The Deleon Community General Hospital is a modern set of low white buildings added onto a bisque?colored core, dating from the Thirties, with a Spanish?tile roof and curved grillework at the windows. The complex fills two blocks on the southern side of Tamarind Avenue, which runs parallel to Pindo Palm Boulevard about a mile to the north. Janice spent most of yester-day here, so she knows the way into the parking garage, and which arrows painted on the floor to follow out of the parking garage, across a glass?enclosed second?story pedestrian bridge, which takes them above the parking?garage ticket booths and a breadth ofbusy asphalt and a hexagonal?tiled patio2 with arcs of oleander hedge and of convalescents in glinting steel wheelchairs, and down a half-flight of stairs into a lobby where street?people, multiracial but the whites among them dyed on hands and face a deep outdoorsy brown, doze3 beside the neatly4 tied bundles and plastic garbage bags containing all their possessions. The lobby smells of oleander, urine, and air freshener.
Janice, wearing a soft salmon5?colored running suit with pow-der?blue sleeves and pants stripes, leads, and Nelson, Roy, Pru, and Judy, all in their airplane clothes, follow, hurrying to keep up. In just one day Janice has acquired a widow's briskness6, the speed afoot of a woman with no man to set the pace for her. Also some remnant of old love ? of old animal magnetism7 revived in this thronged8 institutional setting not so different from the high?school corridors where she first became aware of Rabbit Angstrom, he a famous senior, tall and blond, and she a lowly ninth?grader, dark and plain ? pulls her toward her man, now that his animal fragility has reawakened her awareness9 of his body. His, and her own. Since his collapse10 she is proudly, continuously conscious of her body's elastic11 health, its defiant12 uprightness, the stubborn miracle of its functioning.
The children are frightened. Roy and Judy don't know what they will see in this visit. Perhaps their grandfather has been mon-strously transformed, as by a wicked witch in a fairy story, into a toad13 or a steaming puddle14. Or perhaps a monster is what he has been all along, underneath15 the friendly kindly16 pose and high coax-ing voice he put on for them like the wolf in grandmother's clothes who wanted to eat Little Red Riding Hood17. The sugary antiseptic smells, the multiplicity of elevators and closed doors and directional signs and people in white smocks and white stockings and shoes and plastic badges, the hollow purposeful sound their own crowd of feet makes on the linoleum18 floors, scrubbed and waxed so shiny they hold moving ripples19 like water, widens the ominous20 feeling in their childish stomachs, their suspicion of a maze21 there is no escaping from, of a polished expensive trap whose doors and valves only open one way. The world that grownups construct for themselves seems such an extravagant22 creation that malice23 might well be its motive24. Within a hospital you feel there is no other world. The palm trees and jet trails and drooping25 wires and blue sky you can see through the windows seem part of the panes26, part of the trap.
The vaulted27 lobby holds two murals ? at one end, happy people of many colors work in orange groves28 above which the sun seems one more round orange and, at the other, bearded Spaniards in armor woodenly exchange obscure gifts with nearly naked Indians, one of whom crouches30 with a bow and arrow behind a spiky31 jungle bush. This Indian scowls32 with evil intent. The ex-plorer will be killed.
A skinny strict woman at the main desk consults a computer printout and gives them a floor number and directions to the cor-rect elevator. This family of five crowds onto it among a man who holds a bouquet33 and keeps clearing his throat, a Hispanic boy carrying a clinking tray of vials, and a big jawed34 bushy?haired middle?aged35 woman pushing an ancient version of herself, only the hair not so thick or so brightly dyed, in a wheelchair. She drags her mother out to let other people off and on and then forces the wheelchair's way back in. Judy rolls her clear green eyes heavenward in protest of how obnoxious36 and clumsy grownups are.
Their floor is the fourth, the topmost. Janice is struck by how much less elaborate the nurses' station is here than in the intensive cardiac?care unit. There, the uniformed women sat barricaded37 behind a bank of heart monitors each giving in a twitching38 orange line the imperfect beats from the rows of individual rooms, on three sides, with glass front walls, some doors open so you could see a dazed patient sitting up under his spaghetti of tubes, some of them closed but the curtains not drawn40 so you can see the two dark nostrils42 and triangular43 dying mouth of an unconscious head, and yet others with the curtains ominously44 drawn, to hide some desperate medical procedure in progress. She has home two babies and escorted both of her parents into the grave so she is not a total stranger to hospitals. Here, on Floor Four, there is just a single high counter, and a few desks, and a waiting area with a hard wood settee and a coffee table holding magazines titled Modern Health and Woman's Day and The Watchtower and The Monthly Redeemer. A big black woman, with waxy45 tight?woven corn rows looped beneath her white cap, stops the anxious herd46 of Angstroms with a smile. "Only two visitors in the room at a time, please. Mr. Angstrom came out of the ICCU this morning and he's still not ready for too much fuhnn."
Something in her wide gleaming face and elaborately braided hair transfixes little Roy; suddenly he begins under the stress of accumulating strangeness to cry. His inky eyes widen and then squeeze shut; his rubbery lips are pulled down as if by a terrible taste. His first cry turns a number of heads in the corridor, where attendants and doctors are busy with the routines of early afternoon.
Pru takes him from Nelson's arms and presses his face into her neck. She tells her husband, "Why don't you take Judy in?"
Nelson's face, too, undergoes a displeased48, alarmed stretching. "1 don't want to be the first. Suppose he's delirious49 or something. Mom, you ought to go in first."
"For heaven's sake," she says, as if Harry50's burden of exasperation51 with their only living child has passed to her. "I talked to him two hours ago over the phone and he was perfectly52 normal." But she takes the little girl by the hand and they go down the shiny rippled53 corridor looking for the room number, 326. The number rings a faint bell with Janice. Where before? In what life?
Pru sits on the hard settee ? uncushioned perhaps to discourage loiterers ? and tries to murmur54 and joggle Roy into calm again. In five minutes, with a sob55 like a hiccup56, he falls asleep, heavy and hot against her, rumpling57 and making feel even more oppressive the checked suit which she put on for disembarking into the Northern winter. The air?conditioning in here feels turned off; the local temperature has again climbed into the eighties, ten degrees warmer than normal this time of year. They have brought this morning's News?Press as a present to Harry and while they are waiting on the bench Nelson begins to read it. Reagan, Bush get subpoenas58, Pru reads over his shoulder. Regional killings59 decrease in 1988. Team owner to pay for Amber60's funeral. Unlike the Brewer61 Standard this one always has color on the page and today features a green map of Great Britain with Lockerbie pinpointed62 and insets of a suitcase and an exploding airplane. Report describes sophisticated bomb. "Nelson," Pru says softly, so as not to wake Roy or have the nurses hear what she wants to say. "There's been something bothering me."
"Yeah? Join the crowd."
"I don't mean you and me, for a change. Do you possibly think ?? I can't make myself say it."
"Say what?"
"Shh. Not so loud."
"Goddamn it, I'm trying to read the paper. They think they know now exactly what kind of bomb blew up that Pan Am flight."
"It occurred to me immediately but I kept trying to put it out of my mind and then you fell asleep last night before we could talk."
"I was beat. That's the first good night's sleep I've had in weeks."
"You know why, don't you? Yesterday was the first day in weeks you've gone without cocaine63."
"That had nothing to do with it. My body and blow get along fine. I crashed because my father suddenly near?died and it's damn depressing. I mean, if he goes, who's next in line? I'm too young not to have a father."
"You crashed because that chemical was out of your system for a change. You're under terrible neurological tension all the time and it's that drug that's doing it."
"It's my fucking whole neurological life doing it and has been doing it ever since you and I got hitched64 up; it's having a holierthan?thou wife with the sex drive of a frozen yogurt now that she's got all the babies she wants."
Pru's mouth when she gets angry tenses up so the upper lip stiffens65 in vertical66 wrinkles almost like a mustache. You see that she does have a faint gauzy mustache; she is getting whiskery. Her face when she's sore becomes a kind of shield pressing at him, the crépey skin under her eyes as dead white as the parting in her hair, her whisper furious and practiced in its well?worn groove67. He has heard this before: "Why should I risk my life sleeping with you, you addict68, you think I want to get AIDS from your dirty needles when you're speedballing or from some cheap coke whore you screw when you're gone until two in the morning?"
Roy whimpers against her neck, and two younger nurses behind the counter in the desk area ostentatiously rustle69 papers as if to avoid overhearing.
"You shitty dumb bitch," Nelson says in a soft voice, lightly smiling as if what he's saying is pleasant, "I don't do needles and I don't fuck coke whores. I don't know what a coke whore is and you don't either."
"Call them what you want, just don't give me their diseases."
His voice stays low, almost caressing71. "Where did you get so goddamn high and mighty72, that's what I'd love to know. What makes you so fucking pure, you weren't too pure to get yourself knocked up when it suited you. And then to send Melanie back home to Brewer with me to keep putting out ass1 so I wouldn't run away somehow. That was really the cold?blooded thing, pimping for your own girlfriend."
Nelson finds a certain chronic73 comfort in his wife's fairskinned, time?widened face, with its mustache of rage crinkles and its anger?creased74 triangular brow, pressing upon him, limiting his vision. It shuts out all the threatening things at the rim75. She says, faltering76 as if she knows she is being put through a hoop77, "We've been through this a million times, Nelson Angstrom, and I had no idea you'd hop78 into bed with Melanie, I was foolish enough to think you were in love with me and trying to work things out with your parents." This cycle of complaint is stale and hateful yet something familiar he can snuggle into. At night, when both are asleep, it is she who loops her arm, downy and long, around his sweating chest and he who curls closer to the fetal position, pressing his backside into her furry79 lap.
"I was," he says, plainly teasing now, "I did work them out. So what were you starting to say?"
"About what?"
"What you were going to tell me but couldn't because I fell asleep because according to you I wasn't as wired as usual." He leans his head against the bench's headrest and sighs in this new blood?clean weariness of his. Coming down makes you realize how high up you usually are. "God," he says, "it'll be good to get back to the real world. You're sort of right about yesterday, I was stuck, with Mom grabbing the car as soon as you got back. All you can deal for around Valhalla Village is Geritol."
Her voice in marital80 sympathy softens81. "I like you like this," she confides82. "Just yourself. No additives83." He looks, with his tidy taut84 profile sealed upon his tired thoughts, his thinning temples balanced by his jutting85 little mustache, almost handsome. The scattered86 gray hairs in his rat's?tail haircut touch her, as if they are her fault.
Wearily in Pru's forgiving tone of voice he hears that she is not yet ready to let this marriage go. He has plenty of margin87 still. "I'm always the same," he disagrees. "I can take or leave the stuff. Yesterday, maybe you're right, out of respect for the old guy, or something. I just decided88 to do without. What nobody seems to understand is, it's not addictive89."
"Wonderful," Pru says, the softness in her voice ebbing90. "My husband the exception that proves the rule."
"Don't we have any other topic?"
"This story," she decides to begin, "of Judy's being trapped under the sail. Aren't the sails awfully91 small? You know what a good swimmer she is. Do you possibly think ??"
"Think what?"
"That she was just pretending, hiding from your father as a sort of game, and then it got out of hand?"
"So it just about killed him? What a thought. Poor Dad." Nelson's profile smiles; his mustache lifts closer to the underside of his small straight irritated nose. "I don't think so," he says. "She wouldn't be that cool. Think of how far out there it must have seemed to her, surrounded by sharks in her mind. She wouldn't be playing games."
"We don't know really how it was out there, or how many seconds it all took. Children's minds don't work exactly like ours, and your father's way with her is to be teasing, the way he talks to her. It's something she could have done not to be cruel but a child's idea, you know, of teasing back."
His smile now shows his small inturned teeth, which always look a little gray no matter how hard he brushes them, and flosses, and uses those handles with rubber tips once he gets into his pajamas92. "I knew it was a bad idea, him taking her out there when he doesn't know shit about boats," he says. "You say he acted proud of saving her life?"
"On the beach, before the paramedics came ? it seemed to take forever but they said it was only seven minutes ? he seemed happy, relieved somehow even with the terrible pain and struggling for breath. He kept trying to make jokes and get us to laugh. He told me I should put new polish on my toenails."
Nelson's eyes open and he stares, not at the opposite wall where a dead benefactor's oil portrait preens93, but unseeing into the past. "I had that baby sister, you know," he says, "who drowned."
"I know. How could any of us ever forget it?"
He stares some more, and says, "Maybe he was happy to have saved this one."
And indeed to Harry, as he lies on his back drugged and tied down by tubes and wires in what seems a horizonless field of white, the sight of little Judy alive and perfect in each reddishbrown hair and freckle94, her long eyelashes spaced as if by a Linotype machine with two?point spaces, is a pure joy. She had tangled96 with the curse and survived. She is getting out of Florida, death's favorite state, alive.
His collapse twenty?six hours ago did have its blissful aspect: his sense, beginning as he lay helpless and jellyfishlike under a sky of red, of being in the hands of others, of being the blind, pained, focal point of a world of concern and expertise97, at some depth was a coming back home, after a life of ill?advised journeying. Sinking, he perceived the world around him as gaseous98 and rising, the grave and affectionate faces of paramedics and doctors and nurses released by his emergency like a cloud of holiday balloons. His many burdens have been lifted away in this light?drenched99 hospital, this businesslike emporium where miracles are common if not cheap. They have relieved him of his catheter, and his only problem is a recurrent need to urinate ? all this fluid they keep dripping into him ? sideways into a bed pan, without pulling loose the IV tube and the wires to the heart monitor and the oxygen tubes in his nostrils.
Another small problem is fog: a football game he has been looking forward to seeing, the NFC playoff game between the Eagles and the Bears at Soldier Field in Chicago, is on the television set that comes out on a tan enamelled metal arm not two feet from his face, but the game, which began at twelve?thirty, as it goes on has become dimmer and dimmer, swallowed by an unprecedented101 fog blowing in off Lake Michigan. Television coverage102 has been reduced to the sideline cameras; people up in the stands and the announcers in their booth can see even less than Rabbit lying doped?up here in bed. "Heck of a catch by somebody," said one color commentator103, Terry Bradshaw as a matter of fact, Bradshaw who in the Super Bowl at the beginning of the decade was bailed104 out by a circus catch by that lucky stiff Stallworth. The crowd, up high in the fog, rumbles105 and groans107 in poor sync with the television action, trying to read the game off the electronic scoreboard. The announcers ? a black guy with froggy pop eyes, maybe that same guy who married Bill Cosby's television wife, and a white guy with a lumpy face ? seem indignant that God could do this, mess with CBS and blot108 out a TV show the sponsors are paying a million dollars a minute for and millions are watching. They keep wondering aloud why the officials don't call off the game. Harry finds the fog merciful, since before it rolled in the Eagles looked poor, two perfectly thrown TD passes by Cunningham called back because of bonehead penalty plays by Anthony Toney, and then this rookie Jackson dropping a pass when he was a mile open in the end zone. The game flickering109 in the fog, the padded men hulking out of nothingness and then fading back again, has a peculiar110 beauty bearing upon Rabbit's new position at the still center of a new world, personally. The announcers keep saying they've never seen anything like it.
He has trouble at first realizing he must perform for his visitors, that it's not enough to lie here and accept the apparition111 of them like another channel of television. During the commercial, the one for Miller112 that shows the big black guy lifting the pool table so all the balls roll into the pocket supposedly, he lowers his eyes to Judy's eager face, bright and precise as watchworks free of dust and rust70, and says to her, "We learned, didn't we, Judy? We learned how to come about."
"It's like a scissors," the girl says, showing with her hands. "You push toward the sail."
"Right," he says. Or is it away from? His thinking is foggy. His voice, nasal and husky, doesn't sound like his; his throat feels raw from something they did to him when he was brought into the hospital, something with oxygen, he was half out of it and then all the way out thanks to something they slipped into him in the confusion.
"Harry, what do the doctors say about you?" Janice asks. "What's going to happen?" She sits in a chair near his bed, a new kind of vinyl?cushioned wheelchair, like a revved113?up version of Fred Springer's pet Barcalounger. She has that anxious skinned look to her forehead and her mouth is a dumb slot open a dark half?inch. She looks in that two?tone running suit and those bulky Adidas like a senior?league bowling114 champion, her face hard from too much sun, with two little knobs like welts developing over her cheekbones. The delicate skin beneath her eyebrows115 is getting puckery116. With age we grow more ins and outs.
He tells her, "One doc told me I have an athlete's heart. Too big. Too big on the outside, that is, and too small on the inside. The muscle is too thick. Apparently117 the heart isn't a nice valentine like you'd think, it's a muscle. It pumps with a kind of twisting motion, like this." He shows his little audience with a twitching fist: beat, pause, beat, pause. Judy's face is transfixed by the screen of the heart monitor, which he can't see; but he supposes the effort of his small demonstration118 is showing up in his running cardiogram. Janice watches it too, their four eyes shiningly reflecting the electronic jiggle and their two mouths both open to make identical slots of darkness. He has never before seen any sign of heredity between them. He goes on, "They want to put some dye into my heart, by putting a long tube into some artery119 down at the top of my leg, so they can see exactly what's going on, but offhand120 they think at least one of the coronary arteries121 is plugged. Too many pork chops on top of all that hustle122 on the court when I was a kid. No problem, though. They can bypass anything, they do it every day now, as simple as plumbing123 with plastic pipe. They tell me it's amazing, what they've learned to do in the last ten years."
"You're going to have open?heart surgery?" Janice asks in alarm.
The fist that impersonated a heart feels cloudy and heavy; he lowers it carefully to his side on the sheet, and momentarily closes his eyes, to spare himself the sight of his worried wife. "Nothing for now. Maybe eventually. It's an option. Another option is, this catheter has a balloon in it somehow that they inflate124 when it's inside the plugged?up artery. It cracks the plaque125. That's what they call it, plaque. I thought a plaque was what you got for winning the championship." Rabbit has to keep suppressing the impulse to laugh, at his inability to share with Janice the druginduced peace inside his rib47 cage, the sense of being at last at the still center. Painkiller126, blood?thinner, tranquillizer, vasodilator, and diuretic all drip into his system from above, painting the hospital world with rosy127 tints128 of benevolence129 and amusement. He loves the constant action, the visits to extract blood and measure blood pressure and check instruments and drips, and the parade of firm?bodied odorless young females in starchy cotton and colors of skin from every continent who tend to his helpless flesh with a sexy mix of reverence130 and brutal131 condescension132, with that trained look on their pretty faces like actresses or geisha girls. His little white?walled room seems in his entrancement to be a stage set, crowded with unpredictable exits and entrances. Semi?private, it even has a curtain, which conceals133 his roommate, who was burbling and vomiting134 and groaning135 this morning but has fallen since into a silence that might be death. But for Harry, the play goes on, and on cue another actor enters. "Here's a doc now," he announces to Janice. "You ask him whatever you want. I'll watch the game and Judy'll watch my heart monitor. Tell me if it stops, Judy."
"Grandpa, don't joke," the dear child scolds.
The cardiologist is a big red?skinned immigrant Australian named Dr. Olman. He has a pink hooked nose, brilliant white teeth, and bleached136 lank137 hair. Years of the good life in Florida have overlaid his clipped native accent with a Southern drawl. He takes Janice's little narrow brown hand into his meaty red one and they become, in Rabbit's eyes, his cardiac parents ? worried little nutbrown mother and outwardly calm and factual father. "He's been a pretty sick lad," Dr. Olman tells her, "and we've got to teach him how to take better care of himself."
"What's wrong with his heart, exactly?" Janice asks.
"The usual thing, ma'am. It's tired and stiff and full of crud. It's a typical American heart, for his age and economic status et cetera."
That strangely intense and slightly embarrassing Gallo?wine commercial, about the guy who has a blind date with a girl who turns out to be the very liquor saleswoman who advised him what bottle to take the date as a present, comes on.
"As best we can tell without cardiac catheterization," Dr. Olman is saying, "the principal narrowing is the standard one, the left anterior138 descending139, the workhorse of the system. Luckily, he appears to have fairly well?developed collaterals140, which have kept him going. You see, ma'am, whenever the heart's been starving for oxygen, it tries to develop alternative routes to get blood to the muscle. Also, from the murmur we think we hear there may be a fair bit of stenosis around the aortic141 valve. Not a pretty picture, but by no means the worst we've ever seen."
Janice looks at her husband almost with pride. "Oh, Harry! You would mention the little aches and breathing problems, and I never took you seriously. You didn't complain hard enough."
"It was perfect," the girl in the commercial sighingly says, at the end of their date, starry142?eyed and in soft focus; you can see they will fuck, if not this date the next, and marry and live happily ever after, all by the grace of Gallo.
Dr. Olman has sized Janice up as educable and moves into a heavier sell. "Now, if his luck holds and the lesion isn't located at a bifurcation and there's not too much calcification143 a lot of doctors would advise you to begin modestly, with an angioplasty, and wait and see. To my own way of thinking, though, you have to offset144 the relative lack of trauma145 and expense ? we can't forget expense, now can we, what with Medicare's pulling in its horns and this new chappie's promising146 no new taxes? ? we have to offset those psychological pluses against the minus kicker, the likelihood of recurrent stenosis and having to do it all over again, the odds147 of which, to be honest about it, are on the shady side of fifty per cent. For my money, not to keep beating about the bush, the artery bypass is the sucker that does the job. What do you say in the States, never send a boy when you can send a man? Now, ma'am, how much do you want to know about the heart?"
"Everything," Janice says, adoring of this man willing to explain things to her, her tongue peeking148 through as she prepares to concentrate.
"Way to go," Dr. Olman gamely says, and makes a big fist with one hand and with the fingers ofthe other begins to show her how the coronary arteries he on the heart's surface, their branches burrowing149 into the hardworking muscle. Harry has seen this demonstration earlier in the day and signals Judy to come closer to his bed. She is wearing the pink party dress she came down on the airplane in, and the stiff white ribbon around her braided pigtail. Yesterday's experience at sea has given her a sunburn on her nostril41 wings and beneath her clear green eyes, where her freckles150 are thinnest. She keeps staring at his heart monitor.
"What do you see?" he asks her huskily.
"It's like a little twitchy worm, that just goes and goes."
"That's life," he tells her. "That's your granddad."
Judy yields to an impulse: leaning against the bed, she tries to embrace the old man, disarraying151 and tugging153 at the tubes and wires attached to his upper body. "Oh Grandpa," she confesses, "it's all my fault!"
Her breath feels hot on his neck. He hugs her, as best he can, with the arm not pierced by the IV. "Don't be silly. What's your fault?"
"Yesterday. I scared you out there."
"You didn't scare me, sweetie. The Gulf154 of Mexico scared me. You weren't scared?"
Tearily she shakes her head No.
This seems another wonder to him. "Why not?" he asks.
Her smooth little face gets that tiptoe look which in a mature woman signals that she is about to lie. She says, a bit mincingly155, "Yon were out there with me, Grandpa. And there were lots of other boats around."
He renews his trammelled hug and her slender little body is unresisting, something has gone out of it; he feels a roughness in his throat, perhaps from yesterday's gulps156 of saltwater. His eyes film over with the hot relief of tears. On television, men with wide shoulders and narrow hips157 move like gods on Olympus among the clouds. You can't even see any more who is white and who is black. Blinded though they are, the announcers keep yelling in those straining excited voices they have. A commercial shows a Subaru bumpily159 climbing a mountain of dead car chassis160.
"Want to change the channel?" he asks Judy, and moves her hand from his bandaged wrist, where it is hurting him, to the hand control for the television set on its beige metal arm. He lies back feeling the white walls stretch all around him just like the ocean yesterday, his bed a raft. Judy flickers161 the TV through a wrestling match, a parade, a scare commercial with Karl Malden barking that with American Express Traveller's Checks you can't be robbed, a man and a woman in black skating in a sparkle of ice, a tonguein?cheek horror movie about being a teenage werewolf in London, and another movie called, they learn from the station break, The Fists of Bruce Lee. The kung?fu violence is arresting enough to hold Judy's attention for a few minutes. Fragments of what Dr. Ohnan is confidentially162 yet, in that peppy Australian way, quite audibly telling Janice weave into the action ? murderous kicks turned into slow motion by the director, graceful163 blurs164 of Oriental color. ". .. preliminary test . .. pulmonary congestion165 common after a myocardial infarction . . . backup of blood, leakage166 into the lung tissue ... hydralazine ... inflammation of the pericardium . . . Dilantin . . . skin rashes, diarrhea, loss of hair . . . hate to go to a pacemaker for a man this age . . ."
Bruce Lee kicks out, once, twice, thrice, and three handsomely costumed thugs slowly fly toward the corners of the room, furniture shattering like fortune cookies, and suddenly Judy has switched channels again, coming upon a commercial Harry loves, for some skin moisturizer whose name he can never remember, but he could never forget the look on the model's face, the way she smiles over her naked shoulder as she slinks behind the bathroom door, and then when she comes out the satisfied wicked purr in her expression, her wet hair turbanned in a bulky soft towel, her breasts showing cleavage but the nipples just off the screen, if only the screen were a little wider, if he could only slow the action down like in a kung?fu movie, for a thirtieth of a second there might have been a nipple, and the way she relaxes into a blue velvet167 sofa as if ever so profoundly satisfied, lovely eyes closed with their greasy168 lids, her eyebrows slightly thick like Cindy Murkett's, and then the part coming up where she is dressed to go out for the evening, all moisturized still beneath her gold lam& .... "No, wait, honey": he senses that Judy is about to change channels and reaches out to stop her but fails, it's back to the werewolf, the boy's face is growing fur as he crouches in a telephone booth, and then the ice skaters, the woman sliding backward at you with her little skirt flipped169 up; and then the back of Harry's wrist stings from the tug152 he gave the IV, and a flirtatious170 ghost of yesterday's pain plays across his chest. The Demerol must be wearing off. They gave him a little brown bottle of nitroglycerin on his bedside table next to the telephone and a glass of stale water and he shakes one out shakily and puts it beneath his tongue as they have taught him. It burns under his tongue and then, the funny thing, a minute or two later, his asshole tingles171.
"How much junk food does he eat?" Dr. Olman is asking.
"Oh," Janice says, with enthusiasm, "he's a real addict." His wife is, it occurs to Harry, a channel that can't be switched. The same slightly too?high forehead, the same dumb stubborn slot of a mouth, day after day, same time, same station. She looks up into the doctor's big red blond face as if at an instructively beautiful sunset. The two of them make a duo, dividing him up. One takes the inside, the other the outside.
Now a turquoise172 Subaru is spinning along one of those steep spiky Western landscapes that the makers173 of automobile174 commercials love. A shimmery175 model, skinny as a rail, dimpled and squarejawed like a taller Audrey Hepburn from the Breakfast at Tiffany's days, steps out of the car, smiling slyly and wearing a racing176 driver's egg?helmet with her gown made up it seems of ropes of shimmering177 light. Maybe Nelson is right, Toyota is a dull company. Its commercials show people jumping into the air because they're saving a nickel. The channel jumps back to the Fiesta Bowl Parade. Youth, flowers, a giant Garfield the cat jiggling majestically178 along. Harry's internal climate of drugs and their afterwash seems to be undergoing a distant storm, like sunspots or those faint far hurricanes on Jupiter. Along with history, Harry has a superstitious179 interest in astronomy. Our Father, Who art in Heaven . . .
". . . tons of fat through his system," Dr. Olman is saying, "rivers of it, some of it has to stick. Marbled meats, pork sausage, liverwurst, baloney, hot dogs, peanut butter, salted nuts ..."
"He loves all that stuff, he's a terrible nibbler," Janice chimes in, anxious to please, courting, betraying her husband. "He loves nuts."
"Worst thing for him, absolutely the worst," Dr. Olman responds, his voice speeding up, losing its drawl, `full of fat, not to mention sodium180, and cashews, macadamia nuts, they're the worst, macadamia nuts, but it's all bad, bad." In his intensity181 he has begun to crouch29 above her, as if over a slippery putt. "Anything made with hydrogenated vegetable shortenings, coconut182 oil, palm oil, butter, lard, egg yolk183, whole milk, ice cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, any organ meats, all these frozen TV dinners, commercial baked goods, almost anything you buy in a package, in a waxpaper bag, any of it, ma'am, is poison, bloody184 poison. I'll give you a list you can take home."
"You can, but my daughter?in?law is studying nutrition. She has a lot of lists already." On cue, Pru appears, hesitantly filling the doorway185 with her womanly?wide frame in its nappy travelling suit of three?dimensional checks. Unawares, Janice goes on buttering up Dr. Olman. "She's been saying everything you've been saying for years to Harry, but he just won't listen. He think's he's above it all, he thinks he's still a teenager."
The doctor snorts. "Even the teenagers with their supercharged metabolism186 aren't burning up the fats and sugars this country's food industry is pumping into them. We're having adolescent heart attacks all over" ? his voice softens to Southerliness again ? "God's green creation."
Pru steps forward, in her three dimensions. ` Janice, I'm sorry," she says, still shy of using her mother?in?law's name, "I know he shouldn't have so many visitors at once but Nelson is getting frantic187, he's afraid we're going to miss the plane."
Janice stands, so briskly the wheelchair recoils188 under her. She staggers but keeps her feet. "I'll leave. You say hello and bring Judy when you come. Harry, I'll drop by on my way back when I've put them on the plane. But there's an origami demonstration tonight at the Village I don't want to miss. The man has come all the way from Japan." She exits, and Judy switches off the television in the middle of an especially amusing slapstick commercial for Midas mufflers, and exits with her.
Dr. Olman shakes Pru's hand fiercely and tells her, baring his shark?white teeth, "Ma'am, teach this stubborn bastard189 to eat." He turns and punches Harry with a loosened fist on the shoulder. "For half a century, my friend," he says, "you've been pouring sludge through your gut190." Then he, too, is gone.
He and Pru, suddenly alone together, feel shy. "That guy," Harry says, "keeps attacking America. If he doesn't like the food here, why doesn't he go back where he came from and eat kangaroos?"
His tall daughter?in?law fiddles191 with her long red hands, twisting at her wedding ring, yet moves forward, to the foot of the bed. "Harry," she says. "Listen. We're stricken at what's happened to you."
"You and who else?" he asks, determined192 to be debonair193 Bogie at the airport in Casablanca, Flynn at Little Big Horn, George Sanders in the collapsing194 temple to Dagon, Victor Mature having pushed apart the pillars.
"Nelson, obviously. I don't think he slept a wink195 last night, you were so much on his mind. He can't say it, but he loves you."
Harry laughs, gently, since there is this valentine inside him that might rip. "The kid and I have something going between us. Not sure love is what you'd call it." Since she hesitates in replying, looking at him with those staring mud?flecked greenish eyes that Judy's clearer paler eyes were distilled196 from, he goes on, "I love him all right, but maybe it's a him that's long gone. A little tiny kid, looking right up to you while you're letting him down ? you never forget it."
"It's still there, under it all," Pru assures him, without saying what '`it all" is. Her Sphinx?do hair is slightly wild, Harry sees in the brilliant hospital light ?colorless stray filaments197 stand out all around her head. He feels there is a lot she wants to say but doesn't dare. He remembers how she appeared hovering198 above him as he lay breathless on the beach, in her white suit with its spandex crotch, anxious and womanly, her face in shadow, unlookable at, and right beside it like a thunder?head the face of Ed Silberstein's son, his salt?stiffened199 black curls, his butternut skin, his prick200 making its bump in his tight black trunks, beside the five?sided Omni logo ? a smoothie, on the make, on the rise. Hi?ho, Silvers.
"Tell me about you, Pru," Rabbit says, the words gliding201 out of his hoarse202 throat as if his being in bed and chemically relaxed has moved them to a new level of intimacy203. "How's it going for you, with the kid? With Nelson."
People do respond, surprisingly, to the direct approach, as if we're all just waiting in our burrows204 to be ferreted out. She says without hesitation205, "He's a wonderful father to the children. That I can say sincerely. Protective and concerned and involved. When he can focus."
"Why can't he always focus?"
Now she hesitates, unthinkingly revolving206 the ring on her finger.
As if all of Florida is made up of interchangeable parts, a Norfolk pine stands outside his hospital window and holds an invisible bird that makes the sound of wet wood squeaking207. He heard it this morning and he hears it now. His chest seems to echo with a twinge. Just to be on the safe side he takes another nitroglycerin.
Pru blurts208 out, "The lot worries him, I think. Sales have been off these last years with the weaker dollar and all, and what he says are boring models, and I think he's afraid Toyota might lift the dealership209."
"It would take a bomb to make them do that. We've done O.K. by Toyota over the years. When Fred Springer got that franchise210 Japanese products were still considered a joke."
"That was a long time ago, though. Things don't stand still," Pru says. "Nelson has trouble being patient, and to tell the truth I think it scares him to have none of the old?timers around any more, Charlie and then Manny and now Mildred, even though he fired her, and you down here half the year, and f Jake gone over to Volvo?Olds over near that new mall in Oriole, and Rudy opening his own Toyota?Mazda over on 422. He feels alone, and all he has for company are these flaky types from north Brewer."
At the thought of "these flaky types" more of her hairs, glowing like electric filaments here in Florida's fluorescent211 light, stand out from her head in agitation212. She is trying to tell him something, something is slipping, but how can a man tied up helpless in bed track it down? Rabbit has his heart to nurse. This is life and death. His drugs must be wearing off. The deadly awfulness of his situation is beginning to rise in his throat, burning like an acid regurgitation. His asshole tingles, right on schedule. He has something evil and weak inside him that might betray him at any minute into that icy blackness Bernie talked about.
Pru shrugs213 her wide shoulders in delayed answer to his question about how it was going. "What's a life supposed to be? They don't give you another for comparison. I love the big house, and Pennsylvania. In Akron we only ever had apartments, and the rent was always behind, and it seemed like the toilet bowl always leaked."
Rabbit tries to lift himself onto her level, out of his private apprehension214 of darkness, its regurgitated taste. "You're right," he says. "We ought to be grateful. But it's hard, being grateful. It seems like from the start you're put here in a kind of fix, hungry and scared, and the only way out is no good either. Hey, listen. Listen to me. You're still young. You're great?looking. Smile. Smile for me, Teresa."
Pru smiles and comes around the end of the bed and bends down to give him a kiss, not on the mouth this time like in the airport, but on the cheek, avoiding the tubes feeding oxygen into his nose. Her close presence feels huge, checked, clothy, a cloud come over him like the shadow of that hull215 on its side out there on the Gulf, where it was cold and hot both at once. He feels sick; the facts of his case keep wanting to rise in his throat, burning, on the verge216 of making him gag. "You're a sweet man, Harry."
"Yeah, sure. See you in the spring up there."
"It seems terrible, us leaving like this, but there's this party in Brewer Nelson's determined to go to tonight and changing plane reservations is impossible anyway, everything's jammed this time of year, even into Newark."
"What can you do?" he asks her. "I'll be fine. This is probably a blessing217 in disguise. Put some sense into my old head. Get me to lose some weight. Go for walks, eat less crap. The doc says I gotta become a new man."
"And I'll paint my toenails." Pru, standing218 tall again, says in a level low voice he has not exactly heard before, aimed flat at him as a man, "Don't change too much, Harry." She adds, "I'll send Nelson in."
"If the kid's wild to go, tell him to just go. I'll catch him later, up there."
Her mouth pinches down at one corner, her face goes slightly stiff with the impropriety of his suggestion. "He has to see his father," she says.
Pru exits; the white clean world around Harry widens. When everybody leaves, he will give himself the luxury of ringing for the nurse and asking for more Demerol. And see how the Eagles are doing in the fog. And close his eyes for a blessed minute.
Nelson comes in carrying little Roy in his arms, though visitors under six years old aren't supposed to be allowed. The kid wears the child like defensive219 armor: as long as he's carrying a kid of his own, how much can you say against him? Roy stares at Harry indignantly, as if his grandfather being in bed connected with a lot of machinery220 is a threatening trick. When Harry tries to beam him a smile and a wink, Roy with a snap of his head hides his face in his father's neck. Nelson too seems shocked; his eyes keep going up to the monitor, with its orange twitch39 of onrunning life, and then gingerly back to his father's face. Cumbersomely221 keeping his grip on the leaden, staring child, Nelson steps toward the bed and sets a folded copy of the NewsPress on the chrome?edged table already holding the water glass and the telephone and the little brown bottle of nitroglycerin. "Here's the paper when you feel like reading. There's a lot in it about that Pan Am crash you're so interested in. They think they know now exactly what kind of bomb it was ? there's a kind with a barometric222 device that activates223 a timer when a certain altitude is reached."
Up, up; the air thins, the barometer224 registers, the timer begins to tick as the plane snugly225 bores through darkness and the pilot chats on the radio while the cockpit lights burn and wink around him and the passengers nod over their drinks in their slots of pastel plastic. The image, like a seed at last breaking its shell in moist soil, awakens226 in Harry the realization227 that even now as he lies here in this antiseptic white fog tangled in tubes and ties of blood and marriage he is just like the people he felt so sorry for, falling from the burst?open airplane: he too is falling, helplessly falling, toward death. The fate awaiting him behind this veil of medical attention is as absolute as that which greeted those bodies fallen smack228 upon the boggy229 Scottish earth like garbage bags full of water. Smack, splat, bodies bursting across the golf courses and heathery lanes of Lockerbie drenched in night. What met them was no more than what awaits him. Reality broke upon those passengers as they sat carving230 their airline chicken with the unwrapped silver or dozing231 with tubes piping Barry Manilow into their ears and that same icy black reality has broken upon him; death is not a domesticated232 pet of life but a beast that swallowed baby Amber and baby Becky and all those Syracuse students and returning soldiers and will swallow him, it is truly there under him, vast as a planet at night, gigantic and totally his. His death. His purely233 own. The burning intensifies234 in his sore throat and he feels all but suffocated235 by terror.
"Thanks," he hoarsely236 tells his son. "I'll read it when you go. Those damn Arabs. I'm nervous about your missing your plane."
"Don't be. We got tons of time still. Even Mom can't get lost on the way, can she?"
"Drive east from here to 75 and then south to Exit 21. The road feels like it's going nowhere but after three miles the airport shows up." Harry remembers his own drive along that weird237 highway, the lack of billboards238, the palm trees skinny as paint drips, the cocoa?colored chick in the red Camaro convertible239 and stewardess240 cap who tailgated him and then didn't give him a sideways glance, her tipped?up nose and pushed?out lips, and it seems unreal, coated in a fake sunshine like enamel100, like that yellow sunlight they make on TV shows from studio lights. He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it. He feels his body sweating from fear, he smells his own sweat,? clammy like something at the bottom of a well, and sees Nelson standing there bathed in the artificial light of the world that hasn't broken through into death yet, neat and taut in the puttycolored suit he is wearing instead of the denim241 jacket he wore on the flight down, but with his shirt collar still open, so he looks like an all?night gambler who took off his tie in a poker242 game, down here nearly a week and hardly ever saw the sun. The little smudge of his mustache annoys Harry and the kid keeps calling attention to it, sniffing243 and touching244 the underside of his nose as if he smells his father's clammy fear.
He says, "Also, Dad, I noticed the Deion Sanders case is being pushed back into the sports pages and somewhere in Section B there's an article about fighting flab that'll give you a laugh."
"Yeah, flab. I'm flabby on the inside even."
This is the cue for his son to look sincere and ask, "How're you doing anyway?" The kid's face goes a little white around the gills, as if he fears his father will really tell him. His haircut is annoying, too ? short on top and too long in the back, that pathetic rat?tail. And the tiny earring245.
"Pretty good, considering."
"Great. This big beefy doctor with the funny accent came out and talked to us and said that the first one is the one a lot of people don't survive and in your case now, for a while at least, it's just a matter of changing your lifestyle a little."
"That guy has a thing about potato chips and hot dogs. If God didn't want us to eat salt and fat, why did He make them taste so good?"
Nelson's eyes get dark and swarmy, the way they do whenever his father mentions God. The conversation keeps sticking, it doesn't flow, Harry keeps thinking how he is falling, the kid is like a weight on his chest. Come on, he says to himself, try. You only live once.
"Pru told me you were up all night with worry."
"Yeah, well, she exaggerates, but sort of. I don't know why I can't sleep down here. It all feels phony to me, and there's all this stuff back in Brewer I should be tending to."
"Like at the lot? Between holidays is a slow week usually. Everybody's feeling broke after Christmas."
"Well, yeah, and other stuff. I keep feeling hassled."
"That's life, Nelson. Hassle."
"I suppose."
Harry says, "I been thinking about our conversation, about Toyotas being so dull. Give 'em credit, they're trying to sex the line up. They're coming out with this Lexus luxury sedan next fall. V?8 engine even."
"Yeah, but they won't let us regular dealerships handle it. They're establishing a whole new retail246 network. Let 'em, it's going to flop247 anyway. The Japanese aren't Italians. Luxury isn't their bag."
"I forgot about that separate Lexus network. I tell ya, Nelson, I'm not quite with it. I'm in a fog."
"Join the crowd," Nelson says.
"And oh yeah ? the stat sheets. I've been thinking about that. Are you having trouble moving the used? Don't get greedy. Ten per cent markup248 is all you should expect, it's worth shaving the profit just to keep the inventory249 flowing."
"O.K., Dad. If you say so. I'll check it out."
The conversation sticks again. Roy squirms in his father's grip. Harry is falling, the light is just a skin of the dark, thinner than an airplane's skin, thinner than an aluminum250 beer can. Grab something, anything. "She's turned out to be quite a fine woman, Pru," he volunteers to his son.
The boy looks surprised. "Yeah, she's not bad." And he volunteers, "I should try to be nicer to her."
"How?"
"Oh ? you know. Clean up my act. Try to be more mature."
"You always seemed pretty mature to me. Maybe too, early on. Maybe I didn't set such a good example of maturity251."
"All the more reason, then. For me, I mean."
Does Harry imagine it, or is there a stirring, a tiny dry coughing, behind the curtain next to him, in the bed he cannot see? His phantom252 roommate lives. He says, "I'm really getting anxious about you making your plane."
"Sorry about that, by the way. I feel crummy leaving. Pru and I were talking last night, if we ought to stay a few more days, but, I don't know, you make plans, you get socked in."
"Don't I know it. What could you do, staying? Your old man's fine. He's in great hands. I just have to learn to live with a not so great heart. A bum158 ticker. Charlie's done it for twenty years, I can do it." But then Rabbit adds, threatening to pass into the maudlin253, the clingy, the elegiac, "But, then, he's a wiry little Greek and I'm a big fat Swede."
Nelson has become quite tense. He radiates a nervous desire to be elsewhere. "O.K., Dad. You're right, we'd better get moving. Give Grandpa a kiss," he tells Roy.
He leans the boy in, like shovelling254 off a wriggling255 football, to kiss his grandfather's cheek. But Roy, instead of delivering a kiss, grabs the double?barrelled baby?blue oxygen tube feeding into Harry's nose and yanks it out.
`Jesus!" Nelson says, showing emotion at last. "You all right? Did that hurt?" He whacks256 his son on the bottom, and sets him down on the floor.
It did hurt slightly, the sudden smarting violence of it, but Harry has to laugh. "No problem," he says. "It just sits in there, like upside?down glasses. Oxygen, I don't really need it, it's just one more perk257."
Roy has gone rubber?legged with rage and collapses258 on the shiny floor beside the bed. He writhes259 and makes a scrawking breathless noise and Nelson bends down and hits him again.
"Don't hit the kid," Harry tells him, not emphatically. "He just wanted to do me a favor." As best he can with his free hand, he resettles the two pale?blue tubes one over each ear as they come from the oxygen box hung on the wall behind him and resettles the clip, with its gentle enriching whisper, on his septum. "He maybe thought it was like blowing my nose for me."
"You little shit, you could have killed your own grandfather," Nelson explains down at the writhing260 child, who has to be hauled, kicking, out from under the bed.
"Now who's exaggerating," Harry says, "I'm tougher to kill than that," and begins to believe it. Roy, white in the gills just like his dad, finds his voice and lets loose a yell and tries to throw himself out of Nelson's grasp. The rubber heels of nurses are hurrying toward them down the hall. The unseen roommate suddenly groans behind his white curtain, with a burbly, deep?pulmonary?trouble kind of groan106. Roy is kicking like a landed fish and must be catching261 Nelson in the stomach; Harry has to chuckle262, to think of the child doing that. On one grab: deft263. Maybe in his four?yearold mind he thought the tubes were snakes eating at his grandfather's face; maybe he just thought they were too ugly to look at.
Full though his arms are, Nelson manages to lean in past the tangle95 of life?supporting connections and give Harry's cheek the quick kiss he meant Roy to bestow264. A warm touch of mustache. A sea?urchin's sting. The watery265 monster stirring behind the bed curtain releases another burbling, wracking groan from the deeps. Alarmed nurses enter the room; their cheeks are flushed. The head nurse looms266, with her waxy woven tresses, like oodles of black noodles or packets of small firecrackers.
"Oh yeah," Harry thinks to add as Nelson hurries his yelling, writhing burden away, down the hall, toward Pennsylvania. "Happy 1989!"
收听单词发音 |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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patio
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| n.庭院，平台 | |
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doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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briskness
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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toad
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puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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underneath
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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hood
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linoleum
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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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extravagant
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malice
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motive
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drooping
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panes
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vaulted
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groves
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crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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crouches
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spiky
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scowls
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| 不悦之色，怒容( scowl的名词复数 ) | |
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bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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jawed
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aged
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obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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barricaded
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| 设路障于，以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 )； 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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twitching
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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drawn
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nostril
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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waxy
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| adj.苍白的；光滑的 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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rib
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| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
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displeased
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| a.不快的 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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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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53
rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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54
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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55
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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56
hiccup
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| n.打嗝 | |
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57
rumpling
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的现在分词 ) | |
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58
subpoenas
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| n.（传唤出庭的）传票( subpoena的名词复数 )v.（用传票）传唤（某人）( subpoena的第三人称单数 ) | |
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59
killings
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| 谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发 | |
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60
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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61
brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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62
pinpointed
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| 准确地找出或描述( pinpoint的过去式和过去分词 )； 为…准确定位 | |
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63
cocaine
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| n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂） | |
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64
hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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65
stiffens
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| （使）变硬，（使）强硬( stiffen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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66
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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67
groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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68
addict
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| v.使沉溺；使上瘾；n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人 | |
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69
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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70
rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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71
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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72
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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73
chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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74
creased
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的过去式和过去分词 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹； 皱皱巴巴 | |
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75
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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76
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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77
hoop
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| n.（篮球）篮圈，篮 | |
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78
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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79
furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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80
marital
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| adj.婚姻的，夫妻的 | |
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81
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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82
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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83
additives
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| n.添加剂( additive的名词复数 ) | |
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84
taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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85
jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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86
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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87
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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88
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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89
addictive
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| adj.(吸毒等)使成瘾的，成为习惯的 | |
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90
ebbing
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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91
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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92
pajamas
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| n.睡衣裤 | |
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93
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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94
freckle
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| n.雀簧；晒斑 | |
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95
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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96
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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97
expertise
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| n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长 | |
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98
gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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99
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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100
enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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101
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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102
coverage
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| n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖 | |
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103
commentator
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| n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员 | |
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104
bailed
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| 保释，帮助脱离困境( bail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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105
rumbles
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| 隆隆声，辘辘声( rumble的名词复数 ) | |
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106
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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107
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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108
blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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109
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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110
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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111
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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112
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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113
revved
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| v.（使）加速( rev的过去式和过去分词 )；（数量、活动等）激增；（使发动机）快速旋转；（使）活跃起来 | |
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114
bowling
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| n.保龄球运动 | |
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115
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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116
puckery
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| adj.易皱的；弄皱的；缩拢的；起褶的 | |
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117
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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118
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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119
artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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120
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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121
arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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122
hustle
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| v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌) | |
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123
plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 | |
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124
inflate
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| vt.使膨胀，使骄傲，抬高（物价） | |
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125
plaque
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| n.饰板，匾，(医)血小板 | |
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126
painkiller
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| n.止痛药 | |
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127
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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128
tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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129
benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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130
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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131
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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132
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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133
conceals
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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134
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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135
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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136
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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137
lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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138
anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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139
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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140
collaterals
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| n.附属担保品( collateral的名词复数 ) | |
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141
aortic
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| adj.大动脉的 | |
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142
starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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143
calcification
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| n.钙化 | |
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144
offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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145
trauma
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| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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146
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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147
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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148
peeking
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| v.很快地看( peek的现在分词 )；偷看；窥视；微露出 | |
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149
burrowing
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的现在分词 )；翻寻 | |
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150
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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151
disarraying
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| vt.使混乱（disarray的现在分词形式） | |
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152
tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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153
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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154
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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155
mincingly
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156
gulps
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| n.一大口（尤指液体）( gulp的名词复数 )v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的第三人称单数 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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157
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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158
bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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159
bumpily
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| adv.扑通 | |
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160
chassis
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| n.汽车等之底盘；（飞机的）起落架；炮底架 | |
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161
flickers
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| 电影制片业； （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的名词复数 ) | |
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162
confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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163
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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164
blurs
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| n.模糊( blur的名词复数 )；模糊之物；（移动的）模糊形状；模糊的记忆v.（使）变模糊( blur的第三人称单数 )；（使）难以区分 | |
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165
congestion
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| n.阻塞，消化不良 | |
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166
leakage
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| n.漏，泄漏；泄漏物；漏出量 | |
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167
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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168
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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169
flipped
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| 轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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170
flirtatious
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| adj.爱调情的，调情的，卖俏的 | |
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171
tingles
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| n.刺痛感( tingle的名词复数 )v.有刺痛感( tingle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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172
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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173
makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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174
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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175
shimmery
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| adj.微微发亮的 | |
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176
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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177
shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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178
majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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179
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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180
sodium
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| n.（化）钠 | |
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181
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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182
coconut
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| n.椰子 | |
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183
yolk
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| n.蛋黄，卵黄 | |
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184
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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185
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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186
metabolism
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| n.新陈代谢 | |
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187
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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188
recoils
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| n.（尤指枪炮的）反冲，后坐力( recoil的名词复数 )v.畏缩( recoil的第三人称单数 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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189
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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190
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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191
fiddles
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| n.小提琴( fiddle的名词复数 )；欺诈；（需要运用手指功夫的）细巧活动；当第二把手v.伪造( fiddle的第三人称单数 )；篡改；骗取；修理或稍作改动 | |
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192
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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193
debonair
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| adj.殷勤的，快乐的 | |
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194
collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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195
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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196
distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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197
filaments
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| n.（电灯泡的）灯丝( filament的名词复数 )；丝极；细丝；丝状物 | |
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198
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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199
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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200
prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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201
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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202
hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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203
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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204
burrows
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| n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 )；翻寻 | |
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205
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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206
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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207
squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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208
blurts
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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209
dealership
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| n.商品特许经销处 | |
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210
franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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211
fluorescent
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| adj.荧光的，发出荧光的 | |
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212
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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213
shrugs
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| n.耸肩（以表示冷淡，怀疑等）( shrug的名词复数 ) | |
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214
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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215
hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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216
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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217
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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218
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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219
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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220
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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221
cumbersomely
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| 笨重的； 累赘的，难以携带的； 缓慢复杂的，冗长的； 麻烦的 | |
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222
barometric
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| 大气压力 | |
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223
activates
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| 使活动，起动，触发( activate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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224
barometer
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| n.气压表，睛雨表，反应指标 | |
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225
snugly
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| adv.紧贴地；贴身地；暖和舒适地；安适地 | |
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226
awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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227
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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228
smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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229
boggy
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| adj.沼泽多的 | |
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230
carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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231
dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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232
domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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233
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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234
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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235
suffocated
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| （使某人）窒息而死( suffocate的过去式和过去分词 )； （将某人）闷死； 让人感觉闷热； 憋气 | |
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236
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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237
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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238
billboards
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| n.广告牌( billboard的名词复数 ) | |
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239
convertible
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| adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车 | |
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240
stewardess
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| n.空中小姐，女乘务员 | |
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241
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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242
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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243
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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244
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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245
earring
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| n.耳环，耳饰 | |
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246
retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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247
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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248
markup
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| n.加价，涨价，利润 | |
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249
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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250
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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251
maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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252
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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253
maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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254
shovelling
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| v.铲子( shovel的现在分词 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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255
wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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256
whacks
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| n.重击声( whack的名词复数 )；不正常；有毛病v.重击，使劲打( whack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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257
perk
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| n.额外津贴；赏钱；小费； | |
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258
collapses
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| 折叠( collapse的第三人称单数 )； 倒塌； 崩溃； （尤指工作劳累后）坐下 | |
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259
writhes
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的第三人称单数 ) | |
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260
writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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261
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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262
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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263
deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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264
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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265
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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266
looms
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| n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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