and murmurs248 to her. Harry shouts back, "There's lots else to do. We can go to that circus museum in Sarasota again."
"I hate the circus museum," he hears Judy's small voice say.
"We've never been to the Edison house in Fort Myers," he announces, speaking now as patriarch, to the entire carful. "The people at the condo say it's fascinating, he even invented television it turns out."
"And the beach, baby," Pru softly adds. "You know how you love the beach at the Shore." In a less maternal249 voice she tells Janice and Harry, "She's a lovely swimmer now."
"Driving to the Jersey Shore used to be absolutely the most boring thing we did," Nelson tells his parents, trying to get down out of his dark cloud into a family mode, willing now in recollection to be a child again.
"Driving is boring," Rabbit pontificates, "but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went."
"Harry," Janice says. "You're going too fast again. Do you want to take 75, or push on to Route 41?"
收听单词发音 |
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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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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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groomed
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| v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的过去式和过去分词 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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billboards
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| n.广告牌( billboard的名词复数 ) | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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convertible
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| adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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rankled
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| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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bumper
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| n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的 | |
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hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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dent
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| n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展 | |
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arthritic
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| adj.关节炎的 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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vocals
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| （乐曲中的）歌唱部份，声乐部份( vocal的名词复数 ) | |
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cluttered
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| v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满… | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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reincarnated
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| v.赋予新形体，使转世化身( reincarnate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shrimps
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| n.虾，小虾( shrimp的名词复数 )；矮小的人 | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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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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shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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repels
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| v.击退( repel的第三人称单数 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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dodges
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| n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 )；躲避；伎俩；妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 )；回避 | |
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lipstick
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| n.口红，唇膏 | |
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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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advisers
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| 顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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hopping
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| n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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remorsefully
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| adv.极为懊悔地 | |
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vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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46
lugging
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| 超载运转能力 | |
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47
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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48
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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49
nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
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50
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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51
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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52
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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53
skidding
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| n.曳出，集材v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的现在分词 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区 | |
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54
syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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55
tapering
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| adj.尖端细的 | |
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56
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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57
chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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58
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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59
lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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60
stewardesses
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| （飞机上的）女服务员，空中小姐( stewardess的名词复数 ) | |
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61
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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62
cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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63
unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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64
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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65
dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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66
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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67
raping
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| v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的现在分词 )；强奸 | |
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68
cockroaches
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| n.蟑螂( cockroach的名词复数 ) | |
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69
killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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70
tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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71
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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72
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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73
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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74
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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75
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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76
flicks
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的第三人称单数 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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77
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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78
withholding
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| 扣缴税款 | |
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79
stencilled
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| v.用模板印（文字或图案）( stencil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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81
outfits
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| n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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83
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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84
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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85
floppy
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| adj.松软的，衰弱的 | |
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86
hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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87
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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88
clots
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|
| n.凝块( clot的名词复数 )；血块；蠢人；傻瓜v.凝固( clot的第三人称单数 ) | |
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89
dame
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| n.女士 | |
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90
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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91
catering
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| n. 给养 | |
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92
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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93
squints
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| 斜视症( squint的名词复数 )； 瞥 | |
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94
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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95
kidnapper
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|
| n.绑架者，拐骗者 | |
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96
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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97
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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98
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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99
velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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100
feverish
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|
| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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101
underneath
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|
| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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102
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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103
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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104
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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105
transparent
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|
| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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106
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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107
cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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108
gangster
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| n.匪徒，歹徒，暴徒 | |
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109
earring
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| n.耳环，耳饰 | |
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110
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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111
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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112
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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113
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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114
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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115
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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116
nostril
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| n.鼻孔 | |
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117
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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118
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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119
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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120
cumbersome
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| adj.笨重的，不便携带的 | |
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121
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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122
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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123
genes
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| n.基因( gene的名词复数 ) | |
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124
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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125
pry
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| vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起) | |
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126
calcium
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| n.钙(化学符号Ca) | |
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127
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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128
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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129
slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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130
inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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131
dinosaur
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| n.恐龙 | |
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132
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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133
daze
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| v.(使)茫然，(使)发昏 | |
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134
palled
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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136
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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137
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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138
docilely
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| adv.容易教地，易驾驶地，驯服地 | |
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139
consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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140
notched
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| a.有凹口的，有缺口的 | |
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141
edgy
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| adj.不安的；易怒的 | |
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142
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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143
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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144
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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145
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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146
satiety
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| n.饱和；(市场的)充分供应 | |
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147
anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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148
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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149
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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150
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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151
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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152
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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153
rebuking
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的现在分词 ) | |
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154
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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155
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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156
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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157
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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158
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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159
glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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160
filament
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| n.细丝；长丝；灯丝 | |
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161
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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162
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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163
limbo
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| n.地狱的边缘；监狱 | |
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164
bulge
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| n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀 | |
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165
freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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166
lavatory
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| n.盥洗室，厕所 | |
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167
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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168
genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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169
quirk
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| n.奇事，巧合；古怪的举动 | |
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170
numbly
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| adv.失去知觉，麻木 | |
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171
tugs
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| n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 )；猛拖；拖船v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 ) | |
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172
cohere
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| vt.附着，连贯，一致 | |
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173
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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174
waxy
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| adj.苍白的；光滑的 | |
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175
winks
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| v.使眼色( wink的第三人称单数 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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176
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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177
curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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178
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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179
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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180
deluxe
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| adj.华美的，豪华的，高级的 | |
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181
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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182
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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183
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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184
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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185
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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186
gabbing
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| v.空谈，唠叨，瞎扯( gab的现在分词 ) | |
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187
enquirer
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| 寻问者，追究者 | |
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188
blurts
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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189
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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190
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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191
bossy
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| adj.爱发号施令的，作威作福的 | |
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192
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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193
rattles
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| （使）发出格格的响声， （使）作嘎嘎声( rattle的第三人称单数 )； 喋喋不休地说话； 迅速而嘎嘎作响地移动，堕下或走动； 使紧张，使恐惧 | |
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194
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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195
sloppily
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| adv.马虎地，草率地 | |
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196
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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197
maroon
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| v.困住，使（人）处于孤独无助之境；n.逃亡黑奴；孤立的人；酱紫色，褐红色；adj.酱紫色的，褐红色的 | |
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198
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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199
automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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200
hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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201
squatting
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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202
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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203
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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204
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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205
friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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206
flakes
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| 小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人 | |
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207
irises
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| n.虹( iris的名词复数 )；虹膜；虹彩；鸢尾（花） | |
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208
microscopic
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| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
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209
facets
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| n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面 | |
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210
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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211
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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212
snip
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| n.便宜货，廉价货，剪，剪断 | |
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213
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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214
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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215
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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216
marvelling
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 ) | |
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217
strands
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| n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 ) | |
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218
visualizing
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| 肉眼观察 | |
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219
canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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220
groggy
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| adj.体弱的；不稳的 | |
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221
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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222
bugging
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| [法] 窃听 | |
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223
gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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224
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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225
slumps
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| 萧条期( slump的名词复数 )； （个人、球队等的）低潮状态； （销售量、价格、价值等的）骤降； 猛跌 | |
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226
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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227
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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228
radar
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| n.雷达，无线电探测器 | |
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229
silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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230
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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231
protruding
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
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232
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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233
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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234
poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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235
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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236
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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237
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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238
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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239
resentments
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| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
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240
outgrow
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| vt.长大得使…不再适用；成长得不再要 | |
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241
outgrowing
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的现在分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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242
buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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243
whines
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| n.悲嗥声( whine的名词复数 )；哀鸣者v.哀号( whine的第三人称单数 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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244
itching
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| adj.贪得的，痒的，渴望的v.发痒( itch的现在分词 ) | |
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245
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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246
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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247
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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248
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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249
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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