DESCRIBED in Aggro World as "a sort of Esalen Institute for lady asskickers," the mountainside retreat of the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives stood on a promontory4 dappled in light and dark California greens above a small valley, only a couple of ridgelines from the SP tracks, final ascent6 being over dirt roads vexing8 enough to those who arrived in times of mud, and so deeply rutted when the season was dry that many an unwary seeker was brought to a high-centered pause out in this oil painting of a landscape, wheels spinning in empty air, creatures of the hillside only just interrupting grazing or predation to notice. Originally, in the days of the missions, built to house Las Hermanas de Nuestra Se?ora de los Pepinares — one of those ladies' auxiliaries9 that kept springing up around the Jesuits in seventeenth-century Spain, never recognized by Rome nor even by the Society, but persisting with grace and stamina10 there in California for hundreds of years — the place had acquired extensions and outbuildings, got wired and rewired, plumbed11 and replumbed, until a series of bad investments had forced what was left of the sodality to put it up for rent and disperse12 to cheaper housing, though they continued to market the world-famous cucumber brandy bearing their name.
By the 1960s the kunoichi, looking for some cash flow themselves, had begun to edge into the self-improvement business, not quite begun to boom as it would in a few more years, offering, eventually, fantasy marathons for devotees of the Orient, group rates on Kiddie Ninja Weekends, help for rejected disciples14 of Zen ("No bamboo sticks — ever!" promised the ads in Psychology15 Today) and other Eastern methods. Men of a certain age in safari16 outfits17 and military haircuts and quite often the grip of a merciless nostalgia18 could always be counted on to show up with ogling19 in mind, expecting some chorus line of Asian dewdrops. Imagine their surprise at the first day's orientation20 session, when the Sisters, all wearing ninja gear and unpromisingly distant expressions, filed onstage one by one. Not only were most of them non-Asian, many were actually black, a-and Mexican too! What went on?
"There it is," DL said, "check it out." They had rounded a curve, and under the bright moon the forest fell away and the land went sloping down in pastures and then thickets21 of alder22 to where a creek23 rushed and fell, and up beyond that, high on the other side, there stood the Retreat. Steep walls weather-stained over old whitewash24 did not so much tower above the rolling, breaking terrain25 as almost readably reflect it, as if they shone at all their different angles like great coarse mirrors, beneath ancient tile roofs gone darkening and corroded26 under the elements, with windows recessed27 into shadow and seeming to bear no relation to any set of levels that might be inside. As they got closer, Prairie saw archways, a bell tower, an interpenetration with the tall lime surfaces of cypresses28, pepper trees, a fruit orchard29 . . . nothing looked especially creepy to her. She was a California kid, and she trusted in vegetation. What was creepy, the heart of creep-out, lay back down the road behind her, in, but not limited to, the person, hard and nearly invisible, like quartz31, of her pursuer, Brock Vond.
DL was known at the gates outer and inner, getting long looks Prairie couldn't interpret. By the time they got up to the reception building, there was a welcoming committee standing32 in the lamp-lined drive, all in black gi, headed by a tall, fit, scholarly-looking woman named Sister Rochelle, who turned out to be Senior Attentive3, or mother superior of the place. "DL-san," she greeted her longtime disciple13 and antagonist33. "What new mischief34 now?" DL bowed and introduced Prairie, at whom Sister Rochelle had been gazing as if she knew her but was pretending for some reason that she didn't. They entered a small tiled courtyard with a fountain. Owls35 called and swooped36. Women lay naked in the moonlight. Others, all in black, stood together in the gallery shadows. "Any interest from law enforcement here?" inquired Sister Rochelle.
DL's line should've been something like, "Oh, you working for them now?" delivered emphatically, but she only waited quietly in what Prairie would learn was the standard Attentive's Posture37, her eyes lowered, her lip zipped.
"So will the sheriff break down the gate right away, do you think, or wait till Monday morning? This ain't The Hunchback of Notre Dame38 here, and even if she's not some kind of escapee, there's the Ninjette Oath you took, clause Eight, you'll recall, section B? 'To allow residence to no one who cannot take responsibility for both her input39 and her output.' "
"Like earn what you eat, secure what you shit, been doin' it for years," Prairie said, "what else?" Not in the first place the sort of kid to take stuff personally, getting ESP messages that around here it might not even be considered cool, she had been tending to the line of her spine40 and quietly meeting the woman's neutral but energetic gaze. "Well then maybe you have some kind of work-study program here, list of courses, price schedule, maybe pick something cheap, be a live-in student, work off the fees?" detaching from their eye contact long enough to look around, as if for chores that needed doing, trying to wish some deal into being.
The Head Ninjette seemed interested. "Can you cook?"
"Some. You mean you don't have a cook?"
"Worse. A lot of people who think they're cooks but are clinically deluded41. We're notorious here for having the worst food in the seminar-providing community. And we're looking at another herd42 next weekend, and we try different staff combinations, but nothing works. The karmic invariance is, is we're paying for high discipline in the Sisterhood with a zoo in the kitchen. Come on, you'll see."
Out in the evening, she led Prairie and DL around a few corners and down a long trellised walkway toward the rear of the main building. Suppertime was over and some postprandial critique now vehemently43 in progress. People huddled44, intimidated45, by the back entrance, out which came an amazing racket, giant metal mixing bowls gonging and crashing around on the flagstone floors, voices screaming, for background the local 24-hour "New Age" music station, gushing46 into the environment billows of audio treacle47. Inside, something ruined was still smoldering48 on the back of a stove. Folks stood around next to pots that would need scouring49. There lay throughout the deep old kitchen a depressing odor of stale animal fat and disinfectant. The chef who was supposed tonight to have been in charge crouched50 with his head in an oven, weeping bitterly.
"Hi guys," caroled Sister Rochelle, "what y'all doin'?"
Holding their nightly self-criticism hour, of course, in which everybody got to trash the chef of the day personally for the failure of his or her menu, as well as plan more of the same for tomorrow.
"I did what I had to," the chef blubbered, iron and muffled52, "I was true to the food."
One of the stoveside loungers looked over. "What are you calling 'food,' Gerhard? That meal tonight wasn't food."
"What you cook's stomach trouble with fat on it," fiercely added a lady holding a meat cleaver53, with which she struck a nearby chopping block for emphasis.
"Even your Jell-O salads have scum on them," put in a stylish54 young man in a couturier chef's toque from Bullock's Wilshire.
"Please, enough," whimpered Gerhard.
"Total honesty," people reminded him. This meanspirited exercise, thought to be therapeutic55, was part of everyone's assignment back here to what Gerhard called "indefinite culinary penance56."
"Isn't that kidnapping?" Prairie would wonder later.
No — they had all signed instruments of indenture57, releases, had all arrived somewhere in their lives where they needed to sign. They spoke58 of scullery duty as a decoding59 of individual patterns of not-eating, seeing thereby60 beyond dishes, pots, and pans each uniquely soiled, beyond accidents of personality to a level where you are not what you eat but how. ... At first Prairie had no time to appreciate many of these spiritual dimensions, because she was running her ass1 off nonstop. The penitents61 in the kitchen, weird-eyed as colonists63 on some galactic outpost, greeted her arrival as a major event. As it turned out, none of them could fix anything even they liked to eat. Some here had grown indifferent to food, others actively64 to hate it. Nevertheless, new recipes were seized on like advanced technology from beyond the local star system. After checking out the vegetable patch, the orchards65, the walk-in freezers and pantries of the Retreat, wondering if she was violating some Prime Directive, Prairie taught them Spinach66 Casserole. And it proved to be just the ticket to get these folks going again as a team.
"What were you going to serve them?" she couldn't help asking. "Dip," chirped67 a Mill Valley real-estate agent. "Smores," chuckled68 a Milpitas scoutmaster, "with maple69 syrup70."
"New England Boiled Dinner," replied an ex-institutional inmate71 with a shudder72.
The secret to Spinach Casserole was the UBI, or Universal Binding73 Ingredient, cream of mushroom soup, whose presence in rows of giant cans there in the ninjette storerooms came as no surprise. Deep in the refrigerators were also to be scavenged many kinds of pieces of cheese, not to mention cases full of the more traditional Velveeta and Cheez Whiz, nor was spinach a problem, with countless74 blocks of it occupying their own wing of the freezer. So next day the classic recipe was the vegetarian75 entrée du jour at supper. For the meat eaters, a number of giant baloneys were set to roasting whole on spits, to be turned and attentively76 basted77 with a grape-jelly glaze78 by once-quarrelsome kitchen staff while others made croutons from old bread, bustling79 about while the spinach thawed80, singing along with the radio, which someone had mercifully re-tuned to a rock and roll station.
DL popped her head in in the late afternoon and looked around. "Just what I thought — a teenage charismatic." "Not me," Prairie shrugged82, "it's 'ese recipes." "Um, and those purple things, on the rotisserie?" "Just somethin' out of the TV section. What's up?" "Sister Rochelle wonders if you have a minute." Prairie went along watchfully83, at her own tempo84, making a point of inspecting a few assembled casseroles as well as checking the baloney spin rate before leaving the kitchen, reminding herself of a cat. Upstairs, in the Ninjette Coffee Lounge, the Head Ninjette, with a mug of coffee in her hand, slowly emerged, as they conversed85, from invisibility. It seemed to the girl that this must be a magical gift. She learned later that Rochelle had memorized, in this room, all the shadows and how they changed, the cover, the exact spaces between things ... had come to know the room so completely that she could impersonate it, in its full transparency and emptiness.
"Could I learn to do that?"
"Takes a serious attention span." A look sideways. "Then the question of why should you want to?" Her voice was even, with a slow hoarseness86 suggesting alcohol and cigarettes. Prairie also thought she heard some distant country notes that Rochelle was suppressing on purpose, in favor of something more invisible.
Prairie shrugged. "Seems like it could come in handy."
"Common sense and hard work's all it is. Only the first of many kunoichi disillusionments — right, DL? — is finding that the knowledge won't come down all at once in any big transcendent moment."
"But Zen folks, like where I work, say —"
"Oh, that happens. But not around here. Here it's always out at the margins88, using the millimeters and little tenths of a second, you understand, scuffling and scraping for everything we get."
"So don't get into it unless you mean it?"
"Well you ought to see how many gaga little twits we get up here, 'specially30 your age group, nothing personal, looking for secret powers on the cheap. Thinking we'll take 'em through the spiritual car wash, soap away all that road dirt, git 'em buffed up all cherry again, come out th' other end everybody hangin' around the Orange Julius next door go 'Wow!' 's what they think, like we'll keep 'em awake all weekend, maybe around dawn on Sunday they'll start hallucinating, have a mental adventure they can mistake for improvement in their life, and who knows? Or they get us mixed up with nuns89 or ballet?"
The girl made a point of looking at her watch, a multicolored plastic model from a Vineland swap90 meet. "Givin' those baloneys fifteen minutes a pound, think 'at's about right?"
DL smirked91. "Not goin' for it, Rochelle-awe."
The Senior Attentive shifted gear. "Prairie, we subscribe92 to some outside data services here, but we also maintain our own library of computer files, including a good-size one on your mother."
Where Prairie had been, "your mother" in that tone of voice usually meant trouble, and she wasn't sure if this woman, who looked sort of middle-class, knew how it sounded. But Prairie was shaking with the need to find out anything she could, the way some girls she knew got about boys, his family's name in the phone book, anything. "Would it," slowly (should she bow?), "be OK if—"
"How about after supper?"
"Ohm mah way, as my Grampa the gaffer always sez." Not a minute too soon, she returned to find a number of casseroles beginning to redline, baloney glazes93 to decompose94. Pretending to be setting an example, Prairie slid over to one of the work counters, wrestled95 a hot baloney into place, quickly sharpened a knife, and began to carve the object into steaming, purple-rimmed slices, which she arranged attractively on a serving platter, generously spooning more shiny grape liquid over the top, to be carried in and set on one of the mess-hall tables, where eaters would serve themselves — except for the people in assertiveness96 programs, of course, who sat over at their own table and each got a separate plate with the food already on it.
From the mess hall next door an ambiguous murmuring, part hunger, part apprehension97, had grown in volume. Prairie grabbed a kettle of institutional tomato soup, carried it on in, and for the next couple of hours she also schlepped racks of newly washed cups and dishes in and bused dirty dishes out, cleaned off tabletops, poured coffee, going from one set of chores to another as they arose, sensing partial vacuums and flowing there to fill them, unable to help noticing that people were taking seconds on the Spinach Casserole, and the baloney too. Later she scrubbed out pots and pans and helped put stuff away and swab down the stone floor of the kitchen and scullery. By the time she got upstairs to the Ninjette Terminal Center and found out how to log on, the midsummer sunset had come and gone and the sounds of an evening koto workshop mixed with the good-nights of courtyard birds.
The file on Frenesi Gates, whose entries had been accumulating over the years, often haphazardly98, from far and wide, reminded Prairie of scrapbooks kept by somebody's eccentric hippie uncle. Some was governmental, legal history with the DMV, letterhead memoranda99 from the FBI enhanced by Magic Marker, but there were also clippings from "underground" newspapers that had closed down long ago, transcripts100 of Frenesi's radio interviews on KPFK, and a lot of cross-references to something called 24fps, which Prairie recalled as the name of the film collective DL said she and Frenesi had been in together for a while.
So into it and then on Prairie followed, a girl in a haunted mansion101, led room to room, sheet to sheet, by the peripheral102 whiteness, the earnest whisper, of her mother's ghost. She already knew about how literal computers could be — even spaces between characters mattered. She had wondered if ghosts were only literal in the same way. Could a ghost think for herself, or was she responsive totally to the needs of the still-living, needs like keystrokes entered into her world, lines of sorrow, loss, justice denied? . . . But to be of any use, to be "real," a ghost would have to be more than only that kind of elaborate pretending. . . .
Prairie found that she could also summon to the screen photographs, some personal, some from papers and magazines, images of her mom, most of the time holding a movie camera, at demonstrations103, getting arrested, posing with various dimly recognizable Movement figures of the sixties, beaming a significant look at a cop in riot gear beside a chain-link fence someplace while one hand (Prairie would learn her mother's hands, read each gesture a dozen ways, imagine how they would have moved at other, unphotographed times) appeared to brush with its fingertips the underside of the barrel of his assault rifle. Gross! Her Mom? This girl with the old-fashioned hair and makeup104, always wearing either miniskirts or those weird-looking bell-bottoms they had back then? In a few years Prairie would almost be that age, and she had an eerie105 feeling miniskirts would be back.
She paused at a shot of DL and Frenesi together. They were walking along on what might have been a college campus. In the distance was a pedestrian overpass106, where tiny figures could be seen heading both ways, suggesting, at least for a moment, social tranquillity107. The women's shadows were long, lapping up over curbs108, across grass, between the spokes109 of cyclists. Catching110 the late or early sun were palm trees, flights of distant steps, a volleyball court, few if any glass windows. Frenesi's face was turned or turning toward her partner, perhaps her friend, a suspicious or withheld111 smile seeming to begin. . . . DL was talking. Her lower teeth flashed. It wasn't politics — Prairie could feel in the bright California colors, sharpened up pixel by pixel into deathlessness, the lilt of bodies, the unlined relaxation112 of faces that didn't have to be put on for each other, liberated113 from their authorized114 versions for a free, everyday breath of air. Yeah, Prairie thought at them, go ahead, you guys. Go ahead....
"Who was that boy," DL was asking, or "that 'dude,' at the protest rally? With the long hair and love beads115, and the joint116 in his mouth?"
"You mean in the flowered bell-bottoms and the paisley shirt?"
"Right on, sister!"
"Psychedelic!" Slapping hands back and forth117. Prairie wondered who'd taken the picture — one of the film collective, the FBI? Before the stained deep crystalline view she fell into a hyp-nagogic gaze, which the unit promptly118 sensed, beginning to blink, following this with a sound chip playing the hook from the Everlys' "Wake Up, Little Susie," over and over. Prairie remembered that she had to be up before sunrise, to prep for breakfast. As she reached toward the power button, she said good night to the machine.
"Why good night yourself, gentle User," it replied, "and may your sleep be in every way untroubled."
Back down in the computer library, in storage, quiescent119 ones and zeros scattered120 among millions of others, the two women, yet in some definable space, continued on their way across the low-lit campus, persisting, recoverable, friends by the time of this photo for nearly a year, woven together in an intricacy of backs covered, promises made and renegotiated, annoyances121 put up with, shortcuts122 worn in, ESP beyond the doubts of either. They would probably have met at some point, though who'd have been willing to bet they'd stick? The turbulence123 of the times was bringing all kinds of people together into towns like Berkeley, lured124, like DL, by promises of action. In those days DL was just cruising up and down 101 looking for girl motorcycle gangs to terrorize, drinking drugstore vodka out of the bottle, hustling125 guys named Snake for enough double-cross whites to get her to the next population center offering a suitable risk to her safety. The night before she met Frenesi she had chased the entire membership of Tetas y Chetas M.C. northward126 through the dark farm country around Salinas, vegetables fallen in profusion127 from the trucks and then squashed and resquashed by traffic all day making the night streaming against her face smell like a giant salad. Finally she ran out of gas and had to let them go. By then she was close enough to Berkeley, and had been hearing enough on the radio, to want to go look in. She couldn't have said, then or later, what she thought she was looking for.
What she found was Frenesi, who'd been out with her camera and a bagful of bootlegged ECO stock since dawn, finally ending up on Telegraph Avenue filming a skirmish line of paramilitary coming up the street in riot gear, carrying small and she hoped only rubber-bullet-firing rifles. Last time she looked she'd been at the front edge of a crowd who were slowly retreating from the campus, trashing what they could as they went. When the film roll ended and she came up out of the safety of her viewfinder, Frenesi was alone, halfway128 between the people and the police, with no side street handy to go dodging129 down. Hmm. Shop doors were all secured with chain, windows shuttered over with heavy plywood. Her next step would've been just to go ahead and change rolls, get some more footage, but to go rooting around in her bag right now could only be taken as a threat by the boys in khaki, who'd come close enough that even above the lingering nose-wrenching ground note of tear gas she could still begin to smell them, the aftershave, the gunmetal in the sun, the new-issue uniforms whose armpits by now were musky with fear. Oh, I need Superman, she prayed, Tarzan on that vine. The basic stone bowelflash had come and gone about the time DL showed up, all in black including helmet and face shield, riding her esteemed130 and bad red and silver Czech motorcycle, the Che Zed, overdesigned in every part, up onto which she gathered Frenesi out of danger, camera, miniskirt, equipment bags, and all, and carried her away. Skidding131 among piles of street debris132 and paper fires, over crumbled133 auto134 glass, trying not to hit anybody lying on the pavement, up onto some sidewalk and around the corner at last and down the long hillside to the Bay flashing in the late sun they escaped, in a snarling135 dreamrush of speed and scent7. With her bare thighs136 Frenesi gripped the leather hips137 of her benefactor138, finding that she'd also pressed her face against the fragrant139 leather back — she never thought it might be a woman she hugged this way.
Biker rapture140, for sure. They sat devouring141 cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes in a waterfront place full of refugees from the fighting up the hill, all their eyes, including ones that had wept, now lighted from the inside — was it only the overhead fluorescents, some trick of sun and water outside? no ... too many of these fevered lamps not to have origin across the line somewhere, in a world sprung new, not even defined yet, worth the loss of nearly everything in this one. The jukebox played the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish. DL had taken off the helmet and shaken out her hair, which lit up in the approaching orange sunset like a comet. Frenesi, jittery143, starving, and gaga all at once, was still trying to figure it out. "Somebody sent you, right?"
"Cruisin' through, was all. You sure sound paranoid."
Frenesi gestured with her burger, trailing drops of separating ketchup144 and fat, each drop warped145 by the forces of its flight into swirling146 micropatterns of red and beige, and — "It's the Revolution, girl — can't you feel it?"
DL narrowed her eyes, wondering, What have we here. She felt like an adult come upon a little kid alone at a dangerous time of day, not yet aware of her mom's absence. "I could see you were just all revved147 up," she told Frenesi, though months later. "I couldn't help teasin' you. You were bein' so —" but let it go, pretending she couldn't think of the word. It probably wasn't revolutionary, invoked148 in those days widely and sometimes lovingly and enjoying a wide range of meaning. Frenesi dreamed of a mysterious people's oneness, drawing together toward the best chances of light, achieved once or twice that she'd seen in the street, in short, timeless bursts, all paths, human and projectile149, true, the people in a single presence, the police likewise simple as a moving blade — and individuals who in meetings might only bore or be pains in the ass here suddenly being seen to transcend87, almost beyond will to move smoothly150 between baton151 and victim to take the blow instead, to lie down on the tracks as the iron rolled in or look into the gun muzzle152 and maintain the power of speech — there was no telling, in those days, who might unexpectedly change this way, or when. Some were in it, in fact, secretly for the possibilities of finding just such moments. But DL admitted she was a little less saintly— "Is the asskicking part's usually what I'm lookin' for," watching Frenesi, waiting for disapproval153. "But somebody told me it don't mean much unless I make what they call the correct analysis? and then act on it? Ever hear of that one?"
Frenesi shrugged. "Heard of it. Maybe I don't have the patience. I have to trust the way this makes me feel. Feels right, DL. Like we're really going to change the world this time," looking back in the same go-ahead-say-something way. But DL was smiling lopsidedly to herself. Backlit by the last of the sun, Frenesi in dazed witness, her face had become possessed154 by that of a young man, distant, surmised155 — Moody156 Chastain, her father. Later, when they got to showing each other pictures of their lives, there he was, same face in silver and dye, confirming the earlier gleaming moment — the halo of fresh-drawn copper157, the ghostly young hero who'd come to her rescue, the whoop-de-do that day, Revolution all around them, world-class burgers, jukebox solidarity158, as the sun set behind Marin and the scent of DL's sweat and pussy159 excitation diffused160 out of the leather clothing, mixed with motor smells.
Moody. He'd once been a junior Texas rounder, promoting bad behavior all over the Harlingen, Brownsville, McAllen area. For a while he and a small gang had managed to migrate as far as Mobile Bay, spreading apprehension from Mertz to Magazine, but he was soon back in his native orbit, handing out to all the ladies Dauphin Island orchids161 kept fresh with the beer in an ice tub in the truckbed and resuming his ways, which included driving fast, discharging firearms inappropriately, and passing around open containers, till a sheriff's deputy friendly with the family suggested a choice between the Army now or Huntsville later. The war then approaching was never mentioned directly, but, "Well, what'lí I get to shoot?" Moody wanted to know.
"I mean, who do I get to shoot?"
"Whoever they tell you. Interesting thing about that, way I see it, you don't have nearly the legal problems."
Sounded good to Moody, who went right down and joined up. He met Norleen while he was at Fort Hood2 at services in the same narrow wood church they got married in, just before he shipped out. It was about mid-Atlantic, surrounded by nothing that did not refer, finally, to steel, vomiting163 for days, imagining the horizon outside, the unnatural164 purity, before he understood how terrified he was. It was the first time in his career he couldn't climb in the truck and head for some borderline. He felt himself about to go crazy in this deep overcrowded hole, but he hung on, he tried to see through his fear, and when it came it was like finding Jesus — Moody saw, like the comics or Bible illustrations, a succession of scenes showing him the way he had to go, which was to imagine the worst and then himself be worse than that. He must torture the violent, deprive the greedy, give the drunks something to stagger about. He would have to become a Military Policeman, be as bad as he had to be to make it, using everything he knew from those rounder days. And so he did, pulling his first MP duty in London, on and about Shaftesbury Avenue, accessorized in virgin165 white, known, in military slang in those days, as a "snowdrop."
Darryl Louise was born right after the war, in Leavenworth, Kansas, after Moody, having made it through alive, was assigned to the Disciplinary Barracks there. In the years of war he'd done a lot of shooting, some wounding, a little killing166, but despite his love of weaponry, he'd come to see bombs, artillery167, even rifles, as too abstract and cold. The peacetime Moody wanted to get more personal now. Though he was already licensed168 to use life-threatening come-alongs, to crack heads and dislocate shoulders, he didn't really light up till he discovered the judo169 and jujitsu of the defeated Jap, then enjoying a postwar surge of interest. From then on Moody practiced when he could, wherever he happened to be posted, getting the best of East and West Coast schools of thought, working eventually part-time as an instructor170 with his own group of students. When DL was five or six she started tagging along with him down to the dojo.
"Could've been my mama thought he was slippin' around. Maybe I was supposed to keep an eye on him."
"Hmm-mm, I can see why." The snapshot Frenesi happened to be looking at showed Moody in his full-dress uniform, ribbons and medals and patches and fourragères, holding already oversize eight-month-old DL and grinning in the sunlight. There were palm trees behind them, so it couldn't've been Kansas anymore.
"Way it looks," Frenesi said, when they could say things like this comfortably, "is that he went over. A wild kid who ended up being that deputy sheriff."
"Uh-huh," nodding, sparkling, "and guess who he took it out on." DL had noticed as she got older that her mother, Norleen, was apt to be in and out of their housing unit of the moment on mysterious "chores," her word for something else that years later DL surmised could have been boyfriends. Among Moody's problem areas was a practice of bringing home with him emotional elements of his work. The morning after one of their bigger go-rounds, DL started hollering at her mother. "Why're you puttin' up with his shit?" But Norleen could only gaze tearfully back, needing to talk, all right, but not to her child, whom she must have thought she was protecting.
"Wait a minute," Frenesi broke in, "he beat on your mother?"
She got that who-the-fuck-are-you stare back. "Never heard of that where you come from?"
"He ever do it to you?"
She smiled tightly. "Nope. That was just it." Nodded, her jaw171 forward. "The son of a bitch, you see, wouldn't even work out with me — not even in public at the dojo, not even when we got to be the same size and rank. He would never get into the ring with me."
"He knew better."
"Oh, I wouldt'n've kicked his ass that hard. . . ." She kept a straight face while Frenesi grinned. "I'm serious, you don't let things like how you feel about your daddy get in the way. Not professional, bad for your spirit."
"What about your mom, why did she put up with it?"
Best Norleen could ever do was "It's his job," but DL still didn't get it. "He loves us, but sometimes he has to be like 'at." Her face that morning had been swollen172, distorted enough to frighten the girl, as if her mother were slowly turning into some other creature, one that might even wish her harm.
"You mean, they're tellin' him to?"
Norleen answered with one of those sighs DL had by then learned to dread173, a beaten saddening surrender of breath. "No, but they might's well be. Just how it is. Men are runnin' it, they don't ask us, better learn it now 'cause it doesn't end when you grow up either, Darryl Louise."
"You mean everybody has to —"
"Ever'body darlin'. Can you reach me that big spoon over there?" But years later, DL on a rare visit, her mother by then divorced and living in Houston, Norleen finally told her, "Why, the man had me scared spitless. What was I supposed to do? I didn't even know how to shoot any o' them ol' stupid guns he kept around. And I'm telling you, you're lucky you made it's far as you did. I know that something — Somebody — was lookin' out for me."
And by then DL was able easily to sit attentive, pressureless, through the Christer commercial that followed, one she'd already heard more than once over the phone. She was finally acknowledging her mother's soul, one more side benefit of life in the martial174 arts. The discipline had steered175 her early enough away from the powerlessness and the sooner or later self-poisoning hatred176 that had been waiting for her. Somewhere further along, she'd been given to understand, she would discover that all souls, human and otherwise, were different disguises of the same greater being — God at play. She respected Norleen's love of Jesus even though she'd had her own way to go since she was a girl, even before the Department of Defense177, that well-known agent of enlightenment, ever thought of cutting Moody's orders for Japan.
This was during the lull178 between Korea and Vietnam, but the troops on R and R could still keep Moody plenty busy. Norleen was often out, running those chores of hers, so DL was left on her own. She started to ditch the dependents' school, intending to go look for an instructor in unarmed combat, usually winding179 up hanging around pachinko parlors181 and making shady acquaintances, picking up enough of the language to find built into it a whole charm school's worth of rules for getting along socially over here.
One day, in the ringing crepitation of millions of steel balls, ingeniously waxed pins, and spheriphagous "tulips," she grew aware of a gap in the web, a local redirection of interest. She looked around. He was dressed plainly and had the air of a servant. Bowing, precise, he asked, "You eat soba?"
Bowing back, "You buyin'?"
His name was Noboru, and he claimed to have the gift of seeing in a person what she was truly destined182 to be. "Don't get me wrong!" between slurps183, "you have definite shodan potential at the game, but pachinko is not your destiny. I want you to come and meet my teacher."
"You're — some kind of guidance counselor184?"
"Been out searching a long time. The sensei asked me to."
"Wait — I've been around the circuit enough to know it's the pupil who's supposed to go lookin' for the teacher. What kind of a no-class setup is this here?" But she'd been having no luck on her own, so maybe it was what her Aunt Tulsa liked to call "a message from beyond."
Throughout their first interview, Inoshiro Sensei, as feared, kept one hand on DL's leg while using the other hand to chain-smoke. The pitch was take-it-or-leave-it simple. In her pachinko playing his agent Noboru, with his infallible gift, had detected an advanced ruthlessness of spirit, which the master, going then secretly to observe, had confirmed. DL wondered if being already taller than most Japanese adults, plus her eye-catching head of hair, came into it at all. "There are things I am obliged to pass on. Skills no one owns, but which must be carried forward."
"I'm not even Japanese."
"One of my major karmic missions this time around is to get outside of Japanese insular185 craziness, be international assukikaa, ne? Come on," announced the sensei, "we're going dancing!"
"Huh?"
"See how you move!" They proceeded, DL squinting186 and frowning, to a water-trade joint around the corner called The Lucky Sea Urchin187, where they danced some back-street two-step and DL waved off everything but 7-Up. It wasn't as if these jokers were accosting188 her at a real stable time of her life. At the school on the base, girls were given only a sketchy189 governmental account of puberty and adolescence190. DL's were both turning out to be like vacationing on another planet and losing her traveler's checks. Not long before this her period, a major obsession191 by then, had arrived at last, plus lately she felt washed under by these long, sometimes daylong, waves of inattention, everybody looking at her weirdly192, especially boys. The sensei had scowlingly little sympathy for any of this, however. In the traditional stories, a few of which DL would come to hear before she left Japan, the apprenticeship193 is harsh and long, someplace scenic194 up in the mountains where the student is put to work at menial outdoor tasks, learning patience and obedience195, without which she can learn nothing else, and this alone, in some stories, takes years. What DL got from Inoshiro Sensei was more like the modernized196 crash course. Man here was clearly under some time pressure so heavy she didn't want to know, having herself decided197 it was a romantic terminal illness, an older woman someplace.. . . For ancient dark reasons, he could not return to the mountains, probably had killed somebody back there over this woman, and now, while she lay dying far away, he must live penitent62, earthbound, down here in the ensnarling city, longing198 for her and the mist and the wind-shaped trees....
The sensei ran DL all over the map on incomprehensible, some would say pointless, fool errands. He blindfolded199 her with tape and dark glasses and took her on the Yamanote Line, riding around for hours switching subways, at last unsealing her eyes, handing her a stone of a certain shape and weight, and leaving her well lost, with instructions to get back to his house before nightfall, using only the stone. He gave her messages she didn't understand to take to people she didn't know, at addresses harshly drilled in, that would turn out either not to exist or to be something else, like a pachinko parlor180. He also enrolled200 her in a small dojo nearby run by a former disciple. She would put in half her time on traditional forms and exercises, then slip outside, around the corner and down the alley5, to a rendezvous201 more felonious than illicit202.
Meantime, all her school ditching had become a problem at home. The truancy203 squad204 was now in her face as part of a daily routine. Moody ignored it till they finally came to bother him at work, in front of other men, including officers, not the best way to send him home with a smile on his lips. For a week and a half he would already be screaming as he came up the front path, silencing birds, sending neighbor dogs, cats, and children fleeing indoors, and it would go on, out the screened windows and across the neat little yards, on through suppertime, prime time, and beyond, blunt, embittered205, what the sensei would have called lacking in style. Norleen as usual kept silent, trying to stay out of the way, though sometimes on impulse she was known to actually bring them coffee right in the very fierce middle of it. And as usual Moody made no least move upon his daughter, who might by now, far as he knew, be able to do him some real harm. To tell the truth, these days, pushing twenty years in the service, he was starting to kick back some, working a regular daytime shift for a couple years now, manipulating paper that only represented the adrenaline and guts206 of what he used to do, putting in less and less time at gym, track, pool, or dojo, content to sit behind his increasing embonpoint with a personalized coffee mug wired permanently207 to his right index finger and shoot the shit with numberless cronies from head-bashing days who dropped by all the time. He'd lost his old enthusiasm for unarmed combat, and DL found no way, reasonable or at the top of her voice, to get him to see where her own love of the discipline was taking her. She did tell them both, trying to sound dutiful, about the dojo, but not about Inoshiro Sensei, having sworn to keep silent and already feeling the depressing weight of Moody's suspicions. "I ever find you 'th one 'nem little slant-eyed jerkoffs," as he expressed it, "he gets killed, and you get a Clorox douche, you understand me?" DL hated with all her heart to say so, but she did.
Another message from beyond, no doubt. She saw a pattern. He was settling for spoiling, snarling, aiming his belly208 at her like a great smooth bomb snout and calling her Trash, Gook-lover, and, mystifyingly, Communist too. Norleen nibbled209 her lip and from under her lashes210 sent sorrowing looks that said, Why keep getting him worked up, he'll take it out on me. "I was just sadistic211 enough," DL admitted, years later, to herself and then to Norleen's face, "so mad at you for all 'at knucklin' under, that sure I provoked him. Also I 's wonderin' what it would take to get you to fight him back."
Norleen shrugged. The central air-conditioning pursued its dark slow pulsing, traffic breathed along the freeways, trees outside just managed to stir in the moist subtropical air. " 'Course you knew all the while I was seeing Captain Lanier. . .."
"What? Mama, his CO?" Well no, she sure hadn't known till now, how would she?
"He paid for the divorce, too."
DL shook her head, bewildered. "No shit?"
Norleen, born-again, mannerly and all, laughed like a girl with a garden hose in her hand. "No shit."
And DL guessed that Moody'd known about it all along, too. The Captain would have kept him reminded. Men had ways. She'd been living her childhood in a swamp full of intrigue212, where, below, invisible sleek213 things without names kept brushing past, barely felt sliding across her skin, everybody pretending the surface was all there was. Till one day she had a moment. There just came flowing over her the certainty that only when she was away from them, learning to fight, did she feel any good. The sensei, for all his lechery214, high-speed frenzies215, temperamental snits and low-tolerance ways, had become a refuge from what lay breathing invisible somewhere back in the geometric sprawl216 of yards and fences and dumpsters of Dependents' Housing, more than ready to rise from its crouch51 and take her over. So instead of waiting for something dramatic enough to give her an excuse, which could be too dangerous, DL one day when they both happened to be out of the house just filled a small army bag with what she needed, turned much of the fridge's contents into sandwiches and packed them in a big number 66 market bag, stole a bottle of PX Chivas Regal for the sensei, and without any last look in at her room, went AWOL.
When she arrived at the sensei's house, she found most of the alley filled by a white Lincoln Continental217 whose ample dimensions had been beefed up further with armor plating, radar218, gun pods, and command turrets219. Nearby a detachment of smirking220 crew-cut young fellows in black suits and shirts, white neckties, black shades, posed and sauntered. She knew enough to keep out of the way, hunker down, wrap her hair in a scarf, wait in a shadow till she saw an elderly man in a suit and homburg hat come out the door with Inoshiro Sensei. They bowed, then clasped hands in a way not fully81 visible. The visitor was hustled221 by his kobun into the car, which then was carefully backed out of its tight squeeze. Pedestrian traffic resumed as if after a rainstorm, one more view of Edo.
Inside, DL found the place littered with foam222 plastic sake containers. They'd been sending out for it all day. Noboru was unconscious, but DL thought the sensei had a grip on himself. She asked him, respectfully, for asylum223. He seemed amused. "Do you know who was just here?"
"Yakuza."
"You're too young for such things, Blondie!"
" 'Even a crying baby dummies224 up when she hears the name Yamaguchi-gumi,' " she recited in Japanese.
Sympathetic but leering, he reached for her. Mistake, sensei. She was immediately in a Vanishing Stance, surfaces loaded, ready to let him have it in any variety of ways, all depending on him. "Relax! Only testing you!"
"Uh-huh, tell me, sensei, if you're that tight with the Mob, and I'm working for you, does that mean —"
"Our connection is of very old giri, lot of details, Japanese names, you'd lose track. The war figures in heavily. But you and I, we're connected only by bonds of master and disciple, free to disconnect at any time. If you could leave your parents' house that lightly, you'll have no trouble leaving me."
What was this? Guilt225? "You want me to go back?"
He cackled and fell into sounding not quite decipherable. "You will go back. Till you do, stick around!"
From then on she was able to devote herself full time to ninjitsu, including the forbidden steps outside its canons taken — it seemed long ago — by the sensei, through which the original purity of ninja intent had been subverted226, made cruel and more worldly, bled of spirit, once eternal techniques now only one-shot and disposable, once greater patterns now only a string of encounters, single and multiple, none with any meaning beyond itself. This was what he felt he had to pass on — not the brave hard-won grace of any warrior227, but the cheaper brutality228 of an assassin. When DL finally tumbled, she brought it to his attention.
"Sure," he told her, "this is for all the rest of us down here with the insects, the ones who don't quite get to make warrior, who with two tenths of a second to decide fail to get it right and live with it the rest of our lives — it's for us drunks, and sneaks229, and people who can't feel enough to kill if they have to ... this is our equalizer, our edge — all we have to share. Because we have ancestors and descendants too — our generations . . . our traditions."
"But everybody's a hero at least once," she informed him, "maybe your chance hasn't come up yet."
"DL-san, you are crazy," he diagnosed gently, "seeing too many movies, maybe. Those you will be fighting — those you must resist — they are neither samurai nor ninja. They are sarariman, incrementalists, who cannot act boldly and feel only contempt for those who can. . . . Only for what I must teach you have they learned respect."
He taught her the Chinese Three Ways, Dim Ching, Dim Hsuen, and Dim Mak, with its Nine Fatal Blows, as well as the Tenth and Eleventh, which are never spoken of. She learned how to give people heart attacks without even touching230 them, how to get them to fall from high places, how through the Clouds of Guilt technique to make them commit seppuku and think it was their idea — plus a grab bag of strategies excluded from the Kumi-Uchi, or official ninja combat system, such as the Enraged231 Sparrow, the Hidden Foot, the Nosepicking of Death, and the truly unspeakable Gojira no Chimpira. Despite the accelerated schedule, some of the moves Inoshiro Sensei taught DL would only make sense ten years or more from now — requiring that much rigorous practice every day for her even to begin to understand — and until she did understand, she was forbidden to use any of them out in the world.
As days and weeks passed, DL found herself entering into a system of heresies232 about the human body. In an interview with Aggro World years later, she spoke of her time with Inoshiro Sensei as returning to herself, reclaiming233 her body, "Which they always like to brainwash you about, like they know it better, trying to keep you as spaced away from it as they can. Maybe they think people are easier to control that way." The schoolroom line was, You'll never know enough about your body to take responsibility for it, so better just hand it over to those who are qualified234, doctors and lab technicians and by extension coaches, employers, boys with hardons, so forth — alarmed, not to mention pissed off, DL reached the radical235 conclusion that her body belonged to herself. That was back when she was still thinking about ninjitsu. After a few years she didn't think so much but would just keep working out every day, finding the time and space, often at high cost, but every day of her life.
As the sensei had predicted, she did go back to Norleen and Moody, at least for a while. There had always been channels between the yakuza and the American military, and so eventually everybody knew where she was and that she was safe. Both parents, for their own reasons, were just as happy to have her out of the house just then, and the only reason DL had to resume her role as dependent minor236 at all was that the CO's wife found out about him and Norleen and proceeded to make life unquiet till Moody and the family were Stateside again.
A few years later, competing by then, DL heard about the Sisterhood of Kunoichi Attentives at some meet, "You know, the way you do. Hitchhiked up as far as the end of the gravel237, did the last few miles on foot. Back then they let anybody who showed up crash here for free. Early days, more idealistic, not so much into money." She and Prairie were out taking a break, down by the creek. It was a couple of weeks after their arrival, with Prairie by now an old hand in the computer room as well as the kitchen. "Yeah now it's group insurance, pension plans, financial consultant238 name of Vicki down in L.A. who moves it all around for us, lawyer in Century City, though Amber239 the paralegal has been taking over most of his work since the indictment240." DL seemed a little on edge. Her partner, Takeshi Fumimota, was due in for some kind of health checkup, they'd arranged to meet here, but he still hadn't shown.
"Are you worried?" Prairie, though at heart not a nosy241 kid, did want to give her the chance to talk, if it would do any good.
"Nahh, the ol' son of Nippon can take care of himself."
"Uh, so how'd you guys meet?"
"Aauuhhgghh!" First time outside of Saturday-morning cartoons Prairie had ever seen anybody scream with this intensity242.
"Gee142, thought it was a pretty innocent question. . . ."
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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vexing
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| adj.使人烦恼的，使人恼火的v.使烦恼( vex的现在分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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auxiliaries
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| n.助动词 ( auxiliary的名词复数 )；辅助工，辅助人员 | |
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stamina
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| n.体力；精力；耐力 | |
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plumbed
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| v.经历( plumb的过去式和过去分词 )；探究；用铅垂线校正；用铅锤测量 | |
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disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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safari
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| n.远征旅行(探险、考察)；探险队，狩猎队 | |
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outfits
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| n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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nostalgia
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| n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧 | |
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ogling
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| v.（向…）抛媚眼，送秋波( ogle的现在分词 ) | |
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orientation
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| n.方向，目标；熟悉，适应，情况介绍 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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alder
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| n.赤杨树 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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whitewash
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| v.粉刷，掩饰；n.石灰水，粉刷，掩饰 | |
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terrain
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| n.地面，地形，地图 | |
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corroded
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| 已被腐蚀的 | |
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recessed
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| v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的过去式和过去分词 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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cypresses
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| n.柏属植物，柏树( cypress的名词复数 ) | |
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orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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quartz
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| n.石英 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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input
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| n.输入(物)；投入；vt.把(数据等)输入计算机 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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gushing
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| adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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treacle
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| n.糖蜜 | |
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smoldering
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| v.用文火焖烧，熏烧，慢燃( smolder的现在分词 ) | |
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scouring
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| 擦[洗]净，冲刷，洗涤 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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cleaver
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| n.切肉刀 | |
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stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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therapeutic
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| adj.治疗的，起治疗作用的；对身心健康有益的 | |
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penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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indenture
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| n.契约；合同 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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decoding
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| n.译码，解码v.译（码），解（码）( decode的现在分词 )；分析及译解电子信号 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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penitents
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| n.后悔者( penitent的名词复数 )；忏悔者 | |
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penitent
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| adj.后悔的；n.后悔者；忏悔者 | |
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colonists
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| n.殖民地开拓者，移民，殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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65
orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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66
spinach
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| n.菠菜 | |
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67
chirped
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| 鸟叫，虫鸣( chirp的过去式 ) | |
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68
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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70
syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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71
inmate
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| n.被收容者；(房屋等的)居住人；住院人 | |
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72
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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73
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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74
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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75
vegetarian
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| n.素食者；adj.素食的 | |
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76
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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77
basted
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| v.打( baste的过去式和过去分词 )；粗缝；痛斥；（烤肉等时）往上抹[浇]油 | |
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78
glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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79
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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80
thawed
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| 解冻 | |
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81
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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82
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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83
watchfully
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| 警惕地，留心地 | |
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84
tempo
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| n.(音乐的)速度；节奏，行进速度 | |
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85
conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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86
hoarseness
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| n.嘶哑， 刺耳 | |
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87
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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88
margins
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| 边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数 | |
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89
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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90
swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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91
smirked
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| v.傻笑( smirk的过去分词 ) | |
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92
subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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93
glazes
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| n.上釉的表面( glaze的名词复数 )；釉料；（浇在糕点上增加光泽的）蛋浆v.装玻璃( glaze的第三人称单数 )；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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94
decompose
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| vi.分解；vt.（使）腐败，（使）腐烂 | |
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95
wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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96
assertiveness
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| n.过分自信 | |
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97
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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98
haphazardly
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| adv.偶然地，随意地，杂乱地 | |
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99
memoranda
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| n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
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100
transcripts
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| n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本 | |
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101
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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102
peripheral
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| adj.周边的，外围的 | |
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103
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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104
makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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105
eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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106
overpass
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| n.天桥，立交桥 | |
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107
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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108
curbs
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| v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的第三人称单数 ) | |
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109
spokes
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| n.（车轮的）辐条( spoke的名词复数 )；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 | |
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110
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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111
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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112
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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113
liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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114
authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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115
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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116
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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117
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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118
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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119
quiescent
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| adj.静止的，不活动的，寂静的 | |
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120
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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121
annoyances
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| n.恼怒( annoyance的名词复数 )；烦恼；打扰；使人烦恼的事 | |
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122
shortcuts
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| n.捷径( shortcut的名词复数 )；近路；快捷办法；被切短的东西（尤指烟草） | |
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123
turbulence
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| n.喧嚣，狂暴，骚乱，湍流 | |
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124
lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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125
hustling
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| 催促（hustle的现在分词形式） | |
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126
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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127
profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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128
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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129
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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130
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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131
skidding
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| n.曳出，集材v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的现在分词 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区 | |
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132
debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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133
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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134
auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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135
snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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136
thighs
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| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
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137
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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138
benefactor
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| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
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139
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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140
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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141
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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142
gee
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| n.马；int.向右！前进！，惊讶时所发声音；v.向右转 | |
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143
jittery
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| adj. 神经过敏的, 战战兢兢的 | |
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144
ketchup
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| n.蕃茄酱，蕃茄沙司 | |
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145
warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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146
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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147
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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148
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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149
projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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150
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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151
baton
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| n.乐队用指挥杖 | |
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152
muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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153
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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154
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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155
surmised
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的过去式和过去分词 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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156
moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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157
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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158
solidarity
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| n.团结；休戚相关 | |
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159
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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160
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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161
orchids
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| n.兰花( orchid的名词复数 ) | |
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162
caliber
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| n.能力；水准 | |
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163
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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164
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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165
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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166
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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167
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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168
licensed
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| adj.得到许可的v.许可，颁发执照(license的过去式和过去分词) | |
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169
judo
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| n.柔道 | |
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170
instructor
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| n.指导者，教员，教练 | |
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171
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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172
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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173
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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174
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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175
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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176
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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177
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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178
lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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179
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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180
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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181
parlors
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| 客厅( parlor的名词复数 )； 起居室； （旅馆中的）休息室； （通常用来构成合成词）店 | |
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182
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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183
slurps
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| n.啧啧吃的声音( slurp的名词复数 )v.啜食( slurp的第三人称单数 ) | |
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184
counselor
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| n.顾问，法律顾问 | |
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185
insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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186
squinting
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| 斜视( squint的现在分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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187
urchin
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| n.顽童；海胆 | |
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188
accosting
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的现在分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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189
sketchy
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| adj.写生的，写生风格的，概略的 | |
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190
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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191
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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192
weirdly
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| 古怪地 | |
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193
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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194
scenic
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| adj.自然景色的，景色优美的 | |
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195
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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196
modernized
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| 使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的过去式和过去分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法 | |
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197
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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198
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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199
blindfolded
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| v.（尤指用布）挡住（某人）的视线( blindfold的过去式 )；蒙住（某人）的眼睛；使不理解；蒙骗 | |
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200
enrolled
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| adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
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201
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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202
illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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203
truancy
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| n.逃学，旷课 | |
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204
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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205
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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206
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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207
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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208
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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209
nibbled
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的过去式和过去分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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211
sadistic
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| adj.虐待狂的 | |
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212
intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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213
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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214
lechery
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| n.好色；淫荡 | |
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215
frenzies
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| 狂乱( frenzy的名词复数 )； 极度的激动 | |
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216
sprawl
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| vi.躺卧，扩张，蔓延；vt.使蔓延；n.躺卧，蔓延 | |
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217
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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218
radar
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| n.雷达，无线电探测器 | |
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219
turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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220
smirking
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| v.傻笑( smirk的现在分词 ) | |
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221
hustled
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| 催促（hustle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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222
foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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223
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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224
dummies
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| n.仿制品( dummy的名词复数 )；橡皮奶头；笨蛋；假传球 | |
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225
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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226
subverted
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| v.颠覆，破坏（政治制度、宗教信仰等）( subvert的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某人）道德败坏或不忠 | |
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227
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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228
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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229
sneaks
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| abbr.sneakers (tennis shoes) 胶底运动鞋（网球鞋）v.潜行( sneak的第三人称单数 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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230
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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231
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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232
heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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233
reclaiming
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| v.开拓( reclaim的现在分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救 | |
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234
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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235
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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236
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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237
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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238
consultant
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| n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生 | |
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239
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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240
indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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241
nosy
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| adj.鼻子大的，好管闲事的，爱追问的；n.大鼻者 | |
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242
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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