BY MID1?JUNE the weeds have taken over: burdock and chicory stand three feet tall along the stony2 dry shoulders of Route 111, and the struggling little yew3 hedge meant to dress up the base of the Springer Motors display window has crabgrass and purslane spreading through the rotting bark mulch, which hasn't been renewed for a couple of years. It's one of the things Harry4 keeps making a mental note to do: call the landscaping service and renew the mulch and replace the dead yews5, about a third of them, they look like hell, like missing teeth. Across the four?lane highway, its traffic thicker and faster than ever though the state still holds to the fifty?five?mile?an?hour speed limit, the takeout restaurant called the Chuck Wagon6 has been replaced by a Pizza Hut, one of the six or so around Brewer7 now. What do people see in it? All those gummy wedges of dough8 and cheese, that when you try to eat them pull long strings9 out in front of your face. But, on Saturdays when in the weekend mood Benny runs over and brings back an order for whoever wants it, Harry allows himself a pepperoni with peppers and onions but no anchovies10, please. Like little snails11 stuck in the mud.
Today is not Saturday, it is Monday, the day after Father's Day. Nobody sent Harry a card. He and Janice have visited Nelson twice, for family therapy at this gloomy big rehab center in North Philly, full of banisters and bulletin boards and a damp mimeo-graph smell that reminds him of the basement Sunday school he went to, and both times it was like a quarrel around the kitchen table only with a referee13, a lean pale colored woman with fancy spectacles and one of these sweet churchgoing smiles Harry asso-ciates with the better type of Philadelphia black. They go over the old stuff ?the baby's death, the mess in the Sixties with Janice moving out and Jill and Skeeter moving in, the crazy way Nelson got himself married to this Kent State secretary an inch taller and a year older than he, a Catholic furthermore, and the kind of crazy way the young couple moved into the old Springer house and the older couple moved out and in fact lives half the year in Florida, all so the kid can run wild with the car agency; Harry explains how from his point of view Nelson's been spoiled rotten by his mother because of her guilt15 complex and that's why the kid feels entitled to live in never?never land with all these fags and druggies and let his wife and children go around in rags. When he talks, the mocha?colored therapist's smile gets even more pious16 and patient and then she turns to one of the others, Nelson or Janice or Pru, and asks them how they feel about what they've just heard, as if what he's saying isn't a description of facts but a set of noises to be rolled into some general mishmash. All this "talking through" and "processing" therapists like to do cheapens the world's facts; it reduces decisions that were the best people could do at the time to dream moves, to reflexes that have been "processed" in a million previous cases like so much shredded18 wheat. He feels anticipated and discounted in advance, whatever he says, and increasingly aggravated19, and winds up telling Janice and Pru to go next time without him.
Benny comes over to where Harry stands at the window looking out and asks, "Whajja do for Father's Day?"
Harry is pleased to have an answer. "Nelson's wife brought our grandchildren over in the afternoon and I did a cookout for everybody on the outdoor grill20." It sounds ideally American but had its shaky underside. Their grill, for one thing, is a metal sphere that Consumer Reports said years ago was a classic but that Harry never has quite the patience for, you must wait until the briquettes are gray and ashy, but he's afraid of waiting too long, so there was a lot of staring at the raw hamburger patties not cooking, with Janice annoying him by offering to cook them in the kitchen, since the children were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. For another, the grandchildren brought him cute grandfather's cards, all right, both by this new artist Gary Larson that everybody else thinks is so funny, but this uniformity ? they were even signed by the same red pen, Judy's with quite a girlish flourish to the "y" and Roy's a bunch of aimless but intense pre?literate21 stabs ? suggested a lack of planning, a quick stop at the drugstore on the way over from the Flying Eagle. Pru and the kids arrived with their hair wet from the pool. She brought a bowl of salad she had made at home.
"Sounds terrific," Benny says, in his husky small voice.
"Yeah," Harry agrees, explaining, as if his image of Pru with her wet long hair holding this big wooden bowl of lettuce22 and sliced radishes on her hip23 was visible to them both, "we've arranged a temporary membership for Nelson's wife over at the country club, and they'd been swimming over there most of the day."
"Nice," Benny says. "She seems a nice gal24, Teresa. Never came over here to the lot much, but I hate to see a family like that having a hard time."
"They're managing," Harry says, and changes the subject. "D'jou watch any of the Open?" Somebody really should go out and pick up all the wrappers that blow over from the Pizza Hut and get caught in the struggling little yew hedge. But he doesn't like to bend over, and doesn't quite feel he can order Benny to do it.
"Naa, I can't get turned on by games," the pudgy young sales representative says, more aggressively than the question requires. "Even baseball, a game or two, I'm bored. You know, what's in it for me? So what?, if you follow me."
There used to be a stately old maple25 tree across Route 111 that the Pizza Hut cut down to expand its red?roofed facility. The roof is shaped like a hat, with two slants26. He ought to be grateful, Harry thinks, to have a lively business along this struggling little strip. "Well," he tells Benny, not wanting to argue, "with the Phils in last place you aren't missing much. The worst record in baseball, and now they've traded away two of their old all?stars. Bedrosian and Samuel. There's no such thing as loyalty27 any more."
Benny continues to explain himself, unnecessarily. "Me, I'd rather do something myself f on a nice Sunday, not sit there like a couch potato, you know what I mean? Get outdoors with my little girl at the neighbor's pool, or go take the family for a walk up the mountain, if it's not too hot, you know."
These people who keep saying "you know": as if if they don't keep nailing your attention to their words it'll drift off. "That's the way I used to be," Harry tells him, relaxing as the disturbing image of Pru holding the great bowl on her hip recedes28, and feeling philosophical29 and pleasurably melancholic30 the way he usually does gazing out this big window. Above his head the big blue paper banner spelling ArnAUATOYoT with the sun shining through it is beginning to come unstuck from the glass. "Always doing some sport as a kid, and up until recently out on the golf course, flogging the stupid ball."
"You could still do that," Benny says, with that Italian huskiness, faintly breathless. "In fact, I bet your doc advises it. That's what mine advises, exercise. You know, for my weight."
"I probably should do something," Harry agrees, "to keep the circulation going. But, I don't know, golf suddenly seemed stupid. I realized I'd never get any better at it, at this point. And the guys I had my old foursome with have pretty well moved away. It's all these blond beefy yuppie types up at the club, and they all ride carts. They're in such a fucking hurry to get back to making money they ride around in carts, wearing the grass off the course. I used to like to walk and carry. You'd strengthen your legs. That's where the power of a golf swing is, believe it or not. In the legs. I was mostly arms. I knew the right thing to do, I could see it in the other guys and the pros31 on TV, but I couldn't make myself do it."
The length and inward quality of this speech make Benny uneasy. "You ought to be getting some exercise," he says. "Especially with your history."
Rabbit doesn't know if he means his recent medical history, or his ancient history of high?school athletics32. The framed blowups of his old basketball photos have come out of Nelson's office and back onto the walls, rose?colored though they are, above the performance board. That was something he did carry through on, unlike the rotting bark mulch. ANGSTROM HITS FOR 42. "When Schmidt quit, that got to me," he tells Benny, even though the guy keeps saying he is no sports nut. Maybe he enjoys bullying33 him with it, boring him. He wonders how much Benny was in on Nelson's shenanigans, but didn't have the heart or energy to fire him when he came back to run the lot. Get through the day, and the cars sell themselves. Especially the Carnry and Corolla. Who could ask for anything more?
"All he had to do," he explains to Benny, "to earn another half million was stay on the roster34 until August fifteenth. And he began the season like a ball of fire, two home runs the first two games, coming off that rotator?cuff35 surgery. But, like Schmidt himself said, it got to the point where he'd tell his body to do something and it wouldn't do it. He knew what he had to do and couldn't do it, and he faced the fact and you got to give him credit. In this day and age, he put honor over money."
"Eight errors," Elvira Ollenbach calls in her deep voice from over in her booth, on the wall toward Paraguay, where she has been filling out the bill of sale and NV?1 for an ivory Corolla LE she sold yesterday to one of these broads that come in and ask to deal with her. They have jobs, money, even the young ones that used to be home making babies. If you look, more and more, you see women driving the buses, the delivery trucks. It's getting as bad as Russia; next thing we'll have women coalminers. Maybe we already do. The only difference between the two old superpowers is they sell their trees to Japan in different directions. "An error each in the last two games against the Giants," Elvira inexorably recites. "And hitting .203, just two hits his last forty?one at bats." Her head is full, between her pretty little jug36 ears, with figures. Her father was a sports addict37, she has explained, and to communicate with him she followed all this stuff and now can't break the habit.
"Yeah," Rabbit says, he feels weakly, taking some steps toward her desk. "But still, it took a lot of style. Just a week ago, did you see, there was this interview in some Philadelphia paper where he said how great he felt and he was only in a slump38 like any overeager kid? Then he was man enough to change his mind. When all he had to do was hang around to collect a million and a half total. I like the way he went out," Rabbit says, "quick, and on his own nickel."
Elvira, not looking up from her paperwork, her pendulous39 gold earrings40 bobbing as she writes, says, "They would have cut him by August, the way he was going. He spared himself the humiliation41."
"Exactly," Harry says, still weakly, torn between a desire to strike an alliance with this female and an itch12 to conquer her, to put her in her place. Not that she and Benny have been difficult to deal with. Docile42, rather, as if anxious that they not be swept out of the lot along with Lyle and Nelson. It was easiest for Harry to accept them as innocents and not rock the agency worse than it was being rocked. Both of them have connections in Brewer and move Toyotas, and if the conversations during idle time "down" time, young people called it now ? weren't as satisfying, as clarifying, as those he used to have with Charlie Stavros, perhaps the times were less easy to clarify. Reagan left everybody in a daze43, and now the Communists were acting44 confused too. "How about those elections in Poland?" he says. "Voting the Party out ? who ever would have thought we'd live to see the day? And Gorby telling all the world the contractors45 who put up those sand castles in Armenia were crooks46? And in China, what's amazing isn't the crackdown but that the kids were allowed to run the show for a month and nobody knew what to do about it! It's like nobody's in charge of the other side any more. I miss it," he says. "The cold war. It gave you a reason to get up in the morning."
He says these things to be provocative47, to get a rise out of Benny or Elvira, but his words drift away like the speech of old people on the porches when he was a boy. Not for the first time since returning to the lot does he feel he is not really there, but is a ghost being humored. His words are just noises. In Nelson's old office, and the office next to it where Mildred used to be, the accountant Janice has hired on Charlie's advice is going through the books, a task so extensive he has brought a full?time assistant. These two youngish men, who dress in gray suits of which they hang up the jackets when arriving, putting them on again when they depart, feel like the real management of the firm.
"Elvira," he says, always enjoying pronouncing her name, "did you see this morning in the paper where four men were charged with a felony for chaining themselves to a car in front of an abortion48 clinic? And with contributing to the delinquency of a minor49 since they had a seventeen?year?old boy along?" He knows where she stands: pro17?choice. All these independent bimbos are. He takes a kind of pro?life tilt50 to gall51 her but his heart isn't really in it and she knows it. She leaves her desk and comes striding toward him, thrillingly thin, holding the completed NV?1s, her wide jawed52 little head balanced with its pulled?back shiny?brown hair on her slender neck, her dangling53 big gold earrings shaped like Brazil nuts. He retreats a step and the three of them stand together at the window, Harry between them and a head taller.
"Wouldn't you know," she says, "it would be all men. Why do they care so much? Why are they so passionate54 about what some women they don't even know do with their bodies?"
"They think it's murder," Harry says. "They think the fetus55 is a little separate person from the morning after on."
His way ofputting it feeds into her snort of disgust. "Tccha, they don't know what they think," she says. "If men could get knocked up this wouldn't even be a debate. Would it, Benny?"
She is bringing him in to dilute56 whatever Harry is trying to do to her with this provocative topic. Benny says carefully, huskily, "My church says abortion is a sin."
"And you believe them, until you want to do it, right? Tell us about you and Maria ? you use birth control? Seventy per cent of young married Catholics do, you know that?"
A strange aspect of his encounter with Pru, Harry remembers, had been the condom she had produced, out of the pocket of her shorty bathrobe. Either she always kept one there or had foreseen fucking him before coming into the room. He wasn't used to them, not since the Army, but went along with it without a protest, it was her show. The thing had been a squeeze, he had been afraid he couldn't keep up his own pressure against it, and his pubic hair, where he had some left after the angioplasty, the way they shaved him, got caught at the base in the unrolling, a little practical fussing there, she helped in the dim light, it maybe had made him slower to come, not a bad thing, as she came twice, under him once and then astraddle, rain whipping at the window behind the drawn57 shade, her hips58 so big and broad in his hands he didn't feel fat himself, her tits atwitter as she jiggled in pursuit of the second orgasm, he near to fainting with worry over joggling his defective59 heart. A certain matter?of?fact shamelessness about Pru reduced a bit the poetry of his first sight of her naked and pale like that street of blossoming trees. She did it all but was blunt about it and faintly wooden, as if the dressmaker's dummy60 in the dark behind him had grown limbs and a head with swinging car-rot?colored hair. To keep his prick61 up he kept telling himself, This is the first time I've ever fucked a left?handed woman.
Benny is blushing. He's not used to talking this way with a woman. "Maybe so," he admits. "If it's not a mortal sin, you don't have to confess it unless you want to."
"That saves the priest a lot of embarrassment," Elvira tells him. "Suppose no matter what you two use Maria kept getting knocked up, what would you do? You don't want that precious little girl of yours to feel crowded, you can give her the best the way things are. What's more important, quality of life for the family you already have, or a little knot of protein the size of a termite62?"
Benny has a kind of squeaking63 girlish voice that excitement can bring out. "Lay off, Ellie. Don't make me think about it. You're offending my religion. I wouldn't mind a couple more kids, what the hell. I'm young."
Harry tries to help him out. "Who's to say what's the quality of life?" he asks Elvira. "Maybe the extra kid is the one that's going to invent the phonograph."
"Not out of the ghetto64 he isn't. He's the kid that mugs you for crack money sixteen years later."
"You don't have to get racist65 about it," Harry says, having been mugged in a sense by a white kid, his own son.
"It's the opposite of racist, it's realistic," Elvira tells him. "It's the poor black teenage mother whose right to abortion these crazy fundamentalist jerks are trying to take away."
"Yeah," he responds, "it's the poor black teenage mother who wants to have the baby, because she never had a doll to play with and she loves the idea of sticking the taxpayer66 with another wel-fare bill. Up yours, Whitey ? that's what the birth statistics are saying."
"Now who's sounding racist?"
"Realistic, you mean."
Relaxed in the aftermath of love, and grateful to be still alive, he had asked Pru how queer she thought Nelson was, with all this palling67 around with Lyle and Slim. Her breath, in the watery68 light from the window, was made visible by fine jets of inhaled69 cigarette smoke as she thoughtfully answered, only a little taken aback by the question, "No, Nelson likes girls. He's a mamma's boy but he takes after you that way. They just look bigger to him than to you." Coming into the room less than an hour later, Janice had sniffed70 the cigarette smoke but he had pretended to be too sleepy to discuss it. Pru took the second butt71 away with the condom but the first one, drowned over on the windowsill, was by next morn-ing so saturated72 and flattened73 it could have been there for ages, a historical relic74 of Nelson and Melanie. Rabbit sighs and says, "You're right, Elvira. People should have a choice. Even if they make bad ones." From the room he was in with Pru his mind moves to the one he had shared with Ruth, one flight up on Summer Street, and the last time he saw it: she told him she was pregnant and called him Mr. Death and he begged her to have the baby. Have it, have it you say: how? Will you marry me? She mocked him, but pleaded too, and in the end, yes, to be realistic, probably did have the abortion. If you can't work it out, I'm dead to you; I'm dead to you and this baby of yours is dead too. That nurse with the round face and sweet disposition75 in St. Joseph's had nothing to do with him, just like Ruth told him the last time he saw her, in her farmhouse76 ten years ago. He had had one daughter and she died; God didn't trust him with another. He says aloud, "Schmidt did what Rose is too dumb to: quit, when you've had it. Take your medicine, don't prolong the agony with all these lawyers."
Benny and Elvira look at him, alanned by how his mind has wandered. But he enjoys his sensation, of internal roaming. When he first came to the lot as Chief Sales Rep, after Fred Springer had died, he was afraid he couldn't fill the space. But now as an older man, with his head so full of memories, he fills it without even trying.
Through the plate glass he sees a couple in their thirties, maybe early forties, everybody looks young to him now, out on the lot among the cars, stooping to peek77 into the interiors and at the fac-tory sticker on the windows. The woman is plump and white and in a halter top showing her lardy arms, and the man darker, much darker ? Hispanics come in all these shades ? and skinny, in a grape?colored tank top cut off at the midriff: Their ducking heads move cautiously, as if afraid of an Indian ambush78 out in the prairie of glittering car roofs, a pioneer couple in their way, at least in this part of the world where the races don't much mix.
Benny asks Elvira, "You want 'em, or do I?"
She says, "You do. If the woman needs a little extra, bring her in and I'll chat her up. But don't aim it all at her, just because she's white. They're both going to be miffed if you snub the man."
"Whaddeya think I am, a bigot?" Benny says mock?comically, but his demeanor79 is sad and determined80 as he walks out of the air?conditioning into the June humidity and heat.
"You shouldn't ride him about his religion," Harry tells Elvira.
"I don't. I just think that damn Pope he's got ought to be put in jail for what he does to women."
Peggy Fosnacht, Rabbit remembers, before she had a breast cut off and then upped and died, had been wild with anger toward the Pope. Anger is what gives you cancer, he has read somewhere. If you've been around long enough, he reflects, you've heard it all, the news and the commentary both, churned like the garbage in a Disposall that doesn't drain, the media every night trying to whip you up into a frenzy81 so you'll run out and buy all the depressing stuff they advertise, laxatives and denture adhesive82 cream, Fixodent and Sominex and Tylenol and hemorrhoid medicine and mouthwash against morning mouth. Why does the evening news assume the people who watch it are in such decrepit83 plugged?up shape? It's enough to make you switch the channel. The commercials revolt him, all that friendly jawing84 among these folksy crackerbarrel types about rectal itching85 and burning, and the one of the young/old beautiful woman in soft focus stretching so luxuriously86 in her white bathrobe because she's just taken a shit and all those people in the Ex?Lax ad saying "Good morning" one after the other so you can't help picturing the world filling up with our smiling American excrement87, we'll have to pay poor third?world countries to dump it pretty soon, like toxic88 waste. "Why pick on the Pope?" Harry asks. "Bush is just as bad, anti?choice."
"Yes, but he'll change when the women start voting Republicans out. There's no way to vote the Pope out."
"Do you ever get the feeling," he asks her, "now that Bush is in, that we're kind of on the sidelines, that we're sort of like a big Canada, and what we do doesn't much matter to anybody else? Maybe that's the way it ought to be. It's a kind of relief, I guess, not to be the big cheese."
Elvira has decided89 to be amused. She fiddles90 with one of her Brazil?nut earrings and looks up at him slantwise. "You matter to everybody, Harry, if that's what you're hinting at."
This is the most daughterly thing she has ever said to him. He feels himself blush. "I wasn't thinking of me, I was thinking of the country. You know who I blame? The old Ayatollah, for calling us the Great Satan. It's like he put the evil eye on us and we shrank. Seriously. He really stuck it to us, somehow."
"Don't live in a dream world, Harry. We still need you down here."
She goes out to the lot, where a quartet of female teenagers have showed up, all in jackets of stone?washed denim92. Who knows, even teenagers these days have money enough for a Toyota. Maybe it's an all?girl rock band, shopping for a van to tour in. Harry wanders in to the office where the visiting accountants are nesting, day after day, in piles of paper. The one in charge has a rubbery tired face with dark rings under his eyes, and the assistant seems to be a kind of moron93, a simpleton at speaking anyway, with not enough back to his head. As if to make up for any deficiency he always wears a clean white shirt with a tight necktie, pinned to his chest with a tieclip.
"Ah," the one in charge says, "just the guy we need. Does the name Angus Barfield mean anything to you?" The rings under his eyes are so deep and deeply bruised94 they go all the way around his sockets95; he looks like a raccoon. Though his face shows a lot of wear, his hair is black as shoe polish, and lies as flat on his head as if painted in place. These accountants have to be tidy, all those numbers they write down, thousands and millions, and never a five that could be confused with a three or a seven with a one. As he cocks a ringed eye at Harry waiting for an answer, his rubbery mouth slides around in a restless wise?guy motion.
"No," Harry says, "and yet, wait. There's a faint bell. Barfield."
"A good guy for you to know," the accountant says, with a sly grimace96 and twist of his lips. "From December to April, he was buying a Toyota a month." He checks a paper under his shirtsleeved forearm. He has very long black hairs on his wrists. "A Corolla four?door, a Tercel five?speed hatchback, a Canny97 wagon, a deluxe98 two?passenger 4?Runner, and in April he really went fancy and took on a Supra Turbo with a sport roof, to the tune99 of twenty?five seven. Totals up to just under seventy?five K. All in the same name and the same address on Willow100 Street."
"Where's Willow?"
"That's one of the side streets up above Locust101, you know. The area's gotten kind of trendy."
"Locust," Harry repeats, struggling to recall. He has heard the odd name "Angus" before, from Nelson's lips. Going off to a party in north Brewer.
"Single white male. Excellent credit ratings. Not much of a haggler102, paid list price every time. The only trouble with him as a customer," the accountant says, "is according to city records he's been dead for six months. Died before Christmas." He purses his lips into a little bunch under one nostril103 and lifts his eyebrows104 so high his nostrils105 dilate106 in sympathy.
"I got it," Harry says, with a jarring pounce107 of his heart. "That's Slim. Angus Barfield was the real name of a guy everybody called Slim. He was a, a gay I guess, about my son's age. Had a good job in downtown Brewer ? administered one of those HUD job-training programs for high?school dropouts. He was a trained psychologist, I think Nelson once told me."
The moronic108 assistant, who has been listening with the staring effort of a head that can only hold one thing at a time, giggles109: the humor of insanity110 spills over onto psychologists. The other twists up the lower part of his face in a new way, as if demonstrating knots. "Bank loan officers love government employees," he says. "They're sure and steady, see?"
Since the man seems to expect it, Harry nods, and the accoun-tant dramatically slaps the tidy chaos111 of papers spread out on the desk. "December to April, Brewer Trust extended five car loans to this Angus Barfield, made over to Springer Motors."
"How could they, to the same guy? Common sense -"
"Since computers, my friend, common sense has gone out the window. It's joined your Aunt Matilda's ostrich112?feather hat. The auto113?loan department of a bank is just tiddledywinks; the com-puter checked his credit and liked it and the loan was approved. The checks were cashed but never showed up in the company credits. We think your pal14 Lyle opened a dummy somewhere." The man stabs a stack of bank statements with a finger; it has black hairs between the knuckles114 and bends back so far Rabbit winces115 and looks away. This rubbery guy is one of those born teachers Rabbit has instinctively116 avoided all his life. "Let me put it like this. A computer is like a Frenchman. It seems real smart until you know the language. Once you know the language, you realize it's dumb as hell. Quick, sure. But quick ain't the same as smart."
"But," Harry gropes to say, "but for Lyle and Nelson, Lyle especially, to use poor Slims name in a scam like this when he had just died, when he was just about buried ? would they have actu-ally been so hard?hearted?"
The accountant slumps117 a little under the weight of such naiveté. "These were hungry boys. The dead have no feelings, that I've heard about. The guy's credit hadn't been pulled from the computer, and between these loans from Brewer Trust and the diddled inventory118 with Mid?Atlantic Toyota, some two hundred grand was skimmed from this operation, that we can verify so far. That's a lot of Toll91 House cookies."
The assistant giggles again. Rabbit, hearing the sum, goes cold with the premonition that this debt will swallow him. Here amid all these papers arrayed on the desk where he himself used to work, keeping a roll of Life Savers in the lefthand middle drawer, a fatal hole is being hatched. He taps his jacket pocket for the reassuring119 lump of the Nitrostat bottle. He'll take one as soon as he gets away. The night he and Pru fucked, both of them weary and half crazy with their fates, the old bed creaking beneath them had seemed another kind of nest, an interwoven residue120 of family fortunes, Ma Springer's musty old?lady scent121 released from the mattress122 by this sudden bouncing where for years she had slept alone, an essence of old mothballed blankets stored in attic123 cedar124 chests among plush-bound family albums and broken cane125?seated rockers and veiled hats in round hat?boxes, an essence arising not only from the abused bed but from the old sewing apparatus126 stored here and Fred's forgotten neckties in the closet and the dust balls beneath the venerable four?poster. All those family traces descended127 to this, this coupling by thunder and lightning. It was now as if it had never been. He and Pru are severely128 polite with each other, and Janice, ever more the working girl, has ceased to create many occasions when the households mingle129. The Father's Day cookout was an exception, and the children were tired and cranky and bug130?bitten by the time the grilled131 hamburgers were finally ready to be consumed.
Harry laughs, as idiotically as the assistant accountant. "Poor Slim," he says, trying to harmonize with the head accountant's slanginess. "Some pal Lyle turned out to be, buying him all those wheels he didn't need."
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mid
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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yews
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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brewer
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dough
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strings
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anchovies
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snails
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itch
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| n.痒，渴望，疥癣；vi.发痒，渴望 | |
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referee
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| n.裁判员．仲裁人，代表人，鉴定人 | |
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pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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shredded
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| shred的过去式和过去分词 | |
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aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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20
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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21
literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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22
lettuce
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| n.莴苣；生菜 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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24
gal
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| n.姑娘，少女 | |
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25
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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26
slants
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| （使）倾斜，歪斜( slant的第三人称单数 )； 有倾向性地编写或报道 | |
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27
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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28
recedes
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的第三人称单数 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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29
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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30
melancholic
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| 忧郁症患者 | |
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31
pros
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| abbr.prosecuting 起诉；prosecutor 起诉人；professionals 自由职业者；proscenium （舞台）前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 )；赞成的理由；抵偿物；交换物 | |
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32
athletics
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| n.运动，体育，田径运动 | |
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33
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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34
roster
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| n.值勤表，花名册 | |
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35
cuff
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| n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口 | |
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36
jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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37
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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38
slump
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| n.暴跌，意气消沉，（土地）下沉；vi.猛然掉落，坍塌，大幅度下跌 | |
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39
pendulous
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| adj.下垂的；摆动的 | |
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40
earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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41
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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42
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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43
daze
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| v.(使)茫然，(使)发昏 | |
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44
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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contractors
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| n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 ) | |
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46
crooks
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| n.骗子( crook的名词复数 )；罪犯；弯曲部分；（牧羊人或主教用的）弯拐杖v.弯成钩形( crook的第三人称单数 ) | |
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47
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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48
abortion
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| n.流产，堕胎 | |
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49
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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50
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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51
gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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52
jawed
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| adj.有颌的有颚的 | |
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53
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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54
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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55
fetus
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| n.胎，胎儿 | |
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56
dilute
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| vt.稀释，冲淡；adj.稀释的，冲淡的 | |
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57
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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58
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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59
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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60
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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61
prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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62
termite
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| n.白蚁 | |
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63
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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64
ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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65
racist
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| n.种族主义者，种族主义分子 | |
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66
taxpayer
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| n.纳税人 | |
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67
palling
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的现在分词 ) | |
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68
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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69
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；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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71
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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72
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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73
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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74
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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75
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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76
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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77
peek
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| vi.偷看，窥视；n.偷偷的一看，一瞥 | |
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78
ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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79
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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80
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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81
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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82
adhesive
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| n.粘合剂；adj.可粘着的，粘性的 | |
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83
decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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84
jawing
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| n.用水灌注 | |
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85
itching
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| adj.贪得的，痒的，渴望的v.发痒( itch的现在分词 ) | |
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86
luxuriously
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| adv.奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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87
excrement
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| n.排泄物，粪便 | |
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88
toxic
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| adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的 | |
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89
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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90
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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91
toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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92
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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93
moron
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| n.极蠢之人，低能儿 | |
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94
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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95
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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96
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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97
canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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98
deluxe
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| adj.华美的，豪华的，高级的 | |
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99
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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100
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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101
locust
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| n.蝗虫；洋槐，刺槐 | |
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102
haggler
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| n.很会砍价的人 | |
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103
nostril
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| n.鼻孔 | |
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104
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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105
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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106
dilate
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| vt.使膨胀，使扩大 | |
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107
pounce
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| n.猛扑；v.猛扑，突然袭击，欣然同意 | |
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108
moronic
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| a.低能的 | |
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109
giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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110
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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111
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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112
ostrich
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| n.鸵鸟 | |
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113
auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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114
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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115
winces
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| 避开，畏缩( wince的名词复数 ) | |
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116
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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117
slumps
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| 萧条期( slump的名词复数 )； （个人、球队等的）低潮状态； （销售量、价格、价值等的）骤降； 猛跌 | |
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118
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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119
reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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120
residue
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| n.残余，剩余，残渣 | |
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121
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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122
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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123
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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124
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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125
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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126
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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127
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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128
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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129
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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130
bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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131
grilled
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| adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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