Her voice comes mufed. "What? Leave me alone."
"What time 'dyou come to bed?"
"I didn't dare look. One."
"Where had Nelson been? What was his explanation?"
She says nothing. She wants him to think she has fallen back to sleep. He waits. Lovingly, he caresses11 her shoulder. His glimpse of that French movie last night had stirred him with the idea of a wife as a total stranger, of moving right in, next to her little warm brown body. A wife can be as strange as a whore, that's the beauty of male?female relations. She says, still without turning her head, "Harry12, touch me once more and I'll kill you."
He thinks this over and decides upon counteraggression. "Where the hell had he been?" he asks.
She rolls over, giving up. Her breath has stale tobacco in it. She has given up smoking supposedly but whenever she's around Nelson with his Camels and Pru with her Pall13 Malls she takes it up again. "He didn't know exactly. Just driving around. He said he needed to get out, Florida is so claustrophobic."
The kid is right: life down here is confined to the narrow paths you make. To Winn Dixie, to the Loew's cineplex and the shops in the Palmetto Palm Mall, to the doctor's, to the pro14 shop and back. Between these paths there's somehow nothing, a lot of identical palm trees and cactus15 and thirsty lawn and empty sunshine, hotels you're not staying at and beaches you're not admitted to and inland areas where there's never any reason to go. In Pennsylvania, at least in Diamond County, everything has been paved solid by memory and in any direction you go you've already been there.
Licking her lips and making a face as if her throat aches, Janice goes on, "He drove on 41 as far as what sounds like Naples and stopped at a restaurant when he got hungry and called us but the phone didn't answer, I wondered at the time if we shouldn't have waited to go over but you said you were starving ?'
"That's right. Blame me."
"I wasn't, honey. It wasn't just you. The children were antsy and worried and I thought, Life must go on, dinner will distract us; but then he says he did call just about when we were heading out the door and where he was one beer led to another and on the way back he got a little lost, you know yourself how if you miss the Pindo Palm turnoff everything looks identical, for miles."
"I can't believe it," Harry says. He feels rage coming to boil in his chest and sits up in bed to relieve the pressure. "Without so much as a fucking word to anybody he disappears for, what, eight hours? He is really becoming crazy. He's always been moody16 but this is crazy behavior. The kid needs help."
Janice says, "He was perfectly17 sober when he came back and brought a bunch of those little tiny stuffed alligators18 they make for souvenirs; Pru and I had to laugh. One for each of the children and even one for you, where they've made it stand and put a golf club in its little feet." She flicks19 the blanket back from his lap and touches his drowsy20 penis in his open pajama fly. "How're we doing down there? We never make love any more."
But now he is out of the mood. He slaps her hand primly21 and tugs22 up the blanket and says, "We just did make love. Before Christmas."
"Way before Christmas," Janice says, not moving her head, and for a second he has the mad hope she will turn the blanket down again and simply, quickly, take his prick24 in her mouth, like Thelma used to do almost first thing when they would secretly meet in this last decade; but blowing has never been Janice's style. She has to be very drunk, and he never did like her drunk, a kind of chaos25 wells up within her that threatens him, that threatens to swamp the whole world. She says, "O.K. for you, buster," to register with him that she's been rejected, in case he wants her later, and pushes out of her side of the bed. Her damp nightie is stuck up above her waist and before she tugs it down he admires the taut26 pale buttocks above the tan backs of her thighs27. Guiltily he hears her flush the toilet in the bathroom and with an angry rattle28 and rush of water start to run the shower. He pictures exactly how she looks stepping out of the shower, with her hair in a transparent29 shower cap and her bottom rosy30 and her pussy31 all whitened with dew, and regrets that they must live, he and his little dark woman, his stubborn shy mutt of a Springer, in a world of mostly missed signals. Down here they have been thrown together more than at any time of their lives and they have coped by turning their backs and growing thicker skins. He plays golf three or four times a week and she has her tennis and her groups and her errands. When she comes back from the bathroom, in a terrycloth robe, he is still in the bed, reading in his book about British interference with Dutch merchant ships and France needing to build up her decayed fleet with Baltic timber delivered by Dutch vessels33, in case Janice wants to try at sex again, but now from the other end of the condo the sounds of children can be heard, and of Pru hushing them in her burdened maternal34 voice.
Harry says to jamce, "Let's try to concentrate on Judy and Roy today. They seem sort of woebegone, don't they?"
She doesn't answer, guardedly. She takes his remark as a slam at Nelson's parenting. Maybe it is. Nelson's the one who needs parenting; he always did and never got enough. When you don't get enough of something at the right biological moment, Rabbit has read somewhere, you keep after it until you die. He asks, "What do you and Pru talk about all the time?"
She answers, thin?upped, "Oh, women things. You'd find them boring."Janice always gets a funny intense frowny look on her face when she's dressing35 herself. Even if it's just slacks and a blouse to go to Winn Dixie in, she pinches off an accusatory stare into the mirror, to face down the worst.
"Maybe so," he agrees, ending the conversation, and knowing this will make Janice want to continue it.
Sure enough, she volunteers, "She's worried about Nelson," and falters36 for the next words, the tip of her tongue sneaking37 out and pressing on her upper lip in the effort of thought.
But Rabbit says curtly38, "Who wouldn't be?" He turns his back to put on his underpants. He still wears Jockey shorts. Ruth was amused by them that night ages ago, and he always thinks of it. Today he wants to be a grandfather and tries to dress for the role. Long eggshell?colored linen39 pants with cuffs40, instead of his dirty old plaid bell?bottom golf slacks, and instead of a polo knit a real shirt, 100?per?cent cotton, with blue pinstripes and short sleeves. He looks at himself in the mirror that Janice's image has vacated and is stunned41, deep inside, by the bulk of what he sees ? face swollen42 to a kind of moon, with his little sunburned nose and icy eyes and nibbly small mouth bunched in the center, above the jowls, boneless jowls that come up and put a pad of fat even in front of his ears, where Judy has a silky shine. Talk about Nelson ? Harry's own hair, its blondness dirtied and dulled by gray, is thinning back from his temples. Tall as he is, there is no carrying the slope under his shirt as anything other than a loose gut44, a paunch that in itself must weigh as much as a starving Ethiopian child. He must start to cut down. He can feel, every motion he makes, his weight tugging45 at his heart ? that singeing46 sensation he gets as if a child inside him is playing with lighted matches.
On the breakfast table, today's News?Press has the color photograph of a tiny sickly one?year?old girl who died last night for lack of a liver transplant. Her name was Amber47. Also a headline saying that according to Scotland Yard Pan Am Flight 103 was definitely bombed, just like Ed Silberstein and Judy say. Fragments of metal. Luggage compartment48. Plastic explosive, can be molded into any form, probably a high?performance Czech type called Semtex: Harry can hardly bear to read about it, the thought of all those conscious bodies suddenly with nothing all around them, freezing, Ber?nie, Ber?nie, and Lockerbie a faint spatter of stars below, everything in one split second upside?down and void of merry. Also the mayor of Fort Myers now thinks his police acted properly in the arrest of Deion Sanders. Also Deadly pollution infects Lake Okeechobee. Also Partly cloudy, Highs in low to mid49?80s. "Today's the day," he announces, "Grandpa's going to take you to amazing places!"
Judy and Roy look doubtful but not entirely50.
Janice says, "Harry, have another of these cherry Danishes before they go stale. We bought them thinking mostly of the children but they both say they hate red runny things."
"Why do you want to kill me with carbos?" he asks, but eats the Danish anyway, and cleans up the sweet sugary crumbs51 with his fingertips.
Pru, tall from Harry's seated angle, her hips32 level with his eyes, hesitantly asks, "Would you two possibly enjoy having the grandchildren to yourselves for this expedition? Nelson couldn't get to sleep last night and kept me pretty much up too. I just can't face a day in the car." She does look pale and drawn52, the kid keeping her up all night with his whining53 and whatever else. Even her freckles54 look pale, and her lips, that felt so soft and warm at the airport, are resigned and tight and wryly55 pulled down on one side.
Janice says, "Of course, dear. You get some sleep and then maybe you and Nellie could do something healthy and fun. If you use the Valhalla pool remind him he's supposed to shower before and after and not to do any diving."
Judy laughs and interrupts: "Daddy does belly56 flops58."
Roy says, "Daddy does not flop57. You flop."
"Hey Jesus," Harry tells them, "don't start fighting yet. We aren't even in the car."
In the car by nine?thirty, provisioned with a triple?barrelled package of Double Stuf Oreos and a sixpack of Classic Coke, they begin the long day that for years to come will be known in fond family legend as The Day Grandpa Ate the Parrot Food, though it wasn't exactly for parrots, and he didn't eat much of it. They start by driving down Route 41 (PATIOLAND, Kissin' Kuzzins, Easy Drugs, LAND of SLEEP) to Fort Myers and visiting the Thomas Alva Edison Winter Home, which nearly does them in. They park the Canny60 and pass underneath61 a giant banyan62 tree, a tree (a helpful sign tells them) given to Edison when it was a twig63 by some financial giant of the time, Harvey Firestone or Henry Ford64, and that has since become the biggest banyan tree outside of India, where a single such gigantic tree may shelter an entire bazaar65. Banyans spread by dangling66 down roots and making new trunks that become like crutches67 as the limbs spread out and out ? these creepy trees will go for miles if nobody stops them. Harry wonders, How do they die?
It turns out you can't just walk around the house and grounds, you have to join a tour, for five bucks68 a pop. Judy and Roy both freak out when that's explained to them. They see themselves surrounded by busloads of old retired69 people wearing baseball caps and flip70?up sunglasses and carrying those little sticks that open out into a kind of saddle to be one?legged chairs. Several wrecks71 in wheelchairs join their accumulating tour group as it waits to begin. Judy, looking prematurely72 long?legged in short pink shorts, with funny red shadows of blusher on her cheekbones, says, "I don't care about any dumb grounds, I want to see the machine that makes lightning," and Roy, his loose little mouth dyed by Oreo chocolate, stares with his glazed73 brown eyes as if he's going to melt in the heat.
Harry tells Judy, "I don't think there's any machine that makes lightning, just the very first light bulb ever invented." He tells Roy, "I'll carry you if you get too tired."
At some signal he misses, so they get caught in the back, everybody including the wheelchairs pushes out of the shed into a space of dusty gray earth and outdoor jungle stuffiness75 and knifelike leaf shadows. Their guide is a prissy old blue?haired girl in a billed cap reciting what she's memorized. First she points out to them Kigelia pinnata, the sausage tree of Africa. "The fruit resembles a sausage and that is why the name. It is not edible76, but is used as a medicine by the natives of Africa and because of their superstitious77 nature they worship the tree for its healing power. Just across Memory Garden is the fried?egg tree. The flower looks very much like an egg, sunny side up. It was planted there just in case you like eggs with your sausage."
The group politely laughs. Some of the old folks indeed laugh more than politely, as if this is the funniest thing they've ever in their long lives heard. When do the gray cells start winking78 out in significant numbers? When will it start happening to him, Harry wonders. Or has it already? You don't know what you don't know. A void inside, a void outside. Their guide, heartened by the good audience response, points out more funny trees ? the dynamite80 tree, Hura crepitans, whose fruit explodes when it is ripe, and the very rare Cecropia of South America, the sloth81 tree, indeed the only mature Cecropia palmata in the United States, whose leaves have the texture82 of chamois skin and never disintegrate83. Harry wonders, Why did God bother to do all these tricks, off by Himself in the Amazon jungle? "They are chocolate brown on one side and white on the other and because of their unusual shapes and lasting84 qualities are in great demand for dried floral arrangements. You can purchase these leaves in our gift shop." So He did it so people would have something to buy in gift shops.
Next we come to Enterolobium cyclocarpum, known as the ear tree. "The seed pods," the guide recites, "resemble the human ear." The crowd, warmed up now to laugh at almost any ridiculous thing God does, titters, and the guide allows herself a selfcongratulatory smile; she knows these trees, these words, and these docile85 senile tourists backwards86 and forwards.
A little human hand tugs Harry's with a chamoislike softness of its own. He bends down to little Judy's exquisite87, tarted88?up, green?eyed face. He sees that Pru allowed her to put on a little lipstick89, too. To sweeten this outing for her, to make it seem an occasion. Going sightseeing with Grandpa and Grandma. You'll always remember this. When they're gone to their reward. "Roy wants to know," Judy says as softly as she can, but anxiety driving her voice up, "how soon it's over."
"It's just begun," Harry says.
Janice begins to whisper with them. Her attention span is as poor as theirs. "Could we make a break for it before they make us cross the street?"
"It's a one?way tour," Harry says. "Come on, everybody. Let's stick with it."
He picks up little Roy, whose body weight has been doubled by boredom90, and carries him, and they all cross the street, a street that in the very old days was a cow trail and that "Mr. Edison," as the woman keeps calling him, simpering like he's some big?dicked boyfriend of hers, took it into his head to line with royal palms. "These royal palms grow wild sixty miles of us on the fringe of the Everglades; however, it was much easier, in 1900, to bring them in from Cuba by great sailboats than to drag them by ox teams through our virtually impenetrable Florida swamplands."
On winding91 paths they drag themselves, dodging92 wheelchairs, trying not to step on the little beds of cactus and flowers that line the paths, trying to hear their guide as her voice fades in and out of its scratchy groove93, trying to take an interest in the embowering green enigmas94 that Edison brought from afar in his heavily financed search for a substitute rubber. Here are the kapok95 tree and the Java plum, the cannonball tree from Trinidad and the mango from India, the lipstick tree and the birdseye bush, the sweetheart orchid96, which is not as many people think a parasite97, and the lychee98 nut, whose fruit is much sought after by the Chinese. Harry's legs ache, and the small of his back, and that suspect area behind his left ribs99, which gives him a twinge, but he cannot put Roy down because the kid is asleep: he must be one of the sleepingest four?year?olds in the world. Janice and Judy have conspiratorially100 separated from the group and wandered ahead to the Edison house, a house brought in four sailing schooners101 from Maine in 1886, the first prefabricated house in the world you could say, a house without a kitchen because Edison didn't like the smell of cooking food, a house with a wide veranda103 on all four sides and with the first modern pool in Florida, of blue cement reinforced not with steel but with bamboo and not a crack or leak in it to this day. Marvels105! So much endeavor, ingenuity106, oddity, and bravery has been compressed into history: Harry can hardly stand under the weight of it all, bending his bones, melting his mind, pressing like a turnscrew on the segments of his skull107, giving him a fantastic itch102 under his shoulder blades, where his 100?per?cent cotton blue?pinstriped shirt has moistened and then dried. He catches up to Janice, his heart twanging, and softly begs her, "Scratch." Softly so as not to wake the child.
"Where?" She shifts her cigarette, a Pall Mall she must have borrowed from Pru, to the other hand and rakes at his back, up, down, to the right and left as he directs, until the demon108 feels exorcised. This jungly garden of old Edison's is a devilish place. His breathing is bothered; he makes a determined109 effort not to hyperventilate. The commotion110 wakes Roy and he drowsily111 announces, "I got to go pee."
"I bet you do," Harry says, and tells him, "You can't go behind any of these bushes, they're all too rare."
"The scarlet112 dombeya wallichi is known as the pink ball tree of India," the guide is telling her less unruly students with a lilt. "It has a very heavy fragrance113. Mrs. Edison loved birds and always kept canaries, parakeets, and parrots. These birds live out of doors the year around and love it here."
"How does she know they love it here?" Judy asks her grandparents, a bit noisily, so that several venerable heads turn. "She's not a parrot."
"Who says she's not?" Harry whispers.
"I got to go pee," Roy repeats.
"Yeah well, your need to pee isn't the exact fucking center of the universe," Harry tells him. He is badly out of practice in this fathering business, and never was that great at it.
Janice offers, "I'll take him back along the path, there were bathrooms in the building we came in at."
Judy is alarmed to see these two escaping. "I want to come with!" she cries, so loudly the tour guide stops her recital114 for a moment. "Maybe I got to go pee too!"
Harry grabs her hand and holds it tight and even gives it a sadistic115 squeeze. "And maybe you don't," he says. "Come on, stick it out. Go with the flow, for Chrissake. You'll miss the world's oldest Goddamn light bulb."
A woman in a wheelchair, not so crippled her hair isn't dyed orange and permed into more curlicues than a monkey's ass59, looks over and gives them a glare. Knowing when to quit, Harry thinks. Nobody knows when to quit. Their guide has lifted her voice up a notch116 and is saying, "Here is the sapodilla of the American tropics. From the sap of this tree comes chicle, used in making chewing gum."
"Hear that?" Harry asks Judy, out of breath with the social tension of this endless tour and sorry about the hurtful squeeze. "The tree Chiclets come from."
"What are Chiclets?" Judy asks, looking up at him with a little new nick of a squint117 taken in those clear green eyes. She is sore, slightly, and wary118 of him now. He has nicked her innocence119. Can it be she's never heard of Chiclets? Have they really gone the way of penny candy, of sugar?soaked Fosnacht doughnuts, of those little red ration120 tokens you had to use during the war? All as real as yesterday to Harry. Realer.
"Mr. Edison planted this chewing?gum tree for children," the guide is going on. "He loved his children and his grandchildren very much and spent long hours with them, though because of his deafness he had to do most of the talking." There is a munnur of laughter, and she preens121, stretching her neck and pursing her lips, as if she hadn't expected this, though she must have, she has done this spiel so often she must have their reactions taped down to every stray chuckle122. Now she leads her herd123 of oldsters, shuffling124 and bobbing solemnly in their splashy playclothes, toward a link fence and a new phase of their five?dollar pilgrimage. They are about to cross the road lined with the unnaturally125 straight and concrete?colored palm trunks that Edison, the amazing great American, floated in from Cuba when the century was an infant. But she can't let them cross without socking them with one more cute plant. "The shrub126 with the long red tassels127 is the chenille plant from the Bismarck Islands. The chenille is French and means caterpillar128. You can readily see the meaning for the name of the plant."
"Yukko, caterpillars," little Judy pipes up to Harry, and he recognizes this as a female attempt to rebridge the space between them, and he feels worse than ever about that hurtful squeeze. He wonders why he did it, why he tends to do mean things like that, to women mostly, as if blaming them for the world as it is, full of chenille plants and without mercy. He feels fragile, on the edge of lousy. That bad child inside his chest keeps playing with matches.
The guide announces, "We are now going across the street to the laboratory where Mr. Edison did his last experimental work."
They do at last cross over and, in Edison's breezy old laboratories, among dusty beakers and siphons and alembics and big belted black machinery129, are reunited with Janice and Roy. The tour guide points out the cot where Edison used to take the tenminute catnaps that enabled him to sit and dream in his big deaf head for hours on end, and the piece of goldenrod rubber on his desk, made from goldenrod grown right here in Fort Myers and still flexible after all these years. Finally, the guide frees them to roam, marvel104, and escape. Driving north, Harry asks the three others, "So, what did you like best?"
"Going pee," Roy says.
"You're dumb," Judy tells him and, to show that she's not, answers, "I liked best the phonograph where to hear because he was deaf he rested his teeth on this wooden frame and you can see the marks his teeth made. That was interesting."
"1 was interested," Harry says, "in all those failures he had in developing the storage battery. You wouldn't think it would be so tough. How many ? nine thousand experiments?"
Route 41 drones past the windows. Banks. Food and gas. Arthritis131 clinics. Janice seems preoccupied132. "Oh," she says, trying to join in, "I guess the old movie machines. And the toaster and waffle iron. I hadn't realized he had invented those, you don't think of them as needing to be invented. You wonder how different the world would be if he hadn't lived. That one man."
Harry says, authoritatively133, he and Janice in the front seat like puppet grandparents, just the heads showing, playing for their little audience of two in the back seat, "Hardly at all. It was all there in the technology, waiting to be picked up. If we hadn't done it the Swiss or somebody would have. The only modem134 invention that wasn't inevitable135, I once read somewhere, was the zipper136."
"The zipper!" Judy shrieks137, as if she has decided138, since this day with her grandparents looks as though it will never end, to be amused.
"Yeah, it's really very intricate," Harry tells her, "all those little slopes and curves, the way they fit. It's on the principle of a wedge, an inclined plane, the same way the Pyramids were built." Feeling he may have wandered rather far, venturing into the terrible empty space where the Pyramids were built, he announces, "Also, Edison had backing. Look at who his friends were down there. Ford. Firestone. The giant fat cats. He got his ideas to sell them to them. All this talk about his love for mankind, I had to laugh."
"Oh yes," Janice says, "I liked the old car with daffodil?rubber tires."
"Goldenrod," Harry corrects. "Not daffodil."
"I meant goldenrod."
"I like daffodil better," Judy says from the back seat. "Grandpa, how did you like our tour lady, the awful way she talked, making that mouth like she had a sourball in it?"
"I thought she was very kind of sexy," Harry says.
"Sexy!" little Judy shrieks.
"I'm hungry," Roy says.
"Me too, Roy," says Janice. "Thank you for saying that."
They eat at a McDonald's where, for some legal reason ? fear of lawsuits139, the unapologetic cashier thinks when they ask her about it ? the door is locked out to the playground, with its spiral slide an,' its enticing140 plastic man with a head, even bigger than Edison's, shaped like a hamburger. Roy throws a fit at the locked door and all through lunch has these big liquid googies of grief to snuffle back up into his nose. He likes to pour salt out of the shaker until he has a heap and then rub the French fries in it, one by one. The French fries and about a pound of salt are all the kid eats; Harry finishes his Big Mac for him, even though he doesn't much care for all the Technicolor glop McDonald's puts on everything ? pure chemicals. Whatever happened to the old?fashioned plain hamburger? Gone wherever the Chiclet went. A little Bingo game is proceeding141 in a corner; you have to walk right through it on your way to the bathrooms, these old people in booths bent142 over their cards while a young black girl in a McDonald's brown uniform gravely reads off the numbers with a twang. "Twainty?sevvn . . . Fohty?wuhunn . . ."
Back in the hot car, Harry sneaks143 a look at his watch. Just noon. He can't believe it, it feels like four in the afternoon. His bones ache, deep inside his flesh. "Well now," he announces, "we have some choices." He unfolds a map he carries in the glove compartment. Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago. "Up toward Sarasota there's the Ringling Museum but it's closed, something called Bellm's Cars of Yesterday but maybe we did enough old cars back at Edison's, and this jungle Gardens which a guy I play golf with really swears by."
Judy groans144 and little Roy, taking his cue from her, begins his trembly?lower?lip routine. "Please, Grandpa," she says, sounding almost maternal, "not caterpillar trees again!"
"It's not just plants, the plants are the least of it, they have leopards145 and these crazy birds. Real leopards, Roy, that'd claw your eyes out if you let 'em, and flamingos146 that fall asleep standing148 on one leg ? Bernie, this friend of mine, can't get over it, the way they can sleep standing on this one skinny leg!" He holds up a single finger to convey the wonder of it. How ugly and strange a single finger is ? its knuckle149?wrinkles, its whorly print, its pretty useless nail. Both the children in the back seat look flushed, the way Nelson used to when he'd be coming down with a cold ? a smothery frantic150 look in the eyes. "Or," Rabbit says, consulting the map, "here's something called Braden Castle Ruins. How do you two sports like ruins?" He knows the answer, and cinches his point with, "Or we could all go back to the condo and take a nap." He learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half?wants look better. He peeks151 over at Janice, a bit miffed by her air of detachment. Why is she making this all his show? She's a grandparent too.
She rouses and says, "We can't go back so soon ? they may be still resting."
"Or whatever," he says. Brawling152. Fucking. There is something hot and disastrous153 about Nelson and Pru that scares the rest of them. Young couples give off this heat; they're still at the heart of the world's' business, making babies. Old couples like him and Janice give off the musty smell of dead flower stalks, rotting in the vase.
Judy suggests, "Let's go to a movie."
"Yeah. Movie," Roy says, for these two words doing quite a good accidental imitation of a grown?up voice, as if they've taken on a hitchhiker in the back seat.
"Let's make a deal," Harry proposes. "We'll drive up and nip into jungle Gardens, and if there's a guided tour or you think it'll depress you we'll nip right out again, the hell with 'em. Otherwise we'll go through and see the flamingos and then buy a Sarasota paper and see what's at the movies. Roy, you big enough to sit through a whole movie?" He starts the engine and gets into gear.
Judy says, "He cried so hard during Dumbo Mommy had to take him out."
"Dumbo's mommy . . ." Roy begins to explain, then starts to cry.
"Yeah," Harry says, turning onto 41 again, casting back his voice, rolling along. "That's a tough one, out there in that little prison car. The business with their trunks, remember? But it all works out. Roy, you should have stayed to the end. If you don't stay to the end the sadness sticks with you."
"He becomes a star," Judy tells her brother spitefully. "He shoots peanuts at all the bad clowns. You missed all that."
"That Disney," Harry says, half to Janice, half for their little audience. "He packed a punch. You had to have been raised in the Depression to take it. Even Nelson, your daddy, couldn't stand Snow White when it came around in rerun."
"Daddy doesn't like anything," Judy confides154. "Just his dumb friends."
"What friends?" Rabbit asks her.
"Oh, I don't know their names. Slim and like that. Mommy hates them and won't go out any more."
"She won't, huh?"
"She says she's scared."
"Scared! Scared of what?"
"Harry, " Janice mutters beside him. "Don't pump the children."
"Scared of Slim," Roy says, trying it out for sound.
Judy thumps155 him. "No, Daddy is not scared of Slim, you dumbo, he's scared of those other men."
"What other men?" Harry asks.
"Harry," Janice says.
"Forget I asked," he calls back, his words lost in the squall as Roy grabs Judy's hair and won't let go. In reaching back to pull them apart Janice rips a seam of her blouse; he can hear the threads break even though at that moment he is being passed by an eighteen?wheeler whose shuddering156 white sides say MAYFLOWER MEANS MOVING and create an aerodynamic condition that sucks him sideways so he has to fight the Camry's wheel. The Japanese don't build for the full range of American conditions. Like Nelson said about the van, the wind pushing him all over 422. Still, you got to sell something in life. You can't just sit there and crab157. We can't all sell Lamborghinis.
Jungle Gardens works out better than anyone dared hope. A big shop full of shells and corny artifacts like that stuff of Janice's back on the condo shelves opens into a miniature outdoors. You can go one way to the Reptile158 Show and the Gardens of Christ and the other to the Bird Show. They all turn toward the Bird Show, and watch tattered159, disgruntled?looking parrots ride bicycles and see- saws and hop8 through hoops160. Then a curving cement path, jungle Trail, leads them along: you shuffle161 obediently past mossy roots and trickling162 rocks and at each turn confront some fresh mild wonder ? a trio of spider monkeys with long hairy arms and little worried faces, then a cageful of finches whirring up and down, roost to roost, like the tireless works of a complicated clock, then a bo?tree such as Buddha163 was illuminated164 under. Rabbit wonders how the Dalai Lama is doing, after all that exile. Do you still believe in God, if people keep telling you you are God?
The four Angstroms come to Mirror Lake, where mute swans float, and Flamingo147 Lagoon165, where, as Bernie Drechsel promised, flocks of flamingos, colored that unreal orange?pink color, sleep while standing up, like big feathery lollypops, each body a ball, the idle leg and the neck and head somehow knitted in, balanced on one pencil?thin leg and wide weird166 leathern foot. Others, almost as marvellous, are awake and stirring, tenderly treading. "Look how they drink," Harry tells his grandchildren, lowering his voice as if in the presence of something sacred. "Upside down. Their bills are scoops167 that work upside down." And they stand marvelling168, the four human beings, as ifthe space between farflung planets has been abolished, so different do these living things loom169 from themselves. The Earth is many planets, that intersect only at moments. Even among themselves, slices of difference interpose, speaking the same language though they do, and lacking feathers, and all drinking right side up.
After the flamingos, the path takes them to a snack bar in a pavilion, and a shell?and?butterfly exhibit, and a goldfish pond, and a cage of black leopards just as Harry had promised Roy. The black?eyed child stares at the animals' noiseless pacing as if into the heart of a whirlpool that might suck him down. A small machine such as those that in Harry's youth supplied a handful of peanuts or pistachio nuts in almost every gas station and grocery store is fixed170 to a pavilion post near an area where peacocks restlessly drag their extravagant171 feathers across the dust. Here he makes his historic blunder. As his three kin6 move ahead he fishes in his pocket for a dime172, inserts it, receives a handful of brown dry objects, and begins to eat them. They are not exactly peanuts, but perhaps some Florida delicacy173, and taste so dry and stale as to be bitter; but who knows how long these machines wait for customers? When he offers some to Judy, though, she looks at them, smells them, and stares up into his face with pure wonderment. "Grandpa!" she cries. "That's to feed the birds! Grandma! He's been eating birdfood! Little brown things like rabbit turds!"
Janice and Roy gather around to see, and Harry holds open his hand to display the shaming evidence. "I didn't know," he weakly says. "There's no sign or anything." He is suffused174 with a curious sensation; he feels faintly numb79 and sick but beyond that, beyond the warm volume enclosed by his skin, the air is swept by a universal devaluation; for one flash he sees his life as a silly thing it will be a relief to discard.
Only Judy actually laughs, a laughter that turns forced, out of her fine?featured little face with its perfect teeth; Janice and Roy just look sad, and a bit puzzled.
Judy says, "Grandpa, that's the dumbest thing I ever saw anybody do!"
He smiles and nods at his inflated175 height above her; he feels short of breath and tight bands of pain pulse across his chest. In his mouth an acid taste intensifies176. He turns his hand, his puffy keratotic hand, long?fingered enough to hold a basketball from above, and scatters177 the pellets where the peacocks can eat them. A dirty white one dragging its filmy tail through the dust eyes the turdlike food but doesn't peck. Maybe it was human food after all. Still, his day has taken a blow, and as they move along the path only Judy is gleeful; her prattle178 eclipses a sudden anguished179 crying, the noise peacocks make, behind them.
Wearying of Jungle Gardens, they move along a path that pas?ses yet another piece of this same all?purpose lake, and a cage where a lonely ocelot dozes180, and cactus gardens, and a black pool advertising181 a water monitor but where they see nothing, perhaps because they don't know what a water monitor is, and cages of parrots and macaws whose brilliant plumage and ornate bills seem to weigh them down. It's hell, to be a creature. You are trapped in yourself, the genetic182 instructions, more strictly183 than in a cage. At the last cage a scraggly tall emu and a rhea are snapping at the wires of the fencing with a doleful soft leathery clack of their bills. Their long?lashed184 great eyes stare through the diagonal wire squares. Clip. Tap. Clip, say their sad persistent185 bills, to no avail. Are they catching186 insects human beings cannot see? Are they delirious187, like old rummies?
Harry retastes the acid pellets and the yellow?and?red glop McDonald's puts on hamburgers, with the little limp green pickle188, and wishes to God he could stop eating. Janice comes to his side and touches the back of his hanging hand with the back of hers. "It was a natural mistake," she says.
"That's the kind I make," he says. "Natural ones."
"Harry, don't be so down."
"Am I? "
"You keep thinking about Nelson," she tells him. So that's what has been preoccupying189 her. Her, not him.
"I was thinking about emus," he confesses.
Janice says, "Let's go see if the kids want anything in the souvenir shop and then go buy a paper. I'm dying to be somewhere air?conditioned." In the souvenir shop they buy Judy a lovely glossy190 top shell and Roy a strikingly black?and?white murex, with rough prongs that he instantly begins to scrape along smooth surfaces ? the painted rail leading back to the parking lot, and the Camry itself if Harry hadn't reached down and grabbed the little slob by his boneless little arm. Harry hates shells. Whenever he sees them he can't help thinking of the blobby hungry sluggy creatures who inhabit them, with hearts and mouths and anuses and feelers and feeble eyes, underneath the sea, a murky191 cold world halfway192 to death. He really can't stand the thought of underwater, the things haunting it, eating each other, drilling through shells, sucking each other's stringy guts193 out.
The interior of the car has grown broiling194 hot in their absence. The Florida sun has burned away those thin clouds like aging jet trails and left only a waste of pure blue above the palms and the Spanish tiles. The heat and the pressure of family life have stupefied the kids; they hardly beg for a treat when he stops at a joy Food and Gas and buys a Sarasota Sentinel. The movie they all decide upon is Working Girl at two?forty?five at some "park" that turns out to be miles away, shimmering195 flat Florida miles full of big white soupy power?steered196 American cars being driven by old people so shrunken they can hardly see over the hood197. Any time you get somewhere down here without a head?on collision is a tribute to the geriatric medicine in this part of the world, the pep pills and vitamin injections and blood thinners.
Though Judy swears Roy has been to the movies before, he doesn't seem to understand you can't just talk up as in your own living room. He keeps asking why, with a plaintive198 inflection: "Why she take off her clothes?" "Why she so mad at that man?" Harry likes it, in the movie, when you see that Melanie Griffith in her whorehouse underwear has a bit of honest fat to her, not like most of these Hollywood anorectics, and when she bursts in upon her boyfriend with the totally naked girl, like herself supposed to be Italian but not like her aspiring199 to be a Wall Street wheeler?dealer200, riding the guy in the astride position, her long bare side sleek201 as the skin of a top shell and her dark?nippled boobs right on screen for a good five seconds. But the plot, and the farce202 of the hero and heroine worming their way into the upper?crust wedding, he feels he saw some forty years ago with Cary Grant or Gary Cooper and Irene Dunne or jean Arthur. When Roy loudly asks, "Why don't we go now?" he is willing to go out into the lobby with him, so Janice and Judy can see the picture to the end in peace.
He and Roy split a box of popcorn203 and try a video game called Annihilation. Though he always thought of himself as pretty good on eye?hand coordination204, Harry can't hit a single space monster as it twitches205 and wiggles past in computer graphics206. Roy, so small he has to be held up to the control panel until his twitching207, wiggling weight gives Harry a pain across his shoulders, isn't any better. "Well, Roy," he sums up, when he gets his breath back, "if it was all up to us, the world would be taken over by space monsters." The boy, more accustomed to his grandfather now, stands close, and his breath smells buttery from the popcorn, making Harry slightly queasy208: this thin unconscious stream of childish breath reminds him of the overhead vent74 in an airplane.
When the crowd comes out of Cinema 3, Janice announces, "I think I need a job. Wouldn't you like me better, Harry, if I was a working girl?"
"Which state would you work in?"
"Pennsylvania, obviously. Florida is for vacations."
He doesn't like the idea. It has something fishy209 and uncomfortable about it, like that batch210 of November stats from Springer Motors. "What work would you do?"
"I don't know. Not work at the lot, Nelson hates us to get in his way. Sell something, maybe. My father was one and my son is one so why shouldn't I be one? A salesperson211."
Rabbit doesn't know what to answer. After all these years of his grudgingly212 sticking with her, he can't imagine him begging her to stick with him, though this is his impulse. He changes conversational213 partners. "Judy. How did the movie come out?"
"Good. The man from the wedding believed her story and she got an office of her own with a window and her nasty boss broke her leg and lost the man they both liked."
"Poor Sigourney," Harry says. "She should have stuck with the gorillas214." He stands way above his own little herd in the theater lobby, where the ushers215 move back and forth216 with green garbage bags and red velvet217 ropes, getting ready for the five?o'clock shows. "So, guys. What shall we do next? How about miniature golf? How about driving up to St. Petersburg, over this fantastic long bridge they have?"
Roy's lower lip starts to tremble, and he has such trouble getting his words out that Judy translates for him. "He says he wants to go home."
"Who doesn't?" Janice concurs218. "Grandpa was just teasing. Haven't you learned that about your grandfather yet, Roy? He's a terrible tease."
Is he? Harry has never thought of himself that way. He sometimes says a thing to try it out, like a head fake, to open up a little space.
Judy smiles knowingly. "He pretends to be mean," she says.
"Grrr," Grandpa says.
Forty minutes of southwestern Florida rush?hour traffic bring them to the Deleon exit and Pindo Palm Boulevard and the nicely guarded entrance of Valhalla Village. Up in 413, Pru and Nelson look bathed and refreshed and act as if nothing has ever happened. They listen to the travellers' tales, foremost the incredible story of how Grandpa ate the grungy birdfood, and Pru sets about making dinner, telling Janice to take the weight off her legs, and Nelson settles on the sofa with a child on each knee in front of the local evening news, giving Harry a pang219 of jealousy220 and a sensation of injustice221. The surly kid spends the whole day balling this big redhead and then is treated like a hero by these two brats222 Harry went and knocked himself out for.
Rabbit sits in the chair across the glass table from the sofa and delicately needles his son. ` Ja catch up finally on your sleep?" he asks.
Nelson gets the dig and looks over at him with his dark swarmy eyes a little flat across the top, like a cross cat's. "I went into a place to get a bite to eat last night and stayed at the bar too long," he tells his father.
"Ya do that often?"
With a roll of his eyeballs Nelson indicates the children's heads right under his face, watching television but perhaps also listening. Little pitchers223. "Naa," he allows. "Just when I'm tense it helps to take off once in a while. Pru understands. Nothing happens."
Rabbit holds up a generous hand. "None of my business, right? You're twenty?one plus. It's just you could have called. I mean, a considerate person would have called. None of us could enjoy dinner, not knowing what had happened to you. We could hardly eat."
"I tried to call, Dad, but I don't have your number down here memorized and the place I was in some sleazeball had stolen the phone book."
"That's your story this evening? This morning your mother told me you did call here but we were down to dinner."
"That, too. I tried once from a phone along the highway and then in this place there was no phone book."
"Where was the place? Think I'd know it?"
"No idea where," Nelson says, and smiles into the television flicker224. "I get lost down here, it's like one big business strip. One nice thing about Florida, it makes Pennsylvania look unspoiled."
The local news commentator225 is giving the manatee226 update. "Manatee herds227 continue to populate both warm?weather feeding areas and traditional winter refuges as fair weather and eightydegree temperatures continue. A general waterways alert is out: boaters, cut your throttle228 to half?speed. Throughout the weekend, encounters with manatees229 remain likely in widely varied230 habitats around Southwest Florida."
"They say that," Rabbit says, "but I never encounter one."
"That's because you're never on the water," Nelson says. "It's stupid, to be down here like you are and not own a boat."
"What do I want a boat for? I hate the water."
"You'd get to love it. You could fish all over the Gulf. You don't have enough to do, Dad."
"Who wants to fish, ifyou're halfway civilized231? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish."
The blond newscaster, with his hair moussed down so it's stiff as a wig5, tells them, "An adult manatee with calf232 was reported at midday on Wednesday heading inland along Cape130 Coral's Bimini Canal about one?half mile from the Bimini Basin. Sightings like this indicate that while a large number of the Caloosahatchee herd have moved back out into the open waters of the river and back bays, some animals may still be encountered in and near sheltered waterways. To report dead or injured manatees, call 1?800?3421821." The number rolls across some footage of a manatee family sluggishly233 rolling around in the water. "And," he concludes in that sonorous234 way television announcers have when they see the commercial break coming, "to report a manatee sighting, call the Manatee Hotline at 332?3092."
To refresh his rapport235 with Judy, Rabbit calls over, "How'd you like to have a single big tooth like that mamma manatee?" But the girl doesn't seem to hear, her fair little face radiantly riveted236 on one of those ads with California raisins237 singing and dancing like black men. In a row like the old Mousketeers. Where are they now? Middle?aged238 parents themselves. Jimmie died years ago, he remembers reading. Died young. It happens. Roy is sucking his thumb and nodding off against Nelson's chest. Nelson is still wearing the white?collared, pink?striped shirt he wore down in the plane, as if he doesn't own anything as foolish as a shortsleeved shirt.
"Tomorrow," Rabbit loudly promises he doesn't know who, "I'll get out on the water. Judy and I will rent a Sunfish. I have it all set up with Ed Silberstein's son over at the Bayview Hotel."
"I don't know," Nelson says. "How safe are those things?"
Rabbit is insulted. "They're like toys, for Chrissake. If they tip over, you just stand on the centerboard and up they come. Kids ten, eleven years old race them over in the Bay all the time."
"Yeah, but Judy's not even nine yet, not for a couple weeks. And no offense239, Dad, you're way into double digits240. And no sailor, from what you just said."
"O.K., you do something with your kids tomorrow. You entertain 'em. I spent over eight hours at it today and dropped around eighty bucks."
Nelson tells him, "You're supposed to want to do things like that. You're their dear old grandfather, remember?" He softens241, slightly. "Sunfishing's a nice idea. Just make sure she wears a life jacket."
"Why don't you all come along? You, Pru, Sleeping Beauty here. It's a helluva beach. They keep it clean."
"Maybe we will, if I can. I'm expecting a call or two."
"From the ?lot? Can't they even manage for half a week?"
Nelson is drifting away, hiding behind the distraction242 of television. One of the new Toyota ads is playing, with the blackwoman car salesman. At the end, she and the customer jump into the air and are frozen there. "No," Nelson is saying, so softly Rabbit can hardly hear. "It's a contact I made down here."
"A contact? What about?"
Nelson puts his finger to his lip, to signal they should not wake Roy.
Rabbit gets out his needle again. "Speaking of digits, I keep trying to remember what seemed off about that November statement. Maybe the number of used seemed down for this time of year. Usually it's up, along with the new models."
"Money's scared, with Reagan going out," Nelson answers, ever so softly. "Also, Lyle's put in a new accounting243 system, maybe they were deferred244 into the next month and will show up in the December stats. Don't worry about it, Dad. You and Mom just enjoy Florida. You've worked hard all your life. You've earned a rest."
And the boy, as if to seal in the possibility of irony245, kisses little Judy ón the top of her shiny?sleek, carrot?colored head. The blue light from the set penetrates246 the triangular247 patch of thinning hair between Nelson's deepening temples. A hostage he's given to fortune. Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
"Dinner, guys and gals," Pru calls from Janice's aqua kitchen.
Her meal is a more thought?out affair than Janice's ever are, with a spicy248 clear sort of minestrone soup to begin, and a salad on a separate plate, and a fresh white fish, broiled249 on the stove grill250 attachment251 that Janice never takes the trouble to use. Janice has become a great warmer?up of leftovers252 in the microwave, and a great buyer over at Winn Dixie of frozen meatloaves and stuffed peppers and seafood253 casseroles in their little aluminum254 pans that can be tossed into the trashmasher dirty. She was always a minimal255 housewife and now the technology has caught up with her. The vegetables Pru serves, wild rice and little tender peas and baby onions, have a delicate pointed256 taste that Harry feels is aimed at him, a personal message the others consume without knowing. "Delicious," he tells Pru.
Janice explains to Harry, "Pru went into this little narrow fish store behind Eckerd's where I never thought to go. Our generation," she explains to Pru, "didn't have that much to do with fish. Except I remember Daddy used to bring home a quart of shucked Chesapeake oysters257 as a treat for himself sometimes."
Pru tells Harry in her personally aimed, slightly scratchy Ohio voice, "Oily deepwater fish, bluefish especially, have lots of EPA in their oil, that's a kind of acid that actually thins your blood and lowers the triglyceride level."
She would take care of me, Harry thinks. Pleasurably he complains, "What's everybody always worried about my cholesterol258 level for? I must look awful."
"You're a big guy," Pru says, and the assessment259 pierces him like a love dart260, "and as we all age the proportion of fat in our bodies goes up, and the amount of LDL, that's low?density261 lipoprotein, the bad kind of fat, goes up and that of the highdensity, good kind stays the same, so the ratio goes up, and the danger of Apo B attaching to your arteries262 goes up with it. And we don't exercise the way people used to, when everybody had farms so the fats don't get burned up."
"Teresa, you know so much," Janice says, not quite liking263 being upstaged and using Pru's baptismal name as a tiny check, to keep her in place.
The other woman lowers her eyes and drops her voice. "You remember, I took that course at the Brewer264 Penn State extension. I was thinking, when Roy gets into school full?time, I should have something to do, and thought?maybe nutrition, or dietetics265 . . ."
"I want to get a job, too," Janice says, annoying Harry with her intrusion into Pru's demure266 lecture about his very own, he felt, fatty insides. "The movie we saw this afternoon, all these women working in New York skyscrapers267, made me so jealous." Janice didn't use to dramatize herself. Ever since her mother died and they bought this condo, she has been building up an irritating confidence, an assumption that the world is her stage and her performance is going pretty well. Around Valhalla Village, she is one of the younger women and on several committees. Just not being senile is considered great down here. When they went to the Drechsels' seder, she turned out to be the youngest and had to ask the four questions.
Harry jealously asks Pru, "Does Nelson get the benefit of all this nutrition?"
Pru says, "He doesn't need it, really ? he hardly ever eats, and he has all this nervous energy. He could use more lipids. But the children ? they say now that after two in most American children the cholesterol level is too high. When they did autopsies268 on young men killed in the Korean War, three?quarters of them had too much fat in their coronary arteries."
Harry's chest is beginning to bind269, to ache. His insides are like the sea to him, dark and wet and full of things he doesn't want to think about.
Nelson has done nothing to contribute to this conversation but sniff270 occasionally. The kid's nose seems to run all the time, and the line of bare skin above his mouse?colored mustache looks chafed271. Now he pushes back from his half?eaten fish and announces complacently272, "The way I figure, if one thing doesn't kill you, another will." Though he rests his palms on the edge of the table, his hands are trembling, the nerves snapping.
"It's not what we worry about, it's when," his father tells him.
Janice looks alarmed, her eyes shuttling from one to the other. "Let's all be cheerful," she says.
For dessert, Pru serves them frozen yogurt ? much better for you than ice cream, with no cholesterol at all. When the meal is done, Harry hangs around the kitchen counter long enough to dig into the cookie drawer and stuff himself with three quick vanilla273 Cameos and a broken pretzel. Down here they don't have the variety of pretzels you get in Brewer but Sunshine sells a box of thick ones that are not too tasteless. He has an impulse to help Janice with the dishes and suppresses it; it's just throwing plates into the dishwasher and what else did she contribute to the meal? His feet hurt from all that walking they did today; he has a couple of toes that over the years have twisted enough in his shoes to dig their nails into each other if he doesn't keep them cut close. Pru and Roy and Nelson retreat into their room and he sits a while and watches while Judy, the remote control in hand, bounces back and forth between The Cosby Show, some ice capades, and a scare documentary about foreigners buying up American businesses, and then between Cheers and a drama about saving a fourteenyear?old girl from becoming a prostitute like her mother. So many emergencies, Harry thinks, so much canned laughter, so many actors' tears, all this effort to be happy, to be brave, to be loved, all this wasted effort. Television's tireless energy gnaws274 at him. He sighs and laboriously275 rises. His body sags276 around his heart like a tent around a pole. He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening277 of excitement about anything. These four guests are a strain; he looks forward to their departure Saturday, the last day of 1988.
Judy continues to stare at the screen and ply23 her channel changer. "Just the first part of L.A. Law," she promises, but flicks instead to an ABC news special about "American Kids ? Their Diet of Danger." In their bedroom Janice is reading Elle, looking at the pictures, of superslim models looking stoned.
` Janice," he says. "I have something to ask you."
"What? Don't get me stirred up, I'm reading to make myself sleepy."
"Today," he says. "In that crowd going through the Edison place: Did I look as though I fit in?"
It takes her a while to shift her focus; then she sees what he wants. "Of course not, Harry. You looked much younger than the other men. You looked like one of their sons, visiting."
He decides this is as much reassurance278 as he dare ask for. "At least," he agrees with her, "I wasn't in a wheelchair." He reads a few pages of history, about the fight between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis, and how when amid the bloody279 explosions his chief gunner cried out "Quarter! quarter! for God's sake!" John Paul Jones hurled280 a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis' commander, who called, "Do you ask for quarter?" Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle offire the famous reply came faintly back to him: "I have not yet begun to fight!" The vic-torious American ship was so damaged it sank the next day, and Jones took the captured Serapis, shorn of its mast, into Holland, exacerbating281 the British resentment282 that already existed. All this fury and bravery seems more wasted effort. Rabbit feels as if the human race is a vast colorful jostling bristling283 parade in which he is limp-ing and falling behind. He settles the book on the night table and switches off the lamp. The bar of light beneath the door transmits distant shots and shouts from some TV show, any TV show. He falls asleep with unusual speed, with scarcely a turn into his pillow. His arms, which usually get in the way, fold themselves up like pieces of blanket. His dreams include one in which he has come to a door, a door with a round top to it, and pushes at it. The glass door at McDonald's except that one you could see the hamburger head through. In his dream he knows there is a presence on the other side, a presence he dreads285, hungry and still, but pushes nevertheless, and the dread284 increases with the pressure, so much that he awakes, his bladder aching to go to the bathroom. He can't get through the night any more. His prostate or his bladder, losing stretch like goldenrod rubber. His mistake was drinking a Schhtz while channel?surfing with Judy. Falling asleep again is not so easy, with Janice's deep breathing now and then dipping into a rasping snore just as he begins to relax and his brain to generate nonsense. The luminous286 bar beneath the door is gone but a kind of generalized lavender light, the light that owls43 and other animals of the night see to kill by, picks out the planes and big objects of the bedroom. A square bureau holds the glassy rectangle of Nelson's high?school graduation photo; a fat pale chair holds on one arm Harry's discarded linen trousers, the folds of cloth suggesting a hollow?eyed skull stretched like chewing gum. Air admitted from the balcony under the folds of the drawn curtain grazes his face. A way of going to sleep is to lie on your back and try to remember the dream you were having. Unease seizes him like a great scalyfooted parrot claw and puts him down again on his face. The next thing he knows he is hearing the mowing287 machines on the golf course, and the stirred?up seagulls weeping.
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mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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wafts
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| n.空中飘来的气味，一阵气味( waft的名词复数 )；摇转风扇v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的第三人称单数 ) | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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wig
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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alligators
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| n.短吻鳄( alligator的名词复数 ) | |
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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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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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21
primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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22
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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23
ply
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| v.(搬运工等)等候顾客，弯曲 | |
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24
prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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25
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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26
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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27
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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28
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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29
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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30
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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31
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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32
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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33
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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34
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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35
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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36
falters
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的第三人称单数 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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37
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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38
curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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39
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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40
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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41
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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42
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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43
owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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44
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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45
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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46
singeing
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的现在分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿]；烧毛 | |
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47
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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48
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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49
mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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50
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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51
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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52
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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53
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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54
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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55
wryly
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| adv. 挖苦地，嘲弄地 | |
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56
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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57
flop
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| n.失败(者)，扑通一声；vi.笨重地行动，沉重地落下 | |
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58
flops
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| n.失败( flop的名词复数 )v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的第三人称单数 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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59
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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60
canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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61
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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62
banyan
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| n.菩提树，榕树 | |
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63
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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64
Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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65
bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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66
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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67
crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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68
bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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69
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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70
flip
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| vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的 | |
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71
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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72
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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73
glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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74
vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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75
stuffiness
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| n.不通风，闷热；不通气 | |
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76
edible
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| n.食品，食物；adj.可食用的 | |
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77
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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78
winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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79
numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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80
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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81
sloth
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| n.[动]树懒；懒惰，懒散 | |
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82
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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83
disintegrate
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| v.瓦解，解体，（使）碎裂，（使）粉碎 | |
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84
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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85
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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86
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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87
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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88
tarted
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| vt.将某人打扮得妖艳，将某物装饰得俗气（tart的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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89
lipstick
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| n.口红，唇膏 | |
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90
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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91
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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92
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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93
groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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94
enigmas
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| n.难于理解的问题、人、物、情况等，奥秘( enigma的名词复数 ) | |
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95
kapok
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| n.木棉 | |
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96
orchid
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| n.兰花，淡紫色 | |
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97
parasite
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| n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客 | |
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98
lychee
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| n.荔枝 | |
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99
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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100
conspiratorially
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101
schooners
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| n.（有两个以上桅杆的）纵帆船( schooner的名词复数 ) | |
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102
itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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103
veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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104
marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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105
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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106
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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107
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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108
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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109
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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110
commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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111
drowsily
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| adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地 | |
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112
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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113
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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114
recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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115
sadistic
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| adj.虐待狂的 | |
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116
notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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117
squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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118
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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119
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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120
ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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121
preens
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| v.（鸟）用嘴整理（羽毛）( preen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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122
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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123
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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124
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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125
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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126
shrub
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| n.灌木，灌木丛 | |
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127
tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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128
caterpillar
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| n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫 | |
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129
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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130
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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131
arthritis
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| n.关节炎 | |
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132
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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133
authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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134
modem
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| n.调制解调器 | |
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135
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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136
zipper
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| n.拉链；v.拉上拉链 | |
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137
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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138
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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139
lawsuits
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| n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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140
enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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141
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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142
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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143
sneaks
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| abbr.sneakers (tennis shoes) 胶底运动鞋（网球鞋）v.潜行( sneak的第三人称单数 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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144
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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145
leopards
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| n.豹( leopard的名词复数 )；本性难移 | |
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146
flamingos
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| n.红鹳，火烈鸟（羽毛粉红、长颈的大涉禽）( flamingo的名词复数 ) | |
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147
flamingo
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| n.红鹳，火烈鸟 | |
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148
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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149
knuckle
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| n.指节；vi.开始努力工作；屈服，认输 | |
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150
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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151
peeks
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| n.偷看，窥视( peek的名词复数 )v.很快地看( peek的第三人称单数 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
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152
brawling
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| n.争吵，喧嚷 | |
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153
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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154
confides
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的第三人称单数 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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155
thumps
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| n.猪肺病；砰的重击声( thump的名词复数 )v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的第三人称单数 ) | |
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156
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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157
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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158
reptile
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| n.爬行动物；两栖动物 | |
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159
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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160
hoops
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| n.箍( hoop的名词复数 )；（篮球）篮圈；（旧时儿童玩的）大环子；（两端埋在地里的）小铁弓 | |
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161
shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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162
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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163
Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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164
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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165
lagoon
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| n.泻湖，咸水湖 | |
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166
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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167
scoops
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| n.小铲( scoop的名词复数 )；小勺；一勺[铲]之量；（抢先刊载、播出的）独家新闻v.抢先报道( scoop的第三人称单数 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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168
marvelling
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 ) | |
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169
loom
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| n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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170
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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171
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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172
dime
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| n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角 | |
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173
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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174
suffused
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| v.（指颜色、水气等）弥漫于，布满( suffuse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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175
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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176
intensifies
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| n.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的名词复数 )v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的第三人称单数 ) | |
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177
scatters
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| v.（使）散开， （使）分散，驱散( scatter的第三人称单数 )；撒 | |
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178
prattle
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| n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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179
anguished
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| adj.极其痛苦的v.使极度痛苦(anguish的过去式) | |
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180
dozes
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| n.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的名词复数 )v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的第三人称单数 ) | |
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181
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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182
genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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183
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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184
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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185
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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186
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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187
delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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188
pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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189
preoccupying
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| v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的现在分词 ) | |
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190
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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191
murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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192
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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193
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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194
broiling
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| adj.酷热的，炽热的，似烧的v.（用火）烤（焙、炙等）( broil的现在分词 )；使卷入争吵；使混乱；被烤（或炙） | |
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195
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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196
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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197
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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198
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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199
aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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200
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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201
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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202
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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203
popcorn
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| n.爆米花 | |
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204
coordination
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| n.协调，协作 | |
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205
twitches
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| n.（使）抽动， （使）颤动， （使）抽搐( twitch的名词复数 ) | |
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206
graphics
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| n.制图法，制图学；图形显示 | |
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207
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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208
queasy
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| adj.易呕的 | |
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209
fishy
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| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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210
batch
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| n.一批(组，群)；一批生产量 | |
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211
salesperson
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| n.售货员，营业员，店员 | |
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212
grudgingly
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213
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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214
gorillas
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| n.大猩猩( gorilla的名词复数 )；暴徒，打手 | |
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215
ushers
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| n.引座员( usher的名词复数 )；招待员；门房；助理教员v.引，领，陪同( usher的第三人称单数 ) | |
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216
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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217
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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218
concurs
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| 同意（concur的第三人称单数形式） | |
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219
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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220
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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221
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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222
brats
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| n.调皮捣蛋的孩子( brat的名词复数 ) | |
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223
pitchers
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| 大水罐( pitcher的名词复数 ) | |
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224
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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225
commentator
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| n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员 | |
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226
manatee
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| n.海牛 | |
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227
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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228
throttle
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| n.节流阀，节气阀，喉咙；v.扼喉咙，使窒息，压 | |
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229
manatees
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| n.海牛（水生哺乳动物，体宽扁，尾圆，有鳃状肢）( manatee的名词复数 ) | |
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230
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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231
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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232
calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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233
sluggishly
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| adv.懒惰地；缓慢地 | |
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234
sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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235
rapport
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| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
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236
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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237
raisins
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| n.葡萄干( raisin的名词复数 ) | |
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238
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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239
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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240
digits
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| n.数字( digit的名词复数 )；手指，足趾 | |
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241
softens
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| （使）变软( soften的第三人称单数 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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242
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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243
accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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244
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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245
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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246
penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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247
triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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248
spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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249
broiled
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| a.烤过的 | |
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250
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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251
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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252
leftovers
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| n.剩余物，残留物，剩菜 | |
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253
seafood
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| n.海产食品，海味，海鲜 | |
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254
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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255
minimal
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| adj.尽可能少的，最小的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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257
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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258
cholesterol
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| n.（U）胆固醇 | |
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259
assessment
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| n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额 | |
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dart
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| v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲 | |
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density
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| n.密集，密度，浓度 | |
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262
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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dietetics
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| n.营养学 | |
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demure
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| adj.严肃的；端庄的 | |
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skyscrapers
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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268
autopsies
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| n.尸体解剖( autopsy的名词复数 )；验尸；现场验证；实地观察 | |
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269
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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vanilla
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| n.香子兰，香草 | |
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gnaws
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| 咬( gnaw的第三人称单数 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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sags
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| 向下凹或中间下陷( sag的第三人称单数 )； 松弛或不整齐地悬着 | |
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lessening
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| 减轻，减少，变小 | |
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reassurance
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| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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279
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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280
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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exacerbating
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| v.使恶化，使加重( exacerbate的现在分词 ) | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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284
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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dreads
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| n.恐惧，畏惧( dread的名词复数 )；令人恐惧的事物v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的第三人称单数 ) | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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