Chapter 10 The story of the bum lady

After you've skipped TV and the paper, mornings are the worst part: that first cup of coffee.Exactly, for the first hour of waking you want to know what's going on in the rest of the world.But her new rule: no radio.Do not watch TV.Do not read newspapers.Everything stops. Give her a copy of Cosmopolitan and Mrs. Keith will be suffocated. When the newspaper arrived, she threw it straight into the recycling bin without even removing the rubber band from it.You have no idea that the headlines are: "Killer continues to hunt homeless". Or: "Women Travelers Killed". Most mornings at breakfast Mrs. Keith saw mail order catalogs.All you have to do is order a Magic Shoe Rack over the phone, and you'll receive a stack of catalogs every week for the rest of your life.All kinds of things for your home and garden, all kinds of small things, tools and new inventions to save time and space.

Where the TV used to be on the kitchen counter, she's placed a glass trough with lizards that change color with your interior.A glass tank like an aquarium that turns on the heat switch and won't tell you that yet another street alcoholic has been shot and dumped in the river, the fifteenth victim in a horrific killing of the city's homeless , Those bodies were all stab wounds, gunshot wounds, and burns with lighter fluid.The homeless people in the streets panicked, and at night, despite the new consumption epidemic, rushed for shelter.The trucks out of town were packed.Social radicals declared that the municipality was culling beggars.You only have to glance at a newsstand, or get into a taxi with the radio on, to know that.

You get a glass case and put it where the TV used to be, and there's a lizard in it—that thing is so stupid that every time the maid moves a rock, it thinks it's been moved miles away. This is called "cocooning", where your home becomes your whole world. The Mrs. Keyes—Peckel and Evelyn—they weren't like that before, when a dolphin died in a tuna net they would rush out and write a check.go party.They'd throw big parties for people wounded by landmines.Host dinner parties for people with severe head injuries, fibroids, and bulimia.Cocktail parties and silent auctions for people with restless bowel syndrome.

Each evening has a variety of themes: "Universal peace." Or: "Hope for the future." Think about going to your high school prom every night for the rest of your life.Every night, it's another stage adorned with South American cut flowers and countless tiny sparkling white lights.Ice sculptures and champagne fountains, and a band in little white dresses playing Cole Porter.The guests of honor on every stage are either Arab royalty or the young minds of the Internet, too many get-rich-quick people with bold investments who stay on the ground only when their jets need refueling and maintenance .These people have no imagination, they just open the Town and Country Magazine and say:

I want this. At every charity meal for abused children, everyone walks on two legs and eats custard with one mouth, and their lips all get the same lip augmentation.They were looking at the same Cartier gold watch, at the same time, surrounded by the same diamonds, and wearing the same famous brand necklace on the slender and slender neck shaped by practicing yoga. Everyone moves in and out of the same Lexus only in a different color. No one thought it was a big deal, and every night was a total social standoff. Mrs. Keith's best friend, Elizabeth Ethelbridge Futten, nicknamed "Inky", used to say that there was only one "best" of everything.Inky said one night, "By the time everyone's serving up the best stuff, it's going to look a little—to be honest, honest."

The old society is gone.Now everywhere you see, there are more new media upstarts, and fewer and fewer old railroad and shipping tycoons. Yingqi always said that the latest status is not to show up anymore. It was after a cocktail party for victims of gun violence when Mrs Keith stepped out into the street.Packer and Evelyn came down the steps of the art museum, and there was the usual long line on the side of the road, full of people in sweaters, waiting for the parking boy to bring their car.It was right on the sidewalk, near a bus bench.Sitting in the chairs were a drunkard and a homeless woman, and everyone tried not to look at them.

Also try to hold your breath. The two men, who were not young anymore, wore clothes that looked like they had been picked up from a garbage dump. There were some loose threads at every seam, and the filthy clothes had hardened. Her sneakers, her knotted and tousled hair visible under a tousled plastic wig as thick and gray as steel wool for scrubbing metalwork. The drunkard wore a knitted brown wool cap pulled down very low.He was pampering the homeless woman, with one hand in the front of her rayon elasticated trousers and the other under her sweatshirt.And the homeless woman writhed and moaned, her tongue twirling in her open mouth.

The homeless woman's sweatshirt was lifted up, exposing her belly that looked flat and taut, her skin rubbed pink. The front of the alcoholic's baggy sweatpants were stretched like a tent with his erection, and the front was black with seeping wet marks. It seemed that only Packer and Evelyn were watching the two caressing each other.The parking guys run back and forth between here and the parking lot just down the street.The group of nouveau riche upstarts watched attentively as the fast-moving second hand circled round and round on their diamond watches. The drunk drew the homeless woman's face against his swollen trousers, and her lips twirled around the growing black mark.

The vagrant's lips, Evelyn told Packer, she recognized them. You hear a little noise, the kind of loud ringing that makes everyone waiting to reach into their fur coat pockets for their phones. Oh my goodness.said Mrs. Keith.She told Peckel that the homeless woman who got the drunks' hands and feet, that woman was probably Inky.Elizabeth Ethelbridge Furton Waips. The loud bell rang again. The last thing Evelyn heard was that Ying Qi was running a magazine.Probably Vogue.She spends half a year in Paris every year, deciding on the content of the next season. She will sit in a fashion venue in Milan, record comments on fashion, and broadcast them on the cable network.She's on the red carpet reporting who's wearing what to the Oscars.

The homeless woman on the waiting bench at the bus station put the black thing next to the gray plastic wig, fiddled with it, and said, "Hello?" Her mouth left the wet swell of the drunk's crotch, Said, "Did you take note?" She said, "New pink with orange." The voice of the homeless woman, Mrs. Keith told her husband, she recognized the voice. She said, "Yingqi." The homeless woman tucks her tiny phone back between the elastic bandages wrapped around her leg. "That stinking drunk," said Packer. "He's the president of TWA."

Just then, the homeless woman looked up and said, "Effie? Packer?" With the drunk's fingers still fumbling in her elastic pants, she patted the bench beside her and said, "No Think of it.” (①Evelyn’s nickname) The drunkard drew back his fingers, which were wet and shiny under the street lamp.He said, "Peckel! Come say hello." Of course, Packer was right all along. Yingqi said that the new rich is poor, and the new fame is unknown. "The new upper class," Yingqi said, "is the lower class." Wealthy jet-setters were the first homeless, Inky said, and we had maybe a dozen houses—in different cities—but we still lived on a box. That made a lot of sense, if only because Packer and Evelyn had never had a hard time.All social season, they've been at horse races, art show openings, and auctions, talking to each other about all the socialites in rehab, or getting plastic surgery. "It doesn't matter if you're using a supermarket trolley or a personal jet, it's all the same. It's coming and going all the time, you don't want to be tied up," Inky said. Plus, she said, if you had money, you could sit on the opera house's steering committee.You donate a large sum of money and you get a seat on the board of the museum foundation. You sign a check, and that makes you famous. You get stabbed to death in a hit movie and you become a celebrity. In other words: tied to death. Inky said: "The new celebrity is nobody." The TWA alcoholic had a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.The bottle, he said, was made of equal parts mouthwash, cough syrup, and Old Scent cologne, and after one sip the four of them strode through the shadows, walking Through parks, places you never dare to go at night. What you've got to love when it comes to drinking is that every sip is an irrevocable decision.You charge straight ahead and control the game.This is the same as taking drugs, sedatives and painkillers, each time is a decisive step towards a certain junction. "The new privacy is publicity," Inky says. Even if you're staying in a fancy hotel—the kind that puts you in a white bathrobe and an orchid next to the bidet in a white marble bathroom, she says. place—even then, there is a good chance that a pinhole camera is watching you.She said the only places you could have sex were outside in public, on sidewalks, in subway stations.Most people only want to see it when they think they can't see it. Besides, she said, the whole champagne-and-caviar lifestyle was dead.It's only six hours by jet from here to Rome, which makes evasion all too easy, and the world feels small and uninteresting.Traveling around the world just gets you bored with more places faster.A boring breakfast in Bali, a boring lunch in Paris, a boring dinner in New York, and falling asleep or passing out in the middle of a blowjob in Los Angeles. Too much top-notch experience, too dense, "like building the Imperial Art Museum." Yingqi said. (②Getty Museum, American oil tycoon Paul Getty displayed his private collection of Greek and Roman antiques, French decorative art in the eighteenth century, and a private art gallery of famous Western European paintings from the fourteenth century to the twentieth century. It was originally in his own house, seven The new building cost $12 million to build in the mid-00s.) "Soap up, rinse off, and start all over again," said the TWA alcoholic. In this boring new world where everyone is upper-middle-class, Inky says there's nothing like snooping around the streets for a few hours.After not taking a shower and making you stink, just taking a hot shower is worth traveling all the way to Sonoma for a detox mud bath. (③Sonoma, in California on the west coast of the United States, is a wine country and is also famous for its spa treatments.) "Maybe think about it," said Inky, "that smoothie between the two main courses." Opening a small window into Les Miserables can help you enjoy life as it is. "Come and join us," Inky said, her mouth still smeared with green cough syrup, and strands of plastic wig sticking to it."Next Friday night," she said. Looks bad, she said, just the latest "good thing." She said that everyone who should come will be there.That bunch of old friends.The best of who's who.At ten o'clock in the evening, gather under the slope on the west side of the bridge. They can't go, Evelyn said.Packer and she had agreed to go to the End Latin American Hunger Ball Wednesday night.Thursdays are Aboriginal relief gatherings, and Fridays are auctions for runaway teenage sex workers.These events, and the glamorous trophies they hand out, make people look forward to the day when Americans are most afraid of speaking out. "Anyway, you go to the Sheraton in the downtown area," Yingqi said, "and get a room." Evelyn must have made a pug face, because Inky then said to her, "Take it easy." "Of course we don't live there, we don't go to the Sheraton. It's just a place to change clothes," she said. Any time after ten o'clock on Friday night, she said: under the slope west of the bridge. For Packer and Evelyn Keys, the first question is always what to wear.Well, man, it seems easy, just wear his little dress and trousers in reverse.The left and right shoes are reversed, you see - it looks lame and crazy. "Crazy," Inky would say, "is the new rationality." On Wednesday, after the Hunger Prom, Packer and Evelyn were coming out of the ballroom of the Grand Hotel when they heard "Yale Anthem" being sung in the street.In the street, Frances "France" Dunlop Colgate Nelson drinks with Huster "Shoe" Fraser and Weaver "Bones" Pullman Big jugs of beer, three of them sitting with their dirty trousers rolled up, bare feet in the fountain, France with her bra over her shirt. Yingqi said that if you wear bad clothes, you will be dressed up in a new way. Evelyn tried a dozen trash bags around the house, green and black plastic bags, all big enough to hold yard debris.But all that made her look fat.In order to look good, she finally decided to wear a narrow white garbage bag for kitchen scraps.It looked elegant, even fitting like a wrap dress by Diane von Furstenberg.It was bound with an old wire that had its sheath melted away, showing bits of bright orange safety paint, and had loose copper wire and plugs hanging off to one side. (④Diane von Furstenberg, a Jew, an American fashion designer born in Belgium, is famous for designing wraps.) This season, Yingqi said that everyone wears their wigs upside down and wears two different shoes.She said, take a dirty blanket, cut a hole in the middle, wear it as a cape, and go out on the street for a night of fun. For safety reasons, they stayed at the Sheraton Hotel in the downtown area that night, and Evelyn brought three large suitcases full of military surplus supplies.Bras that are yellowed and oversized, sweaters that are full of balls.She took a bottle of mud mask to smudge them herself.They sneaked down the fourteenth floor of the hotel fire escape, exited a door leading to a back alley, and got away.They are nobody, nobody recognizes them, and they have no responsibility to do anything. No one looked at them, begged for money, or tried to sell them anything. They walked towards the bridge like invisible people, safe because they were poor. Packer walked with a limp because his left and right shoes were reversed.Evelyn opened her mouth blankly, and suddenly spit out a mouthful of phlegm.That's right, it's the girl who was not allowed to scratch even itches in public places since she was a child, spitting openly on the road.Peckel staggered and bumped into her, she grabbed his left arm, he hugged her, and they kissed like only two wet mouths, and the surrounding city disappeared. On the first night on the street, Yingqi brought a black patent leather bag with a cracked surface. The bag smelled foul, like the shore after low tide on a hot day. The smell, "This is a new anti-class symbol, "she says.Inside the leather bag is a kind of take-out carton from the hall.Inside the box was a lump of orange the size of a fist. "It's been four days," Ying Qi said, "Swinging it around is more effective than bodyguards in keeping people away from you." Smell to maintain privacy, this is a new way to maintain personal space, to scare others with smell. No matter how bad it smells, she said, you'll get used to it.Yingqi said: "Calvin Klein's 'permanent' perfume, don't you just get used to it...?" The two of them, Inky and Evelyn, walked down the street a little away from the group.In the front, a few people in miniskirts got out of a limo, and some thin people wore headphones with wires running from their mouths to their ears, and everyone was talking to someone in the distance.As the two of them walked by, Yingqi staggered, flung the leather bag containing the rotten fish, and leaned against the sleeves of the fur coats and fur coats.It doesn't matter if it's a bodyguard in a dark suit or an assistant in a custom black suit. The crowd huddled together and backed away, all groaning and covering their noses and mouths with manicured hands. Yingqi kept walking forward, she said: "I like to do this kind of thing." Faced with the new rich, Ying Qi says it's time to change the rules."The poor are the new aristocracy," she said. Ahead of a group of millionaire tech upstarts and Arab oil tycoons, all smoking outside an art gallery, Inky said: "We went over and asked them for a little money..." It was their holiday as textile presidents and tobacco heiresses as Packer and Effie Case, their weekend retreat from the social safety net. TWA's alcoholic was named Webster Banner, nicknamed "Boy Scout."She, Inky and Effie, Monsieur joined Thin Man and Frances, then Packer and Potter joined in, and then Shoes and Bones.They were all very drunk and playing a guessing game, during which Packer yelled, "Is there anyone under this bridge who isn't worth at least forty million?" Of course, all you hear is the sound of cars passing by overhead. Later, they're pushing shopping carts somewhere in an industrial area.Inky and Effie pushed one, and Packer and Scout walked behind them.Yingqi said: "You know, I used to think that the thing worse than falling out of love is to win in love..." She said, "I used to love "Boy Scouts" very much, since I was in school, but you know Something... let us down. " Inky and Effie, wearing the kind of mittens on their hands that make it easier to organize old cans, Inky said: "I used to think that the secret to a happy ending was to bring the curtain down at the right time. Once the happy moments are over, things don’t feel right again.” Those who climb up the social ladder feel that everything is hard work—they are afraid of using the wrong fork, and they get nervous when the hand washing bowl is passed—they have more to worry about when they are homeless.Food poisoning, chilblains, exposed gold teeth that give away your identity, or someone smells like Chanel No. 5 on you. There are a million twigs that will give you away. They became what Inky called "commuter bums". She said: "And now? Now I love Scout, I love him like I'm not married to him. "On the street like this, it feels like they're some sort of pioneers starting a new life in the wilderness. But it's not bears or wolves to worry about, it's—Inky shrugs her shoulders and says—drug dealers and drivers A murderer who went through random shooting. "But it's still the best part of my life," she said, "but I know it can't be like this forever..." Her new social schedule is getting fuller.It's all this "hidden in the city" thing.It was impossible to do anything on Tuesday, because she was going to collect rags with Ding Qi and Zida.Afterwards, Packer and the Boy Scouts would meet to sort out the aluminum cans, and after that, all of them would go to a free clinic where their feet would be looked at by a young doctor with dark eyes and a vampire's hometown accent. Peckel says aluminum cans are the South African silver dollars of the street. "Think big. Pretend you're making a movie that's going to be on a network," Inky said, standing on top of the ramp where the car turned off the highway. Yingqi wrote on a piece of brown cardboard with a black signature pen: single mother, ten children, suffering from breast cancer. "Just do it—right?—" she said, "they'll pay you..." Effie wrote: Lame Wounded Soldier.hunger.I want to go home. Inky said, "Great." She said, "You picked Cold Mountain." into a movie, starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellig won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.) This is their suburban camping event. Stealth in the open, in plain sight. No one is more overlooked than the homeless.It doesn't matter if you're Jane Fonda or Robert Redford, as long as you're pushing a shopping cart down the street in broad daylight, wearing three layers of dirty, ragged clothes, and muttering Chattering - no one will pay attention to you. They can live like this for the rest of their lives. "Boy Scouts" and Yingqi, they plan to register and wait in line to buy a low-income state house.They want to sit in the waiting room, get free dental visits from handsome young science students, order free methadone, and slowly switch to heroin.Receive adult vocational training, fry hamburgers, learn to drive and do laundry, and slowly become the lower middle class. (⑥Maintenance therapy to relieve drug addiction.) At night, Packer and Effie hugged each other, either under the bridge or on the cardboard over the steaming warm manhole cover, his hand inside her dress, as strangers walked by. Make her orgasm, and they love each other more than ever before. But Yingqi was right, this kind of thing can't be like this forever, the end came so quickly, until it was reported in the newspaper the next day, some people still couldn't figure out what happened. They slept in front of a warehouse and found it more comfortable than in Banff or Hong Kong.By this time, their blankets all smell the same, and their clothes—their bodies—feel like a home.Packer's arms around his wife alone are like a mansion on Park Avenue, or a villa on the Greek island of Crete. That night, a black car pulled over to the side of the road, its brakes slammed, and one wheel hit the pavement.The two bright beams of the headlights, shining directly on the Cases, woke them up.The rear door opened, there was a scream from the back seat, and a woman fell head first, arms and hands waving, onto the pavement.Her long black hair hides her face.She was completely naked and crawled out of the car on all fours. Packer and Evelyn, buried in their home of rags and old blankets, saw the naked girl crawling toward them. Behind her, a black man's shoe stepped out of the open car door.Then a leg in black trousers, a man in a pair of black leather gloves climbed out of the back of the car, and the girl stood up and screamed, screamed, please, scream Crying for help, so close you could see she had one, two, three gold rings in one ear.The other ear was gone. What looked like a long lock of black hair was actually blood running down the side of her neck.Where there was an ear, only some uneven flesh was seen. The girl backed away to the Cases, whose eyes were only visible under the blanket. The girl grabbed their blanket while the man grabbed her by the hair.As the man grabbed her away, kicking and crying, the girl tore off the blanket, revealing them half asleep, blinking in the bright headlights of the car. The man must have seen them, and whoever was driving must have seen them too. The girl screamed, "Please," she screamed, "Plate..." and she was dragged back into the car.The doors slammed shut, the tires squealed, leaving only the girl's blood and black rubber scratches.In the ditch was a paper cup from a fast food restaurant, which fell or was knocked over during the struggle. It was accompanied by a pale ear with two shiny gold rings on it. At breakfast, in their Sheraton suite, they saw the news in the paper as they ate eggs with mushrooms and apricots, English muffins, warm coffee and cold bacon.Local news reports that the daughter of a Brazilian oil tycoon has been kidnapped.Her photo was the same naked girl with the long black hair from the night before, except she was smiling and holding a trophy with a little gold tennis player on top. According to the newspaper, the police did not even have a single witness. Of course, the Cases could send a letter, but they didn't actually see anyone's face.They also didn't see the license plate number.All they saw was the girl, and blood.Packer and Evelyn, can't help at all.If they go to the police station, they will only embarrass themselves. You can already imagine the headlines in the newspaper: "Celebrity couple, pretending to be homeless for fun." Or: "Millionaires pretend to be poor". They also definitely can't pull out Inky and "Scout", "Skinny", "Shoes" and "Bones". Making Packer and Evelyn the laughing stock of the public won't save that poor girl.They will definitely suffer no less than what she has suffered. The next week's newspapers reported the death of the kidnapped tycoon's daughter. However, Yingqi is still not worried at all.Poor dirty people have nothing to worry about on the street.The girl who was killed was young, clean looking, beautiful and rich. "There is nothing to lose," Inky said. "This is new wealth." "Soap it up, rinse it off, and start over," Packer said. No, Yingqi doesn't intend to put aside her happiness and return to the days of being famous and rich.And as those days came, Packer went out with her more and more.To protect her, he said. On such an evening, Evelyn was at a benefit dinner dance for a fight against colon cancer when her cell phone rang and it was Inki and there was a man behind him yelling and it was Packer's voice .On the phone, Yingqi gasped and said, "Effie, please, Effie, help, we are lost and someone is chasing us." She said, "We went to the police, but ..." and then the phone disconnected. It was as if she had run into a tunnel, under a viaduct. The headline in the newspaper the next day read: "Publisher and Textile CEO Both Assassinated". Now, almost every morning, there are unwanted news headlines: "Female homeless people were slashed to death with knives." Or: "The killer continues to attack the homeless" Every night, somewhere, the black car was looking for Mrs. Keith, the only witness to the crime.Someone was slashing and killing anyone in the street who looked like it could be her, anyone in tatters sleeping under a pile of blankets. It was after this that Evelyn freaked out.She stopped subscribing to the newspaper, lost the TV, and bought instead a large glass case in which she kept a lizard that changed color depending on the decor. Now, Mrs. Keith is the opposite of the homeless. She has too many houses. The house has become her burden. A picture of a garden on coated paper, wearing a diamond ring from the cremation of your beloved husband. Of course, she still misses her friends, her husband.But that's what Yingqi might say: to be is to be new. While she still buys tickets to those charity events, participates in auctions and sees dance performances, it's important to know that what she's doing helps improve the world.Next, she's off to swim with endangered gray whales. Sleeping under the canopy of some disaster-shrunken rainforest. Photograph fading lizards and study ecology. It's important to know that she still wants to be different. Mrs. Clark told us that there were five people at the Chateau Diodete that summer. Poet, Sir Byron. Shelley, and his lover, Mary Godwin. Mary's half-sister, Claire Clalmont, was pregnant with Byron's child. And Byron's doctor, John Polidori We sat around the electric fireplace and listened in silence in the second-floor balcony smoking room, the Gothic smoking room.Each of us curled up in a yellow leather winged armchair, or a sofa with cross-stitched cushions, or a brocade-covered love seat we dragged from somewhere.Bent chair legs left messy marks on the dusty and moth-eaten carpet. Almost all of us were there except Mrs. Bumbo, who went to bed early, and Miss America, who was still picking locks. The electric fireplace was just a circle of light swirling under a layer of thick red and yellow grass glued together.Bright but not hot, all our hanging crystal trees have been extinguished, only red and yellow lights dance across our faces, shapes of red and yellow smooth over wood paneling and patchwork flagstones land. It was the five, Mrs. Clark said, trapped in the rain, bored, Shelley and his group, who took turns reading to the others from a collection of German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana. "Sir Byron," said Mrs. Clarke, "can't stand that book." Byron said the people in that room were far more talented than the author of the book they were reading.He said they could each write better horror stories, and they should each write one. That was about a century before Bram Stoker wrote Lord Droguler.In that summer, there was Dr. John Polidori's work "Dracula", and now the original concept of the vampire. On one such rainy night, on the shores of Lake Geneva in a thunderstorm, eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin had a dream that would become the legend of Frankenstein, the two monsters that have served as the basis for countless books and films. Even this family reunion has become legendary.Along the shores of Lake Geneva, resort hotels have installed binoculars in their windows facing the lake, so that their guests can see the villa that is said to have an incest hybrid meeting.Middle-class tourists, bored on summer travel, took their worst fears under Sir Byron's roof.It's that small group of young people who want to get rid of the million rules of their culture, while others spy on them through binoculars, thinking they will see some monsters. Here we are equivalent to a group of people in Diode Di Villa. Some who tell stories aloud to each other. Some want to find concepts that will resonate in the future.Resonate in books, movies, plays, songs, TV shows, t-shirts, money. It was these faces—about three times the size of the previous crowd, a mob—that we had met before, behind that coffee shop.Us: These are the faces that ended up here.Even at that time, the Countess of Vision wore her trademark-like headscarf.The Savage Duke wore his blond hair in a ponytail.The missing link is his long nose and wild black beard. What people say today about Chateau Diodete will be said about that café in the future.Some people who never saw that ad will swear they were all there, they were smart enough not to agree to join this workshop, otherwise, they might as well die.Or become very rich.Years later, the coffee shop, with shelves of free newspapers and a sign full of business cards, offering enemas and pet health consultations, must have been as big as a small shop. The gymnasium can accommodate so many people who claim to be there that night. The story of that night will become a legend. Be our myth. There was a whole bunch of people, poets and housewives and us, standing there with paper cups of coffee, listening to Mrs. Clarke.Her enormous breasts and silicone pout made some giggle.Someone asked her if she had a telephone so that people from the outside world could contact people in the workshop, and Mrs. Clark said, yes."It's 1-800-fuck you," she said. Just then, some people left. Meaning, no.There is no contact with the outside world.No TV or radio or telephone, or internet.Just you and what you take with you in one piece of luggage. In other words, more people were lost. Those who got away, survivors of the first round.These smart people tell their own stories.is the camera behind the camera behind the camera.Mr. Whittier would call it that.They will have their ultimate truth - but only in the circumstances of that night. These poor idiots don't have much to sell. We've all seen that ad, just in different ways and in different places, and it says: Writer's Workshop leave your life behind for three months Just disappear.抛下所有妨碍你完成杰作的一切。你的工作，家人和家，所有的责任和旁骛——先搁置三个月。和想法相近的人生活在一个让你完全沉浸在写作中的环境里。合格者可获提供免费食宿。将你生命中的一小段时间赌在可以创造一个全新未来的机会上，成为职业诗人、小说家、编剧家。及时行动，过你梦想中的生活，名额极其有限。 这个广告印在一张索引卡上、一张处方笺上，框在一条虚线后面，好像是一张你会撕下来的折价卷。最底下是一个电话号码，那是克拉克太太的电话号码，钉在图书馆大厅的软木告示板上，贴在超级市场后面的厕所旁边，在自助洗衣店里。那张印在索引卡上的广告，前一个礼拜还到处可见，后一个礼拜就全不见了。 所有的卡片全都消失了踪影。 看到的人，如果打那个电话，就会听到一段克拉克太太的录音，说明那家咖啡店，还有我们应该去会面的日期和时间。 现在围坐在红黄两色的假火光中，我们心里已经可以想见未来的情形：看到我们告诉别人，我们怎么决定做这场小小的冒险，结果一个疯子把我们在一间旧戏院里关了三个月。我们已经把情况弄的更恶劣，加以夸大。我们会说这个地方冷得冰凉，没有自来水。连吃的东西都要配给。 这些全不是真的，可是会让故事更动人。不错，我们会包装真相，加以放大，加以夸饰，以求效果。 我们会创出我们自己的人兽乱伦杂交大会，让这个世界上的人闲话八卦。 我们每个人分到的后台化妆室，谈起来的时候，会让里面有毒蜘蛛、饥饿的大老鼠，到处粘着也不只是否定督察那只猫的毛而已。 有鬼。我们在那间老旧的剧院里放进一只鬼，来丰富故事内容，让改编的电影里有用得到特效的地方。哦，我们自己在这里闹鬼，把这里装满了失落的鬼魂。 我们会把我们的生活化为可怕的冒险。一个真实生活的恐怖故事，有一个圆满的结局，像一场我们撑着活了下来而可以谈论的试炼。 除了游民夫人和她手上的亡夫。美国小姐肚子里一点点长大，如滚雪球般越来越大的胎儿，还有喷嚏小姐的过敏症之外，我们其他的人还要有更多、更多的痛楚和痛苦，以后在全国性的电视谈话节目中再挖出来讲，也就是美国小姐所说的那些电视节目。就算我们始终没有激发起什么好点子，始终没能写出我们可称为杰作的小说，困在一起的这三个月也足够写一本回忆录，拍成一部电影，将来可以不必做一份固定工作，只要当名人就行了。 一个可以卖得出去的故事。 现在，围坐在玻璃火炉周围，我们计算着需要记得以便在全国性电视节目上引起轰动的细节。让我们可以“在现场”指导，让那部电影“具真实感”。那个故事说到我们如何遭到绑架，囚为人质，而每天喷嚏小姐病的越来越重，而美国小姐肚子里的孩子则越来越大。 虽然没有人说出口，可是喷嚏小姐的死会成为再完美不过的第三幕的高潮，我们最黑暗的一刻。 而最完美的结局会是租约过期之后，房东闯了进来，及时救出了体力衰竭的美国小姐、精神失常的游民夫人。我们之中少数几个人跛行到阳光下，几乎睁不开眼睛，泣不成声。其余的人则由担架抬了出来，送上救护车，一路鸣着警笛到医院去。电影再往前跳接到我们全体环立在床边，看着美国小姐生产。再跳接到我们参加喷嚏小姐的葬礼。可怜的喷嚏小姐的鬼魂，为了让剧情更动人而牺牲。 我们要用八卦神探的录影机来拍附加的实况录影，诽谤伯爵的卡式录音带来当旁白。 最后，美国小姐，要把她的新生婴儿命名为喷嚏小姐，或是她原先的本名。象征一个循环的完成，生命继续，获得重生。可怜的、衰弱的喷嚏小姐。 在这个电影-书籍-T恤的故事中，我们所有人都爱喷嚏小姐……她那深藏的勇气……她那阳光般的幽默。 唉。 不错，除非我们之中有那个能咳出个新版的科学怪人或是卓九勒，我们自己的故事一定得弄得更戏剧化才能卖的出去。在整个事件结束之前，我们需要一切能把情况弄得更加糟糕很多的事物。 去他的什么原创性，写什么假设情况的小说一点用也没有。那得花上好大的力气，才能赚到一点点蝇头小利。 尤其是版税要分成是十七份。就算你删减掉注定要送命的喷嚏小姐，也还要分成十六份。 我们所有的人都默不作声，但在心里命令她：咳嗽。 赶快一命呜呼了吧。 不错，其他的人都在那次咖啡店的集会里中途离席的时候，我们才是聪明的一群。不错，这件事当初看起来像是一场最后会引来大麻烦的疯狂冒险，可是，嗨——这件事现在看起来可是一场会带来大财富的疯狂冒险呢。 我们所有的人都默默地坐在这里，但是命令喷嚏小姐：咳嗽。 我们所有的人都满心希望她能帮忙让我们成名。 这就是无神教士为什么拉断了所有消防警报器线路的原因。我们刚进门的第一个钟点里就下了手。至少，他是这样告诉媒人的。无神教士是在军中学会线路的，而失落环节则帮忙他拿着手电筒。为了保险起见，他们还检查了所有的电话线路。唯一找到还有用的一条线，失落环节用他多毛而肌肉结实的手一把从墙里给拉了出来。 这也是灵视女伯爵为什么把小小塑胶叉子的尖齿插进每个门锁里再扳断的原因。这样谁也没法用钥匙开得了锁。以防万一他的假释官会循着她的电子手铐找到她的踪迹。不错，我们这里没有一个希望被救出去——现在还不要。 我们所有的人都在下赌注。这些场景是不会出现在电影里的。这些将来全都要看起来像是魏提尔先生干的。那个邪恶、有虐待狂的老魏提尔先生。 我们已经组织起来对抗克拉克太太和魏提尔先生那对搭档。 美国小姐和喷嚏小姐已经成为股市情节的重点。我们的牺牲品，命运已经注定。 在红色和黄色的电动火光中，在有雕花木镶板的歌德式吸烟室内，克拉克太太沉坐进她那张皮质翼状靠背扶手椅的厚垫子里，她的下巴越来越低，几乎陷进她的乳沟，她问保安会修女有没有找到她的保龄球？ 保安会修女摇了摇头，没找到。她轻敲着她手表的表面，说道：“再过四十五……四十四分钟，天就黑了。” 喷嚏小姐咳了起来——好长一阵声音响得有如湿的卵石撞在一起的咳嗽——我们大家勉强忍住没有发出欢呼。她在口袋里掏着药片、胶囊，可是缩回来的手却是空的。 保安会修女向大家告退，走下楼梯，走向大厅，走向床铺，一级一级地逐渐消失身影，越变越小，最后她头顶上染了色的黑发也不见了。 我们的美国小姐在别的地方，跪在一个门锁前面，想把锁撬开。或是想拉开我们都知道不会有作用的消防警报器。 多亏了无神教士。 诽谤伯爵的卡式录音机上红灯亮着，八卦侦探把他的录影机由一只眼转另一只眼前。 由楼梯底下传来一声尖叫。一个女人长长的哀号，是保安会修女的声音，叫我们赶快过去。她踩到什么东西而绊了一跤。 是游民夫人。一块新的污渍。一只手里紧握住一把刀。在她四周围，她的血形成一个黑色水潭渗进大厅的蓝色地毯里。 长长的黑发似乎由她脸的一侧蜿蜒而下，消失在她皮毛大衣的领子里。但是在楼梯的最下一级，大家看清楚她时，那道像辫子似的黑发其实是血。在她脸侧那道如浮雕的长发下，她的耳朵不见了。她趴在那里，伸出的一只手里满是红色和粉红色，在那堆像生蚝似的东西正中央，闪亮着一枚珍珠耳环，映着那假的火光。在她手掌里，就在那只粉红色的耳朵旁边，是那枚以她火花的亡夫所做成的钻戒。 我们所有人站在楼梯上望着她，游民夫人微微一笑，她的头转向一边，抬眼望着我们。她说：“我在流血……血流得很多……”在她苍白的面孔和两手之外，一道血流似乎一直不停地向远方流去。她的手指松开，那把刀滑落在地毯上，她说：“现在，魏提尔先生，你一定得让我回家去……” 凶悍同志用手肘撞了诽谤伯爵一下说：“我不是跟你说过了吗？你看”她朝那道血痕的顶端点了下头，说道：“现在你看得到拉皮手术留下的疤了吧。” 游民夫人死了。保安会修女用一根手指贴在她颈边说了这件事，血玷污了修女的手指。 到了这时候，我们的未来已经决定了，不能再改了。这就是我们的饭票，告诉别人我们怎么亲眼目睹了一个无辜的人被迫走上自绝之路，再加上游民夫人混迹下层社会的故事。她丈夫的悲惨遭遇，遭绑架的巴西石油大亨的女继承人。去他妈的发明新怪物的想法。在这里，我们只要四下看看，多多注意就行了。 八卦侦探由他录影机的观景窗里，倒带重看游民夫人在台上说故事的片段。看她叙述又再重述。 我们的玩偶，我们的故事情节。 诽谤伯爵把他的录音机倒带回来，而我们一再重听保安会修女的尖叫，听了再听。 我们的鹦鹉。 在那黄色和红色玻璃的火光中，魏提尔先生说，“哎，已经开始了……” “魏提尔先生？”克拉克太太说。 魏提尔先生，我们的反派，我们的主人，我们的魔鬼，我们因为他折磨我们而爱慕的人，他叹了口气。他看着游民夫人的尸体，一只颤战抖动摇晃的手伸了起来，捣住嘴巴，打了个哈欠。 否定督察望着尸体，轻拍着抱在怀里的那只猫，虎斑色的猫毛飞飘到各处。 冻疮男爵夫人和灵视女伯爵跪在尸体旁边。没有哭，但是她们的两眼睁得让你能看到眼球四周都是眼白，正像看到一张中了奖的乐透彩卷时的模样。 圣无肠一面看着尸体，一面从一个银色袋子里舀出冷的意大利面，每一口滴下红色汁液的面里都沾着一些猫毛。 这就是我们对付我们对付我们来过接下来的三个月。 魏提尔先生坐在他的轮椅上，由楼梯顶望下来，在他身边，诽谤伯爵用他的笔和记事本，还在记着笔记。 魏提尔先生伸出颤抖的手指说：“你，你在把这件事写下来吗？” 诽谤伯爵看着他所记的真相，头都没抬，只点了下头，是的。 “那——跟我们说个故事，”魏提尔先生说：“回到火边来。”他扭动了下他颤战的手。说道：“拜托。” 诽谤伯爵微微一笑。他把记事本翻到空白的下一页，把笔套上，抬起头来，说道：“有谁记得一个很老的电视节目，叫《隔壁邻居小丹尼》的吗？”他说话色声音缓慢而低沉有力，他说：“有一天……”他说：“有一天，我的狗吃了包在铝箔里的垃圾……”