Chapter 6 5-1

Forty minutes later Vic was sitting in Dearing Oaks Park.He had called home and told Donna he would be back later.She asked why, why was his voice so strange?He just said to go back before dark and let her cook for Ted first. She wanted to ask more questions, but he had already hung up the phone. Now he is sitting in the park. The tears had washed away the fear, and all that was left was the ugly, irritated residue.But annoyed wasn't the exact word, he was furious, lashing out like he'd been stung by something.Some part of him already knew it was dangerous for him to go home now... dangerous for all three of them.

There's something delightful in hiding the wreckage after a catastrophe with more destruction, and there's a no-brainer determination in punching her deceitful face. He is sitting by the duck pond.On the other side, a lively Frisbee game is underway.All four girls and two of the boys who played the game were on roller skates, and roller skating was as hot as it was this summer. A young girl on skates pushed a cart of biscuits, peanuts, and boxes of soft drinks with a friendly, fresh face.Simple, a boy threw a Frisbee at her, she caught it lightly, and threw it back.In the sixties, Vic thought, a girl like her would have been in a commune, diligently exterminating insects on potato farms; this girl probably had a good position in the Small Business Administration.

He and Roger used to come here for lunch together.That was in their first year of running their own business, and later Rog found out that while the pond looked lovely, there was always a faint stench of putrefaction nearby...the white paint outside the hut on the rock in the center of the pond wasn't paint , but bird droppings.A few weeks later, Vic saw a rotting dead rat floating by the pool, along with some condoms and rubber wrappers.In my mind, they haven't been here since then. A frisbee, bright red, floats through the air. The scene that had made him angry recurred, and he couldn't resist.It was as cruel as the anonymous sender's choice of words, but he couldn't shake it.He saw them get into his and Zena's bedroom, into their bed.Every bit of his thought movie was as clear as a finely striped X-rated film at the State Theater on Union Street: she moaned, she glowed faintly with her breath, and she was beautiful.Every muscle in her was tensed, and her eyes were so hungry and darker as if they were experiencing high sexual pleasure.He knew the look, he knew the gesture, he knew the voice.He thought—thought—that only he knew them.Even her mother, her father didn't know.

Then he'd remember the man's penis -- the head of his glans -- going up and in.On "saddle," the word foolishly popped into his head, thumping and refusing to leave.He saw the words creep into the soundtrack of the film reel: "I'm back in the saddle, other times friends are just friends..." This shocked him, made him angry, and made him fly into a rage. The Frisbee flew up and down, and Vic's eyes followed it. He began to suspect something, yes.But doubt is not the same as knowing, and he only now knows that. He could write a short essay on doubt and knowing.And what makes it doubly cruel is that he's come to believe that doubts are groundless, and if not groundless, what you don't know can't hurt you, can it?If a man walks through a dark room with a deep opening in the middle, he does not need to know that he is almost falling, even if he is only a few inches from going through the room before he stumbles and falls.There is no need to be afraid, as long as the lights are not on, there is no need to be afraid.

Well, he didn't fall. He just got pushed.The question is, what is he going to do?The angry shadow of him, the hurt, bruised, screaming shadow, had none of the "adult" courage to admit that there were dangerous abysses on one or both sides of many, many marriages.Go to your shack forums or change or whatever people call it these days, I'm talking about my wife and she fucked someone. (Other times friends are just friends.) As long as I keep turning my back, as long as Tad isn't in the house— The scene began to appear again, the wrinkled sheets, the tensed body, and the soft voice.Ugly words, terrible words kept creeping into his mind, like a mass of whimsical thoughts, peeping at everything from afar:

"Lots of corners, hair pies, give her some boots, shoot my load, I don't fuck for riches not fucked for fame but I'm too ashamed of the way I fucked your mom, my cuckold got stuck in your mire, put this To tie people up and make troops bend over— in my wife! " He was thinking, in pain, clenching his fists. "In my wife." But the angry, wounded shadow admitted--jealously--that he couldn't go home and beat Donna half to death, while he could take Tad away, regardless of explanation.If she had the face to let her cry and block him, he didn't think she would.Take Ted, find a motel, find a lawyer, clean it up, and never look back.

But if he just forcibly dragged Ted to a motel, would the kid be spooked?Will he ask for an explanation?He was only four, but old enough to know that something was terribly, horribly wrong. And that trip—Boston, New York, Cleveland.Vic wasn't going to take care of the trip, not now. What does it matter to me that old Sharp and his boy can fly to the moon?But—he was not alone in this matter, he also had a partner.that partnership. ', have a wife and two children.Even now, as deeply hurt as he was now, Vic remembered his responsibility to at least get this thing done and try to save that account—which meant trying to save the Worx ad itself.

As much as he didn't want to ask, there was one more question: Why did he have to refuse to listen to her explanation and insist on taking Ted with him unilaterally?Was it because she'd ruin Ted's character by sleeping with someone else?Not so, he thought, but because his consciousness immediately discovered that the surest and deepest way to sting her (as deeply as he was now) was through Ted, but was he trying to treat Ted as As an emotional lever, or a heavy sledgehammer?His mind said, "No." other questions. that note. Think about that note, not what it said, not those six dirty lines about battery acid, think about the fact behind the note that someone was killing a - pardon the pun - a A goose that only lays golden eggs.Why was Donna's lover sending this note?

Because the goose had stopped laying golden eggs for him, and the ghostly man was half dead with rage. Did Donna kick him? He thought carefully about whether there were other possibilities. but.Aside from that sudden, scary look, I love playing her out of shit, isn't it just a typical fox under the grape thing?If you can't get it, piss on it so no one else can either.Illogical, but satisfying.The new and more comfortable feeling in the home fits the above explanation just as well.The relief that was palpable almost immediately in Donna...she had chased away the ghostly man who had fought back at her husband with the anonymous note.

Last question, what's the difference? He took the note out of his pocket and turned it over without opening it, just looking at the red Frisbee as it floated by in the sky. He thought, what to do? "What the hell is that?" asked Joe Kemp. One word at a time, almost no ups and downs.He was standing in the doorway, looking at his wife, Charity was packing up, she and Brett had eaten. In disguise, there was a car full of car parts that were broken and broken in the winter, and he was about to drive into the garage when he saw the pile of things. "It's a chain hoist," she said.She's already sent Brett to his little buddy David Bergeron's for an evening, and she doesn't want him watching when things go badly, "Bright said, you need a Joel Chains, he said."

Joe walked across the room, thin but strong, with a broad, pointed nose in his face, and a quick, silent walk. Now the green felt hat is tilted back a little, revealing the hairline.There was a smudge of oil on his forehead, his breath smelled of beer, and his brown eyes were small and hard.He is a quiet man. "You tell me, Charity," he said. "Sit down, your dinner is getting cold." His arm rushed like a piston, his hard fingers pinched into her arm: "What the hell are you doing? Tell me, I will." "Don't scold me, Joe Camper." He hurt her badly, but she didn't want to see his satisfaction in her face and eyes.He was a beast in many ways, and though she had been excited about it in her youth, she had lost all passion for it now.Over the years of marriage, she has learned that sometimes being brave can get the upper hand. "Tell me what you've been doing, Charity?" "Sit down and eat." She was calm, "Then I'll tell you." He sat down and she brought a plate, a large sirloin. "Can we eat like a Rockefeller now?" he asked. "Is there any reason for you, I say?" She served coffee and roasted potato chips: "You don't need a chain?" "I never said I can't use it, but how can I afford it?" He began to eat sirloin, but kept his eyes on her.He won't hit her now, this is her chance, he is relatively restrained now.She knew that he would only pick her up when he came back from Gary's, smelling of wine and majestic and scarred. Charity sat down on the opposite side of the floor: "I won the lottery." His jaw froze there and began to move again.He forked the sirloin and put it in his mouth. "Of course, old Cujo will be pulling a bunch of gold buttons today." He pointed at the dog with the fork, and Cujo was restlessly up and down the edge of the porch. Walking down and down.Black didn't want to take Cujo to the Bergeron's because they had a cage of rabbits that would make Cujo run wild. Charity reached into the front pocket of her apron, took out the bonus claim form she had filled out at the office, and handed it across the desk. Campbell stretched out a hand, spread the paper with his stiff fingers, and began to stare up and down, his eyes resting on the number, "Five—" He began to read, then stopped abruptly. Charity looked at him without saying a word. He didn't smile, he didn't go around the table to kiss her, she just felt pain in the face of a man like that.When this happened, it seemed to him that there was something else ahead of him. He finally raised his head: "You got five thousand dollars?" "Taxes haven't been paid yet." "How long have you been playing the lottery?" "I spend fifty cents a week. . . I don't think you can tell me, Joe Campbell, that you drink so much beer." "Be careful what you say, Charity," he said without blinking, his eyes glowing blue. "Watch your mouth or it'll swell up in no time." He started eating the sirloin again.Charity, relieved behind her expressionless face, slammed her chair into the tiger's face for the first time, but it didn't bite her, at least not yet. "When will we take the money?" "The check came in the mail in two weeks, and I bought the chain with our savings. The bonus claim form is cute, isn't it? That's what the office guy said." "Is that what you went to buy?" "I asked Brett what you need most, and this is a gift." "Thank you." He went on eating his sirloin. "I gave you a present," she said, "and you give me one too, will you, Jo?" He continued to eat, then looked up at her without saying a word.He was still wearing the green hat, it was tilted back, and there was no expression in his eyes. She said it slowly, deliberately, knowing that rushing would go wrong, "I want to go out for a week, take Brett with me, and I want to go down to Connecticut to see Holly and Jim." "No," he said, still eating the sirloin. "We can go by car, we'll live in their house, it won't cost much. Now we have a lot of money left over, and with the money we just got, we'll only spend a third of what we paid for the chains. I I have already called the bus station to ask the price of the round-trip ticket." "No, I need Brett to stay and help me." Her two hands have been angrily tied into a knot under the table, but the expression on her face is still calm: "Didn't you do the same well when he was in school?" "I said no, Charity," he answered.She saw in his face, angry and bitter, that he liked to say it.He saw how much she needed him to say something like that, how much planning had she done?It made him happy to see her in pain. She stood up and walked over to the sink, not because she had to do anything, but because she wanted to control herself. The stars hung high in the night sky, looking at her twinkling.She turned on the faucet. The ceramic had faded and turned yellow, and the water was hard, like Joe. Seeing that she gave up so easily, Campbell was probably a little disappointed. He said painstakingly: "The child should learn to have a sense of responsibility. If I let him help me this summer, instead of chasing David Bergeron day and night home, won't hurt him." She turned off the tap; "I sent him there." "Why are you?" "I think he can go." She turned to him. "I've told the boy that you'll agree when you hear about the chain." "If you're smart, you'll know it's a waste of a child," said Jo. "I guess you'll think about it next time before the festival," and he smiled at her with his mouth full, and went to get his bread again. "You can come with us." "Of course: I'll just tell Rich Simmons to forget to drive this summer. But why would I go down south to see both of them? From what I've seen and what you've told me, I think they're nothing more than a To the best scumbags. The only reason you like them is because you want to be a scumbag like them.” His voice was rising little by little, and his mouth was already spraying out.Usually this is done to scare her and she will give in.Usually it was, but tonight she would not be like that again. "You're always trying to make that boy mean as they are, that's what I think, I guess, you want him to turn against me, am I wrong?" "Why don't you ever call him by his name?" "Go and close the damn door now, Charity," he said, looking hard at her, and a flush crept up his cheeks. "Do as I say, now!" "No," she said, "it's not over." He put down the fork, stunned: "What? What did you say?" She walked up to him, for the first time in this marriage, walking up on her own, angrily. But this anger is just in the heart, boiling and splashing like a bottle of acid.She could feel the acid eating and biting her, but she dared not scream.Then she is finished.She lowered her voice: "Yes, you can look at my sister and brother-in-law like that, of course you can. But look at yourself, sitting there, eating with dirty hands, and wearing a hat while eating. You don't want him to see How other people live, just like I don't want him to see how you live when you are huddled with your friends. That's why I didn't allow him to go hunting with you last November." She paused, and he just sat with a half-eaten slice of bread in one hand, ox loin juice hanging on his cheek. She thought that the only reason why he hadn't rushed towards her was probably because she had dared to speak to him like this, which had completely stunned him. "So I'm going to make a deal with you," she said, "I've bought you a chain hanger, and I can give you the rest of the money, but if you're still so indecent, I might only give you some of it." You. You let me take him to Connecticut, and I can let you take him to Moosehead Lake next deer season." She was cold, prickly, and she knew she was talking to a devil. "It's time for you." He looked surprised, as if he was talking to a child who couldn't distinguish between simple cause and effect. "I can take him hunting if I want. You know? He's my son. Thanks God, whenever I want, whenever I want!" He smiled slightly, satisfied with the tone, "Now, do you understand?" She stared into his eyes: "No, you can't." He stood up suddenly, and the chair fell to the ground. "I'll hold you back." She wanted to back away from him, but she knew that if she did, she would be doomed.Every wrong move, every signal to give up, gives the land the upper hand. He was undoing his belt. "I'm going to whip you, Charity," he said regretfully. "I will do everything I can to stop you. I will go to the school to report him playing truant, and I will report to Chief Bannerman that he has been abducted. Most importantly...I will try to make Brett unwilling to go." He had untied the belt, held the end of the buckle in his hand, and let the belt drag towards the floor, rocking back and forth. "Until he's fifteen, if you want to take him out with your bunch of drunks, you have to get my permission," she said. "You can belt me, Joe Campbell, but you can't change that." .” "Is that so?" "I stand here and tell you, that's it." But suddenly he didn't seem to be staying in this room with her anymore, his eyes looked to a distant place, thoughtful. She had seen him in that manner before.Something was going through his brain, a new factor was being added to the equation.She prayed that factor would be on her side of the equal sign.She had never confronted him like this before.Now she is terrified. Campbell suddenly smiled: "You little guy who likes to get angry, don't you?" She said nothing. He started to put the belt back in the loop on his trousers, still laughing, still looking far away: "You think you can be like a hotshot, like a little Mexican hotshot?" Still she said nothing, cautiously. "What if I said you and he could go, and then what, did you ever think we'd go hunting on the moon?" "What do you mean by that?" "I mean yes," he said, "you and he can go." He walked across the room to her, with the same speed and quickness.She felt a chill at the thought of how fast he would have been running across the room and whipping her a minute earlier.Who will stand in his way then?What a man does to his wife is entirely their business.She can't say anything, she can't do anything, because Bright, Bright is her pride. He put a hand on her shoulder and slid to her breast, squeezing it. "Come on," he said, "I'm horny." "Bright—" "He won't come until nine o'clock, come on. Tell you, you can go. You can at least say thank you, will you?" Something comically absurd rose to her lips, and before she could stop it, she blurted out: "Take off the hat." He casually tossed it into the kitchen, still smiling, his teeth were yellow and the front two were false teeth. "If we had the money, we could have fun on a bed full of greenbacks," he said. "I saw it once at the movies." He took her upstairs. She had been waiting for him to turn into an evil devil, but he didn't.He made love as usual, fast and hard, but not evil, and he didn't mean to hurt her.Tonight she had an orgasm for the tenth, maybe eleventh time in her marriage.She gave herself to him, eyes closed, feeling his cheek against the top of her head, trying not to let herself cry out, if she did, he would doubt it.She didn't know if he knew that it always happened to men in the end, and sometimes it happened to women too. Not long after (but an hour before Brett returned from the Bayrons), he left her without telling her where he was going.She figured it was Gary Pellville's, and they'd start drinking again. Lying on the bed, not knowing if everything she had done and promised today was worth it, she found tears welling in her eyes, but she held back them.She lay there like that until she heard Cujo calling, and then the back screen door slammed and Brett came back. Outside the window, the moon rose in silvery, holy light.Moonlight is carefree, Charity thought, but the thought didn't make her feel good. "What's the matter?"' Donna asked. Her voice was muffled, almost knocked down.They were both sitting in the living room.Vic had come back just as Ted was about to rest, and it had been half an hour now.Tad was asleep upstairs, "Devil's Words" pinned next to his bed, and the wardrobe door shut. Vic stood up and walked to the window, which was dark. She knew what he was thinking sullenly, what was he thinking?She wasn't entirely sure, but she had a fairly clear picture. On the way home, he kept thinking about whether to face her frankly, cut open the boil, clean out the poison, and continue to live together as cleanly as possible... Or leave everything behind and take Ted away. .He tore up the letter after leaving Darling Oaks Park, and threw the scraps of paper out the window on the 302 on the way home.Littering Vic Trenton, he thought.Now he has made a choice.He saw her pale shadow in the dark glass, her face a white circle in the yellow light. He turned to her, unsure of what to say. He knew that Donna was thinking too. There were no new ideas, there were none now, and the last three hours had been the longest three hours of her life. She had heard something in his voice when he called to say he would be back later.The first thing she felt was panic, the raw, restless terror of a bird stuck in a dark garage.A thought was chasing after her, and it was in italics, followed by the big comic book exclamation point, He knew it!he knows!he knows!She made Tad dinner in a panic, trying to imagine what would happen next, but couldn't.Then I'll wash the dishes, she thought, and dry them, and put them away, and read a few stories to Tad...and go to the ends of the earth. Panic was followed by guilt, and after that fear, and finally, the circle of emotion closed quietly by itself, and she was left in a resigned indifference that was even imbued with a certain relief, the secret was over. . She didn't know if Steve did it, or Vic guessed it himself, and she hoped it was Steve's, but that didn't matter.She still felt a little relieved that Ted had slept peacefully, but she didn't know what morning he would face when he woke up tomorrow, and this thought brought her back to the beginning of her relationship, and she Feel panic.She felt sick and lost. He turned to her from the window and said, "I received a note today, unsigned." But he could not go on, and he crossed the room again, disturbed.What a handsome man he was, she found herself thinking, it was too bad he had gray hair so early, which might be a good thing for some young men, but for Vic it just made him look too much. Getting old early, and— —and why did she want the ground's hair?It's not his hair that worries her, is it? She said every major thing, and her voice was soft, but there was a tremor in it, as if they were some terrible medicine too bitter to swallow: "Steve Kemp, the redecorating The table in your study. Five times, never in our bed, Vic, never." Vic reached for the bag of Winstons on the sofa table, but just knocked it to the floor. He picked it up and pulled out one.His hands were still shaking badly, and they weren't looking at each other.This is bad, Donna thought, we should look at each other.But she couldn't be the first to see it.She was alarmed, ashamed.He just panicked. "why?" "Is it important?" "It's important to me. It says a lot, unless you want to break off, and if you want to break off, I can consider it unimportant. I'm so pissed off, Donna, and I'm struggling to keep that...that from getting the upper hand , because if we’re not going to wait until later to face reality, we’ll have to face it now. Are you trying to break ties?” "Look at me, Vic." He worked hard and finally did it. Maybe he was really as angry as he said, but all she saw was a poor man.Terrified species, it was hit hard in the mouth with a boxing glove.She suddenly found that he was so close to the edge of everything. The company was almost collapsed. Come on, his marriage is on the verge of collapse.In a burst of impulse, she suddenly felt a warmth towards him.She had hated this man, and, at least for the past three hours, had been afraid of him.But at this moment, a realization took over her.On the whole, she'd rather he was thinking about himself pissed off than... not about what he was feeling on his face. "I don't want to end the relationship," she said. "I love you. I think I just got that feeling back in the last few weeks." After a while, he seemed relieved, and he walked to the window again, and back to the couch, where he sat, looking at her. "Then why?" The comprehension evaporated in a tempered but intensified rage. Why?A man's question.It is deeply rooted in the question: What is the concept of masculinity for a highly intellectual Western man in the late twentieth century?I must know why you do this.As if she were a creaking car with a plugged needle valve, or a robot whose chips had just broken while delivering sandwiches in the morning and a plate of scrambled eggs at night.What drives a woman crazy?It occurred to her that it wasn't about sex in real life, but about this maddeningly efficient male. "I don't know if I can explain it. I'm afraid it sounds stupid, trivial and boring." "Try, don't you..." He cleared his throat, mentally spitting in his hand (that damned efficiency came again), and said slowly, "I didn't satisfy you, did I?" "No," she said. "Then why?" he asked helplessly, "God, why?" Well... you asked. "Scared," she said, "mostly, I think." "Fear?" "When Ted went to school, there was nothing to keep me from being scared, like... what they call it... white noise. The sound that the TV makes when it's not on something," "He didn't go to any real school," Vic answered quickly.She knew he was going to get pissed off, that he was going to start accusing her of why she was trying to blame Ted.Once he gets angry, the result can only be one of the two.For her, there was something in it, and she had to say it.Things were going to go wrong, something very fragile was thrown out of his hand, flew towards her, flew back, and it would probably fall to the ground. "That's only part of it," she said, "he didn't go to real school, and I'm still with him most of the time, but when he's gone... there's a contrast..." She looked at him, "In contrast Something quiet would sound very loud, and that's when I started panicking. Next year he's going to Kindergarten, I think, going to half a day every day instead of three and a half days a week like now. The next year, five full days a week God. All this time to fill. I'm scared to death just thinking about it." "So you're trying to fill in some of that time by having sex with someone?" he asked bitterly. His words stung her, but she continued stubbornly, trying to follow the invisible line that had come out.She didn't raise her voice.He had asked, and she would tell him. "I don't want to be on the library committee anymore, I don't want to be on the hospital committee anymore, or sell bakery, or instruct first-timers so they don't all order the same casserole at Saturday dinner Meat. I don't want to keep looking at the exact same depressed face over and over again, listening to the exact same chatter about who does what in this town and when. I don't want to sharpen my claws and ruin someone else's reputation .” These words came out violently, even if she wanted to stop, she couldn't hold it back. "I don't want to sell bread, I don't want to sell perfume, I don't want to organize any parties, I don't want to join any unions, you—" She paused for a short moment, took a breath, and felt the weight of the words. "You don't know what emptiness is, Vic, don't think you do. You're a man, and men always solve problems. Men solve problems, women remove the dust, and you remove the dust in an empty house, and sometimes you listen to the wind outside Howling. There is only a very small amount of time when there is wind in the house, you know? You turn on the radio and you hear Bob Segel or Bukkar or whoever, and you can still hear the wind. Thoughts go to You come at me, idea, no good stuff, but they come at me, you clean all the bathrooms, you clean the sinks, you go to an antique store downtown one day to see some ceramic knick-knack, Remember that your mother had a little bric-a-brac like a bookshelf, and your grandmother had these too." He stared at her blankly, the expression on his face frank and confused, which made her feel a wave of despair. "I'm talking about feelings, not facts." "Yes, but why?" "I'm telling you why, I'm telling you how I feel, so I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the mirror and seeing how much my face has changed, and I know no one will think of me as a teenager anymore, Or someone asking me for a driver's license when I go to the bar to ask for a drink, I'm starting to get scared because I'm finally grown up. Ted's going to preschool, which means he's going to elementary school, then middle school—" "Are you saying that you found a lover just because you feel stupid?" He looked surprised when he saw that it was her.She liked him like that because she thought there was something in his words.Steve Kemp found her attractive, and of course that was flattery, and that was certainly the first thing that made teasing so much fun, but it was by no means the only thing. She grabbed his hand, looked at him eagerly, and thought, she thought, knowing that she would never be honest with a man again. "It means more. It means knowing that you don't have to wait for yourself to be an adult anymore, to use everything you have to calm yourself down. It's knowing that every day your opportunities are getting smaller and smaller. ...to a woman—no, to me—that's a cruel thing to deal with. Being a wife, of course. But you'll go to work, you'll come home, but you're still deeply to be buried in her work. Being a mother, of course, is all very well, but she has less space every year, because every year the outside world snatches her children a little further from her, "Men...they know what they are. They have an image of what they are. They never lived just an ideal, and that breaks them down, and maybe that's why so many men tragically died before their time. die, but they know what it means to be an adult. When they get to thirty, forty, fifty, they have something to catch...they don't hear that wind, and if they do, they don't They'll find a longsword, go fight it, they'll think it's a windmill or something, they're going to knock it down. "A woman, like me, does, just run away, not like you guys. I panicked the way our house looked after Ted left. Once, maybe you'll feel stupid, I was in Ted As I was changing the sheets in his room, I couldn't help but think about my girlfriends in middle school. I wondered where they all went and how they were doing, and I was distracted. Suddenly the door of Ted's closet opened. I ran out screaming, I don't know why, unless I thought I did it. For a split second, I felt like Joan Brady was coming out of Ted's closet, headless and covered in blood , she said to me: 'I died in a car accident when I was nineteen when I came back from Sammy's Pizzeria, and I didn't give a damn'." "My God, Donna." Vic was taken aback. "I freak out, that's everything. Every once in a while I look at a knick-knack, or think of a pottery class, or yoga class, or something like that, and I freak out. The only way to escape from the future is the past, So... so I started teasing him." She lowered her head and buried her head in her hands suddenly, her voice was covered but still understandable. “这很有意思，就像又回到了学校，就像一个梦，一个愚蠢的梦。他好像就是那种白噪音，他吸去了风的声音。挑逗很有趣。性……都不好，我有过几次高潮，但都不好，除了认为整个过程中我仍只是爱着你，知道自己只是正从你身边滑开外，我找不到其它解释。”她又看了看他，哭了起来，“他也心不在焉，这几乎成了他的职业了，他是个诗人……至少他自称是这样，我分辨不清他的面目。他总在各地游荡，梦想他还在大学里，抗议越战，我想这就是为什么他会那样。现在我想我已经说出了所有能告诉你的，这是我的小小的丑陋的故事，但这是我自己的故事。” “我想揍他一顿，”维克说，“要是我把他的鼻子揍出血，我会感觉好些。” 她面色苍白地笑了，“他走了，泰德和我晚饭后去了皇后商店，那时你木在家。他店外的窗子上挂着一个'招租'的牌子。我说过，他是个总在各地游荡的人。” “那张条子里可没有一点诗意。”维克说。他短短地看了她一眼，又低下头。她的手摸向他的脸，他不自觉地向后缩了一下，这一缩比任何其它事都让她刺痛，刺痛得她不能想象的内疚和恐惧又向她袭来，那是一种迷们，而她再也哭不出来了，她知道在很长时间内，她再也不会有眼泪了，这伤害和随之而来的对心灵深处的打击让她实在难以承受。 “维克。”她说，“我很难过，你受到了伤害，我很难过。” “你什么时候和他断的？”' 她告诉他她回来见到他已经在屋里的那天的事，没有提她当时的恐惧和他差一点要强奸她。 “那张条子就是他向你反扑的方式。” 她把额前的头发轻轻理向一边，点了点头，她的脸上已经没有了血色，眼眶下红肿，显得非常推停：“我想是的。” “上楼吧。”他说，“很晚了，我们都很累了。” “能和我做爱吗？” 他慢慢摇了摇头：“今天不。” "Ok." 他们一起上楼。多娜问；“以后会怎么样，维克？” 他又摇摇头：“我不知道。” “是不是我要在黑板上写五百遍'我发誓再也不这样做了'？我们会不会离婚？会不会再也不提这事了？会怎么样？”她想自己并没有歇斯底里，她只觉得一阵疲乏，但不知不觉中音量在升高。最糟糕的是羞愧，羞愧被发现，羞愧看到恶梦像一只无情的拳头打中他的脸。 她恨自己，也恨他，她恨他让自己觉得这样羞愧。因为如果真要做一个决定，她相信自己对带来这个结局的那些因素并不负有什么责任。 “我们应该一起尽力把事情做好。”他说，但她没有领会地的意思——他没在对她说。“这种事，”他在用一种恳求的语调问，“只有他一个，是吗？” 这是一个无法原谅的问题，他没有权利这样问。她离开了他，几乎是跑着上了楼。问题解决之前，任何愚蠢的斥责和非难都不会有什么帮助，只会毁掉他们好不容易才建立起来的一点点可怜的真诚。