Chapter 13 Section 4

Marvin walked out of the basement, faced the sunlight, and froze for a moment.He drives the car with tenacity, and once he chooses a lane, he stays the same.He wore a trench coat with a tartan lining, which he always wore when the leaves started to change color.He has persisted in this habit of changing clothes for many years, adjusting according to the changes of the universe, making his life appear very regular.He's worn this style of jacket for decades, giving away his old ones to the Salvation Army and buying a new one.Before the store closes, he will appear in the silent and spacious display area.There, rows of suits are neatly arranged, as if they are managers in hell.The tan was familiar to him, and he could spot it from fifty yards away.

He also wears a pair of latex gloves, which he keeps on whenever he's in town, just in case. When he arrived on New York's Lower East Side, he walked the streets several times before finally finding a parking space that looked good.In that place, he will not encounter a tow truck, and will not encounter broken car theft.He locked the car door, took a step back, looked carefully at the parked car, and observed the situation on the street.There are cheap old furniture for sale and a truck park where every truck is covered in graffiti.People passing by looked grumpy and unlovable.He saw two men in wheelchairs reach out for a little change when the car stopped at a traffic light.

Marvin slithers forward, his characteristic shuffling, with a certain interpretive quality that enriches the literature on shuffling.Orchard Street is a mile long, lined with knitwear.He walked down the street looking at the clothes in the windows and in the stalls.Later, he stopped to look at a batch of - what was it called - text printed on T-shirts.Almost every piece has interesting and dirty words on it, something that could not be seen on the page in history, but is now printed on the T-shirts in the window.Standing beside him was a young man with thin limbs, tattoos all over his body, and a half-shaven mustache, staring at him blankly.He felt it, felt the piercing gaze go straight to the side of his head.

Marvin glanced at him. "What? I'm looking in the window," said Marvin. "I see you want to see it too?" "I can't see it? Why? This is a shop window." "You see me watching, so you can watch it?" "What? I can't see it?" "I'm watching." "It's a window on the street," said Marvin. "You want to see the window? I'll give you the window." "For no reason, what are you doing?" "You think you want to see it? Then I'll let you see it." Marvin had no choice but to step aside, his fingers in latex gloves curling.It's just impossible.You cannot walk normally on the street.why?They will kill you.They come rushing out the door and stabbing you just because you looked at them.This is a recent term used in the game of death and menace.You look at them and they could kill you.You make eye contact with them, which gives them the right to kill you.

Later, walking across Essex Street, he found the bakery.He likes this layout, the front room is a store, and the back room is a workshop, where the oven and the kneading table are placed, making onion buns in front of you.A man was wearing a white shirt and a white apron, with sifted flour stuck to his hands and arms.The rustic scene unfolded in the window, the bread and the movement of his hand revealing something white, had power for a moment and attracted Marvin.He thought he could stand there all day, watching the bakers work with the dough in their hands.Later, he bought a burrito for his daughter, the kind with sliced ​​onions.You eat this kind of food, you live in this kind of city, you practice this kind of religion, you face this kind of war.

He walked down the street, the bag of tacos against his chest, warm.He passed a playground where children were crouching on the handball field and others were running fast.After half a block, you will enter the place where the Chinese live together. When he had a good appetite, he often came here to taste the food with Eleanor. It was an ancient myth of Chinese stuff, food served in steaming steamers filled with vegetables whose names he did not know, showing the mysterious mind of that people.He stops to watch, as the fish flicker about in their homemade aquarium.He bought a deep-fried glutinous rice ball, and the original appetite was gone, not so much for the taste, as for the show.It is like the memory of food, the ghost left by ginger and green onion.

He casually returned to the car and saw the two beggars with sparse beards.They turned the wheelchairs under them and scrambled towards a stopped car. They leaned forward, shook their hands, and stretched out in front of the driver.It's a competition where they shake their arms and look through the dusty glass, hoping to make contact with the people in the car.But the driver turns his head away and closes the car door as a way to deal with the glass-washing person, the flower-selling person, the carjacking person, and the person who wants to strike up a conversation. If you look at them, they might kill you.

He was driving home, leaning forward, hands gripping the steering wheel.An English girl, from Somerset, could not have been invented.He played the piano dirge, which was Eleanor's favorite piece, which he listened to again about once a month, and he hit the repeat button, so it went on and on.At this time of year, it was her voice that he heard, reminding him to take off the tan trench coat.Time to wear that old Margaret casual, Marvin.Over the years, every word in this short, simple sentence has connected these two people who were bound together.They met in the Second World War, and then the geese passed the book, and finally married, and after a while, they had a child.Over time, two hearts formed a habit to accomplish certain things.dry cleaning.He has dry-cleaned tons of Margarita loungewear.

As he walked in the door, the phone rang.He went into the kitchen, put the bag of tacos on the table, took out a bottle of celery juice, and took a swig.At this time, he has freed his hands and can drink. He has been compensated for his hard work.He starts to take off his gloves.The glove was tight, and he struggled to pull it to the widest point of his palm, then yanked on each finger of the glove.The process was laborious and made him feel as though his fingers were somehow artificial.Later, he walked across the room to the telephone.The telephone is wall-mounted, and in a nearby photo, President Reagan stands in the Oval Office, flanked by Bobby Thomson and Ralph Blanca, and behind him is a tasseled flag.In the entire house above the basement, it's the only thing related to baseball.She—Eleanor—would be very anxious to know that he grabbed the bottle and drank straight from it.

The phone is still ringing.He glanced at it and grabbed the receiver—they called it a hand receiver now.He finally decided to sell the house and move into the apartment building where Clarice lived.The daughter and son-in-law lived on the fourth floor above, and the father lived on the third floor below.It was an easy-care house with yellowing bananas on the windowsill.There, he can sit and take a shower while Clarice and Carl run upstairs on the treadmill.They insist on exercising and hope to live a long life. "I'm calling from Phoenix." The other party said. "Is it the Phoenix City, or the Phoenix Bird?"

"A man I know visited you a few months ago, ten or eleven months ago." "I can't remember." "It's called Brian Glaske." "Even if you tortured me, I can't remember. People came to me several times, I saw them on the street, they were like clothes bags to the airport. I thought about it. " "Anyway, he talked about that visit recently. Can you tell me about that baseball in the box?" They'd knock on the door to see if there was anything wrong with him.He'd poke his head out from behind the shower curtain.It's okay, I'm okay, it's okay. “You’re a big football fan, retired and lived in Arizona. They put you in a heart valve with a mylar sleeve, and you’re obsessed with the old days. In your career, you’ve worked on restructuring and— —what’s it called—acquisition. You’ve made millions of dollars and you’re still not satisfied. You want to make one last acquisition, and it’s a deep, personal desire within you.” "Brian said that could have been the case." "You want to talk about that baseball thing, you gotta get the ballpark first. Actually, I'm up for sale. I get a call from somebody, and they're slurring their speech. Their gums are full of polymer, Holes were drilled in the sides to channel feces and urine out. They left the hospital and came home with the effects of a color Doppler ultrasound. I heard calls from people with quadruple bypass tubes in their blood Contains a lot of nitroglycerin, which you can use to make explosives." "I'm not a fan anymore, I no longer care about the team's situation." "I'm in the category of people who get medical tests right now. I mean, I have recurring cancer in multiple parts of my body, and the doctor gave me a team price. It's okay, you shouldn't laugh. I want to give you bad Feel." "You're a Dodgers fan, aren't you?" "Since the day I was born." "Grew up in Brooklyn?" "Grown up in Brooklyn, bought cheesecake in the Bronx, used to go to the Lower East Side." "Dodgers fans. And yet, you have a copy of the Paul Field scoreboard in the basement." "It's to remind me," said Marvin, "or to prepare me. I forget what it was for." "I'm not retired, I'm not making millions of dollars. Also, I don't know exactly why I want to buy this baseball." That was true, and Marvin liked it, and liked to hear that there were people who didn't have the heart throbbing for the old Giants or the old New York.Specially made stools can be purchased at surgical equipment outlets.You put it in the bathroom and you can sit in the shower and clean where your hands can't reach without falling or breaking a hip.He saw such a stool on the joint replacement channel one day. There are various models, and the legs of the stool are non-slip.TV channels are plentiful, with dedicated channels for each part of the body. "You're calling me from nowhere," Marvin said. "You want to buy a baseball, but you don't know why." "You're right," said the voice on the phone. This is not bad, Marvin has encountered such a situation for a long time.Marvin is in such a state.For years, he didn't know why he was looking for items that were nearly depleted.Why does he have such a crazy love for a baseball?Later, he finally understood that this was Eleanor's influence on his soul, the effect of the fear deep in his heart.This feeling drove him to collect things, to amass wealth, in order to fight against the dark shape of some unbearable loss.The influence of his wife Eleanor was present in his memory, in the smoky leather of the catcher's glove in the basement.In oval photographs of men with handlebar mustaches, he sees his wife's eyes.The state of loss is a fact, a reality revealed through the long years of solitude.He had never felt the need to use the word authenticity before.It was there, though, curled up somewhere in his brain for years, and now it came out, prolonging the sense of loss. "I have a mushroom-shaped tumor growing on my body." "Ok." "The doctor calls it fungus." "I don't know the term." "I don't know either. I looked it up in two dictionaries and couldn't find it in the dictionaries. When they use terms that aren't in the dictionaries, it means, they're saying goodbye to you." They go to Chinatown.They go to the waters of Jersey City to sample harpooned swordfish.The swordfish didn't die from being caught in a fishing net, it was better cooked with olive oil and pickled caper buds.It is the last delicacy made with fish on this planet. "I have to start by telling you that I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about?" "pedigree." "The pedigree. I don't have the full pedigree." He told the other party about baseball.He wanted to make a long story short, but then he opened up.He made that person happy, why not?Now, he can take care of some small daily things by himself, and his speech is not lacking in order.But he saw that day was slowly approaching.Clarice would rent him a hospital bed in the apartment room, with a high side so he wouldn't roll off and onto the floor.Strangers would come here to wash his genitals.They were immigrants, from countries he'd seen on the Travel Channel, and they were leading lives he couldn't even imagine.He will forget how to eat and even how to use simple words.He was lying on the bed, and it was very difficult to even take a breath.Oxygen tubes up his nose, bananas on the windowsill—he hated seeing them soften.Clarice said softly, putting a cool cloth over his head.It's okay, I'm okay, it's okay.In pressed white shorts and heelless socks, Carl looked like a boyish stockbroker. "Can we talk about the price?" said the voice on the phone. The word for water was water, but he couldn't say it, his body had forgotten something fundamental.He was talking to the guy in Phoenix on the phone, looking at the trench coat draped over the chair. They went to the Jersey City Shore, had sex, made salad.At that time, these terms were still in the dictionary. That night he ate half a cantaloupe with some grapes on top.In supermarkets, this is how they are sold wrapped in plastic wrap.