Chapter 28 Chapter 27

On the morning of June 27, Larry Underwood sat on a bench in Central Park, looking in the direction of the zoo.Behind him, 5th Avenue, once crowded with cars, was silent now. The owner of the car was either dead or fled.From 5th Avenue down, many luxurious shops have become smoldering bricks and tiles. From where Larry sat, a lion, an antelope and a monkey could be seen.Except for this monkey, all other animals died.Larry concluded that they hadn't died from the flu, but from being without food and water for so long.The monkey had only moved four or five times in the three hours Larry had been sitting here.The monkeys also caught the super flu.It's really a cruel old world.

On the right, a clock with various animal figures strikes eleven.The animal figures of the clock that had delighted all the children now played to the empty houses.The bear in the clock blows the horn, the monkey in the watch, which never gets sick (but may stop), plays the tambourine, and the elephant drums with its long trunk.Heavy tunes, boy, these damn heavy tunes. "End the world of clockwork animals!" After a while, the clock fell silent, and Larry could hear the shout again, flickering from the distance.On this fine morning, the intermittent shouts came from somewhere to Larry's left, probably near Hexshe Field.

"The devil has come!" cried the now and then faint cry. The sky has been bright since morning, the sky is bright, and the sun is scorching hot.A bee flew around Larry's nose, circled a nearby flower bed, and finally landed in a beautiful three-point pattern on a peony flower.From the zoo came the disturbing buzzing of flies landing on dead animals. "The devil is really here now!" The person who howled like ghosts and wolves was a tall man who looked about sixty-four or five years old. The first time Larry had heard him yelling had been the night before, drinking Dutch sherry to kill the time.Lying in this silent city at night, I feel that the sound of howling ghosts and wolves seems to be louder and more eerie.This insane sound floats over the streets and alleys of Manhattan, resonating, reverberating and deforming.Lying sleeplessly in his queen-sized double bed, Larry began to believe, absurdly, that the howling man was coming towards him to help him find the source of his sometimes recurring nightmares.For a long time it seemed that the voice kept coming closer to him "The devils are coming! The devils are on their way! They're on the outskirts!" And Larry began to believe again that he had locked the three-way trap. The door, would burst open from the inside out, and the howling man would stay there...he was not a man at all, but a man with a dog's head, two big round fly eyes and a mouth full of horse-like teeth giant monster...

But Larry had seen him in the park earlier this morning, just a crazy old man in corduroy trousers, Japanese sandals, and horn-rimmed glasses.Larry tried to speak to him, but the man ran away in fright, yelling over his shoulder that the devil could appear in the street at any moment.He tripped over an ankle-high wire fence and sprawled on all fours in the bike path with a comical "wow" and his glasses flew off, but didn't shatter.Larry walked over to him, but before he could get there, the man grabbed his glasses and walked straight down the avenue, shouting the endless warning.In this way, Larry's perception of the man went from extreme fear to complete disinterest and mild annoyance.

There were other people in the park, and Larry started talking to a few of them.They were all dazed, and their speech was incoherent.When you speak, you will also keep touching your sleeves with your hands.They have many of the same stories to tell.Their friends and relatives are dead or dying.There was a shooting in the street, there was a tragedy on 5th Avenue, Tiffany is gone, can it be true?Who's going to clean up?Who's going to collect the trash?Can they get out of New York?They heard that the army was defending some places.A woman freaks out because the rats are also planning to come out of the tunnels to take over the Earth, and Larry is warned not to think about his first day back in New York.A gum-chewing young man frankly told Larry that he was going to fulfill a lifelong ambition.He was going to Yankee Stadium, run naked along the outfield, and masturbate at home plate. "Chance of a lifetime, man," he told Larry, blinking, before walking away aimlessly, chewing gum.

Many people in the park got sick, but not many died there.Maybe it's their reluctance to be an animal's dinner.When they feel that their lives are coming to an end, they all crawl inside the door.This was the only time Larry had ever met a dead person this morning, and he hoped it would be only this time.He went to the toilet next to the cross wall, trying to find a comfortable position.He opened the door, and a dead man with grinning teeth and gleefully wriggling maggots all over his face sat inside.His hands rested on his bare thighs, his sunken eyes fixed on Larry.A disgusting sweet smell hits the face.It seemed that the man sitting there was a spoiled bonbon, a piece of dessert left over from the chaos for the flies to eat.Larry slammed the door shut, but it was too late: he vomited up his morning cornflakes, then retched, and didn't stop until he was afraid he would rip his guts.As he staggered to the zoo, he was still praying: God, if you exist, if you accept the request, old man, please don't let me see this scene again.I've had enough annoyances, I can't take it anymore.Thank you very much.

Now, sitting on this bench (the howling man is far away and can't be heard, at least temporarily), Larry finds himself thinking about the World Series from five years ago.It was a good thing to think about it, because these were the last happy hours for him now.His physical condition is at the peak, his mind is fully rested, and he no longer has to worry about work. That happened after he broke up with Rudy.Their breakup was all about a shitty thing that wasn't worth mentioning.If he ever saw Rudy again (and never, his heart told him, only to sigh), Larry was going to confess to him.He'd lean down and kiss Rudy on the toe of his shoe, if Rudy needed it to make things right.

They traveled across the country to Omaha in an old 1968 Mercury.There they want to work for two weeks, get a free ride west, work another two weeks, and get a free ride.They worked for a while on a farm in the West Nebraska Panhandle.One night, Larry lost $60 in a poker tournament.The next day, he had to borrow money from Rudy to tide him over.A month later they were in Los Angeles, and Larry was working on land for the first time, if you would call minimum-wage dishwashing work a job.One night about three weeks later, Rudy brought up the subject of borrowing money.He said that he met a guy from a very good employment company who could help him find a job that would never lose his job, but the referral fee was 25 yuan.Then came the amount he had lent Larry after the poker game.Rudy said he would never have asked the question again, but...

Larry protested that he had paid the debt.The two of them started a real comparison.He said that if Rudy wanted twenty-five dollars, that's fine, but he just hoped Rudy wouldn't try to make him pay double. Rudy said he never wanted a "gift," he just wanted his money back, and he wasn't interested in Larry Underwood bullshit.Larry said Jesus Christ would have laughed out loud at that.It never occurred to me that I needed your receipt, Rudy.It seems I was wrong. It eventually escalated into a full-blown brawl, almost on the verge of a fight.Finally, Rudy's face was red with anger.This is you, Larry, he growled.You're done, you turned out to be such a person.I always thought I wouldn't learn my lesson.But I think I finally learned my lesson.Fuck you, Larry.

Rudy left, and Larry followed him to the steps of the tenement house, pulling his wallet from his backpack.In the pocket behind the photo were neatly folded three 10-yuan bills, and he threw them hard behind Rudy. "Come on, you worthless little liar! Take it! Take the damn money!" Rudy slammed open the outer door, strode into the night, and walked towards the place where his tragic fate would be decided without looking back.Larry stood on the top of the steps, gasping for breath.After about a minute, he began to look around for the three 10-yuan bills and saved them again. Thinking about it now, years later, he felt more and more that Rudy was right.In fact, he was overconfident.Even if he paid Rudy back, so what?The two of them have been good friends since elementary school.Come to think of it, Larry was always short of eight cents short of tickets to a Saturday afternoon show; he always brought some licorice or two lollipops or borrowed a 5 Divide coins for school lunch money, or get 7 cents for streetcar fare.So over the years, Rudy must have borrowed a full 50 yuan, maybe 100 yuan.When Rudy asked him for the twenty-five dollars, Larry probably didn't remember the hard-pressed days.He had subtracted the 25 yuan from the three 10-yuan bills in his mind, and he said to himself: "If you only leave 5 yuan, even if you pay him the bill, I'm not sure, but you Sure. Let's stop talking about it."

Since then, he has been alone in the city.He has no friends, and he doesn't even plan to make them at the Encino Café where he works.In fact, he thinks everyone who works there, from the grumpy head chef to the gum-chewing butt-wiggling waiters, is some sort of snob.Yes, he does think everyone at Tony's is a snob.But he, Larry Underwood, is about to become a saint (you might be more convinced of that).Isolated among these snobs, he felt like a beaten dog, like a banished islander who misses his homeland. He met Yvonne Wetterling at a cinema.When the second movie ended, she was tearfully looking for her bag around the seats.Inside was a driver's license, as well as checkbooks, union membership cards, a credit card, photocopies of birth certificates, and Social Security cards.Although he believed that the Kunbao had been stolen, he didn't say it, but helped her find it.Sometimes it seemed like they really were living in a wonderful world, because just when they were about to give up looking, he found the kun bag under the seat three rows away from them.He guessed that someone kicked it there while watching the movie.When she expressed her thanks, she hugged him tightly and shed another tear.Larry, feeling like a Captain America, told her that he wanted to take her out and get some hamburgers or something to celebrate because he was really hungry.Yvonne said it was her treat.Larry obliged like a handsome prince. They have started visiting each other.In less than two weeks, their relationship has skyrocketed.Larry found a better job as a clerk in a bookstore and recorded a jazz song with a group called Fast Rover & All-Time Bass Band.The name was actually the best thing about the group, however, the rhythm guitarist was Johnny McCall, the guy who would go on to organize Ragged Remnant and become a really good band. Larry and Yvonne came together and everything changed for Larry.One of them was having space, having his own space, for which he paid half the rent.Yvonne bought the curtains, they got some thrift store furniture and refurbished it together, and the rest of the band and some of Yvonne's friends also frequented.The house was bright by day and filled with the scent of the California breeze at night.It's a sweet orange scent that's obnoxious with the smoke that sometimes wafts in through the windows.When no one came, he would watch TV with Yvonne, and sometimes she would bring him a can of beer and sit on the arm of a chair and touch his neck.This is their own space, a "home", a real home.Sometimes he would lie in bed at night with his eyes wide open and Yvonne sleeping next to him, and he would express surprise at how well he felt.Then he would drift off to sleep, real sleep, and he wouldn't think about Rudy Marks at all, at least. They lived together for 14 months and everything was perfect until the last 6 weeks or so.Yvonne was ill by then, partly because Larry was busy with the world album.He was in the bookstore all day, and then he went to Johnny McCall's house, and the whole group only practiced once on weekends, because the other two guys had night shifts.Two of them are interested in something new, maybe just want to find something new among the old antiques.Johnny called the set a "real" production, with tones like "Nobody But Me" and "My Precious Love Double Shot." He later returned to his home.Yvonne has got supper ready.That was a real home cooked meal.This girl has been well trained and cooks good meals.After dinner they went to the living room, turned on the TV, and watched serials.After that is sex.It all seemed normal, everything seemed to belong to him, nothing could confuse his thoughts.Nothing so good has happened since then, never again. He realizes that he has cried for a while, and even has a moment of annoyance at the fact that he is sitting on a Central Park bench, crying in the sun like a pensioner.Then it occurred to him that he had a right to weep over what had been lost, and a right to be shocked to find out the way things were. His mother died three days ago.She walked into another world lying in a hammock in the foyer of Mersey Hospital.It was filled with thousands of other people who were also dying.As she was leaving, Larry knelt beside her.Seeing his mother's death, and the stench of feces and urine rising around him, the nonsense of the unconscious, the gasping of the suffocating, the nonsense of the insane, and the crying of the bereaved, he thought he might go crazy of.Mom still fails to recognize him in the end; there is no final goodbye moment.Her ribcage ended up half-full, like the weight of a car on an inner tube, deflated very slowly.He squatted beside her for ten minutes, not knowing what to do, thinking in utter confusion that he should wait until the death certificate was signed, or someone came to ask him what had happened.But what is clear is that things have happened, and they are happening everywhere.This place has become the home of madmen.And the young doctor with no serious face came over to express his sympathy, and then started the death machine.Sooner or later his mother would be carried away like a sack of oats, and he didn't want to see that.Her handbag is under the hammock.Among them he found a pen and a small hairpin, and a checkbook.He tore off the deposit slip from the back of the checkbook, wrote her name, address, and after calculating for a while, added her age, put it in the pocket of her coat with a hairpin, and began to cry .He cried and kissed her on the cheek and ran away. He felt like a deserter.He felt better in the streets, despite the frantic crowds, sick people, and army patrols coming and going.Now he could go sit on that bench and grieve over more mundane things: During his time in Los Angeles, he had lost his pension, and he had lost his profession.When he watched the world album with Yvonne, he realized that Rudy should have a bed and late love.In the case of Rudy, he was most heartbroken, and he hoped to return to Rudy the 25 dollars he had saved for 6 years. The monkey died at 2:15. It stayed on the perch, sitting impassive.With his chin resting on his hands, his eyelids began to tremble, and then fell off, hitting the concrete floor with a bang. Larry never wanted to sit there again.He stood up and walked aimlessly towards the avenue leading to the large bandstand.About 15 minutes ago, he heard the howling of ghosts and wolves from a distance, but now the only sound in the park seems to be the sound of his heels hitting the concrete floor and the chirping of birds.The birds apparently did not catch the flu.How lucky they are. When he walked near the bandstand, he saw a woman sitting on a bench in the auditorium.She may be 50, but looks younger.Wearing very expensive-looking gray-green slacks and a silk shoulderless jacket... She looked up at the sound of Larry's footsteps, and looked around.She held a pill in her hand and casually tossed it into her mouth like a peanut. "Hello!" Larry greeted.Her face was calm, and her eyes were blue with a wary gleam.She wears gold-rimmed glasses, and the notebook is embellished with what looks like ermine.There are four rings on the finger: a wedding ring, two diamond rings and a cat's-eye emerald ring. "Oh, I'm not a bad guy," he said.The funny thing was that he wanted to say that, according to his guess, what she was carrying might be worth twenty thousand dollars.Of course, they could be fake, but she didn't look like a woman in synthetic stones. "No," she said, "you don't look like a bad person, and you don't have a disease." Her voice rose a little on the last word, giving it a half-questioning quality.She wasn't as calm as she seemed at first glance; she had a little twitch on one side of her neck, and behind the piercing gaze of those blue eyes there was the same sadness that Larry had found in his own as he shaved this morning. "No, I don't think I'm sick either. What about you?" "Nothing. Did you know there was an ice cream wrapper glued to the shoe?" He looked down, and it was true.This made him blush.Standing on one leg, he tried to tear off the wrapping paper. "How can you be a crane," she said, "sit down and try. My name is Rita Blackmore." "Nice to meet you. My name is Larry Underwood." He sat down.She stretched out her hand, and he shook it gently, pressing her ring with his fingers.Then he carefully tore the wrapper off the shoe and threw it primly into the trash can next to the bench that said, "This is your park, please keep it clean!"It struck him as funny, so he threw back his head and laughed.This was also the first time he had really smiled happily since he came home that day and found his mother lying on the floor of the room, and he was extremely relieved to find that the pleasure of such a smile had not changed.It's a hearty laugh, not a pursed smile. Rita Blackmore stared at him and smiled, and he was attracted again by her easy and refined demeanor.She's like a woman from an Owen Shaw novel.But the woman was a whore, and maybe a character people created for television when he was a kid. "When I heard you coming, I wanted to hide," she said. "I thought you were the one with the broken glasses and the weird talk." "The one who cried and howled?" "Did you call him that or did he call himself that?" "That's what I called him." "He's very smart," she says, opening her ermine-trimmed (probably) bag and pulling out a pack of menthol cigarettes. "He reminds me of Diogenes gone mad." "Really? But it looks like a real demon," said Larry, laughing again. She lit a cigarette, took a deep breath, and then exhaled. "He wasn't sick either," Larry said, "but most of the others were." “The janitor in our building seemed healthy,” Rita Blackmore said. “He was still at his post. I gave him $5 when he came out in the morning. Health, or is it because he is sticking to his post? What do you think?" "I don't know what to say." "Yes, of course you don't know what to say." She put the cigarette case back in her bag, and he saw a revolver in it.She caught his gaze. "It's my husband's. He's the managing director of a big New York bank. He carries it with him to cocktail parties. Someone asks him why he always has this thing, and he'll say, 'I'm a New Yorker. General manager of a big bank.' He died two years ago. Had a stroke. Then he hanged himself with his tie. Do you think our generation is equal to the old generation who killed themselves with boots? But Harry Blackmore killed himself with his tie. I like that gun, Larry." A chaffinch landed on the ground in front of them and pecked at the ground. "My husband has a nervous fear of thieves and bought this gun. Does it really recoil and make a lot of noise when you fire it, Larry?" Larry, who had never fired a gun, said, "I don't think the recoil would be too much. It's a .38, isn't it?" "I think it's a .32 caliber." She took the gun out of her bag, and he saw that there were still a lot of phials in the bag.This time she didn't pay attention to his gaze, she was staring at a neem tree about 15 paces away. "I want to try it. Do you think I can hit that tree?" "I don't know," he said apprehensively, "I don't actually think . . . " She pulled the trigger, and the pistol slammed.A small hole appeared in the neem tree. "Ten rings," she said, blowing the smoke from the barrel like a gunslinger. "Awesome!" he said.When she put the gun back in her handbag, his heart resumed its normal beating. "I ain't gonna shoot anybody. I'm sure. Nobody's going to be shooting around here anytime soon, is it?" "Oh, I don't know that." "You are looking at my ring. Do you like it?" "Huh? No!" He began to blush again. "My husband who is a banker believes in diamonds like a baptist believes in the Apocalypse. I have a lot of diamonds, all insured. But if anyone wants my diamonds, I will hand them over. But it's all some rocks, no?" "I think you're right." "Of course," she said, the spasm in her neck jumping a few more times. "If someone wants to rob, I will not hand it over. I will give him Cartier's address. The stones they collect are more valuable than ours." "What are you going to do now?" Larry asked her. "What do you suggest?" "I don't know either," Larry said, and sighed. "My answer is correct." "You know what? I saw a guy this morning and he said he's going to Yankee Stadium and... and masturbating at home plate." He could feel himself blushing again. "What a dreadful walk it has been for him," she said. "Why don't you suggest something nearer to him?" She sighed, and that sigh became a shudder.She opened her purse, took out the pill bottle, and dropped a capsule into her mouth. "What?" Larry asked. "Vitamin E." She smirked evasively.The spasm in the neck jumped another beat or two, then stopped.She became peaceful again. "The bar's empty," Larry said suddenly. "I've been to Pat's on 43rd Street and it's empty. They have a big mahogany bar and I went inside and poured a full teacup .After a while I couldn't stay any longer, so I put the cup there and came out." They sighed together like a chorus. "You're a very easy fellow," she said. "I like you very much. It's a good thing you're not mad." "Thank you, Mrs. Blackmore." He was pleasantly surprised and pleased. "Rita, call me Rita." "Ok." "Are you hungry, Larry?" "To be honest, I'm really hungry." "You don't mind taking me to lunch." "That would be an honor." She stood up and held out her arm to him with a slightly forced smile.As he took her arm, he smelled something that immediately made him feel good.He felt a little uneasy again with such an elderly woman who still had charm. He forgot about it in a moment, and they walked out of the park and up Fifth Avenue, away from the dead monkeys and the howling people and the blackened stinking fellows sitting in the sidewall toilets. She chattered on and on, and afterward he couldn't remember what she said (yes, there was only one thing he remembered: she said that she always dreamed that she had a handsome young man on her arm, A walk on 5th Avenue, a young man who was good enough to be her son but not his), he still remembers that walk often, her beautiful smile, her lilting, cynical and informal chatter and the rustle of slacks. They entered a steakhouse, and Larry, a little clumsy at the table, wowed her with every dish: steak, schnitzel, instant coffee, strawberry custard pie.