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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
1. Nice networks don't go down
It was unthinkable that the invisible ants that governed all human endeavor should catastrophically fail, but fail they did, catastrophically, on the occasion of Trish's eighth date with Rainer. It took nineteen seconds for the cascade1 of errors to slow every car on the Interstate to a halt, to light up the dashboard with a grim xmas tree of errors, to still the stereo and freeze the tickers of information and context that they had come to think of as the crawling embodiment of the colony that routed all the traffic that made up their universe.
"We are going to be: So. Late," Rainer said, and Trish swiveled in her seat to look at him. He was Fretting3 again, his forehead wrinkled and his hands clenched4 on the steering5 wheel. When they traded massages6 (third date) and she'd rubbed at his hands, she'd found them tensed into claws that crackled with knuckle-fluid when she bent9 each finger back and rubbed sandalwood-scented oil into it. He was mighty11 cute for a neurotic12 -- at least he knew it when he was being nuts. Not that he'd stop being nuts, but he'd cheerfully admit it.
"We are not going to be late," she said. "We just need to manually route ourselves out of the dead spot and get back on the grid13 and we'll be on our way. We've got plenty of time."
"Dead spot?"
"Yes," she said. His forehead wrinkles were looking more klingon by the second. "Dead spot." She forced a chuckle14. "You didn't think that the whole world was down, did you?"
He relaxed his knuckles15. "Course not," he said. "Dead spot. Probably ends up at the turn-off."
"Right," she said. "We need a map. I'm navigatrix. You're pilot. Tell me where your maps are, then get onto the shoulder and drive straight."
"Where my maps are? Jesus, what century do you live in? My maps are with the sextant and sundial, between my leeches17 and my obsidian18 sacrifice-knife."
She laughed. "OK, pal19, I'll find a michelin, you drive. Every car has a couple maps. They self-assemble from happy meal boxes." She opened the glove-compartment and started rooting through it while he pulled onto the shoulder and gunned the tiny two-seater along it.
"This is: So. Illegal," he said.
"Naw," she said. "I'm pretty sure you're allowed on the shoulder when the routing goes down. It's in the written-test manual. Learned it while I was helping20 my little cousin Leelee study. Aha!" she said, holding something up.
"You have a cousin named Leelee? That's uniquely horrible."
"Shut up," she said. "Look at this." It was an old-fashioned phone, of a certain handsome retro line that made it look like a dolphin fucking a silver dildo, the kind of thing marketed to old people who wanted a device with its affordances constrained21 to collapse22 the universe of all possible uses for things that fit into your hand into the much smaller universe of, say, a cellphone.
"Yeah, my mom left that behind a couple years ago. I looked everywhere for it but couldn't find it. She must've been snooping in the glove-box. Serves her right. So what?"
"These things can unmesh and talk straight to a tower at a long distance, can't they?"
"I dunno, can they?"
"Oh yes, they can. Which means that they work in dead spots. So we can call and get directions."
"You think you're pretty smart, huh, dumpling?"
She put her finger to her temple and made an adorable frowny thinky face, and held it until he looked at her and laughed. They'd discovered their ability to make one another laugh when he'd farted while taking off his kilt (second date) and had reflexively swung the hem8 back to make it appear that his mighty gust24 was ruffling25 the pleats.
"What's your mom's number?" she said.
He recited it and she tapped it in.
"Hi there! This is Trish, Rainer's friend? We're on the way, but the, well the, but the -- I mean to say, the grid's down or something. The car doesn't have any nav system, the dolby's out, the Interstate's a parking-lot... Oh, you too? God. Wonder if it's the whole country! So, we need directions from San Luis Obispo, to the cemetery26, if possible."
:...:
"Why yes, it's venti nice to be meeting you," she said. "I've heard a lot about you, too. Yes, I'm giving directions, he's driving. Oh, that's so sweet of you. Yes, he does look like he's going to scrunch28 his forehead into his upper lip. I think it's cute, too. Right. Got it. Left, then right, then left, then a slight left, then up the hill. Got it. Whups! That's the duracell! Better go. Soon! Yes. Whoops29."
"So?" he said.
"So, your mom sounds nice."
"You got the directions?"
"She gave me directions."
"So you know where we're going?"
"I don't have a single, solitary30 clue. Your mother gives terrible directions, darling. Pull off at the next exit and we'll buy a map."
"We are going to be: So. Late."
"But now they know we're late. We have an excuse. You: stop Fretting."
#
Once they were on the secondary roads, the creepiness of the highway full of stopped cars and crane-necked drivers gave way to a wind-washed soughing silence of waves and beach and palms. Trish rolled down the window and let the breeze kiss the sweat off her lip, watching the surfers wiping out in the curl as the car sped toward the boneyard.
"Are you sure this is the kind of thing you're supposed to bring a date to?"
"Yes," he said. "Don't Fret2. That's my job."
"And you don't think it's even a little weird31 to take a girl to a cemetery on a date?"
"We're not burying anyone," he said. "It's just an unveiling."
"I still don't get that," she said. "I keep picturing your mom cutting a ribbon with a giant pair of gold scissors."
"Right, let's take it from the top," he said. "And you'd better not be getting me to talk to stop my Fretting, because appealing to my pedantic32 nature to distract me is a very cheap trick."
"I'm fluttering my eyelashes innocently," she said.
He laughed and stole a hand through the vent27 in her apron-trousers and over her thigh33. "Achtung!" she said. "Eyes on road, hands on wheel, mind in gutter34, this instant!" She put her hand over his and he put down the pedal. His hand felt nice there -- too nice, for only eight dates and 20-some phone calls and about 100 emails. She patted it again.
"This is kind of fun," he said, as they zipped past some surfer dudes staring glumly35 at their long-boards' displays, their perfect tits buoyant and colored like anodized aluminum36 with electric-tinted sun-paste.
"Ahem," Trish said, squeezing his hand tight enough to make his knuckles grind together. "You were about to explain tombstone-unveiling to me," she said. "When you got distracted by the athletic37 twinkies on the roadside. But I am sweet-natured and good and forgiving and so I will pretend not to have seen it and thus save us both the embarrassment38 of tearing out your Islets of Langerhans, all right?" She fluttered her eyes innocently in a way that she happened to know made him melt.
"Explaining! Yes! OK, remember, I'm not particularly Jewish. I mean, not that my parents are, either: they're just Orthodox. They don't believe in God or anything, they just like Biblical Law as a way of negotiating life. I renounced39 that when I dropped out of Yeshiva when I was 12, so I am not an authority on this subject."
"Let the record show that the witness declared his utter ignorance," she said. "But I don't get this atheist-Orthodox thing either --"
"Just think of them as Mennonites or something. They find the old ways to be a useful set of rules for navigating40 the universe's curves. God is irrelevant41 to the belief."
"So they don't believe in God, but they pray to him?"
"Yeah," he said. The surfers were all coming in now, jiggling their boards and rebooting them and staring ruefully at the radical42 cutback off the lip, dude, gnarly, as they plodded43 up the beach. "The ritual is the important part. Thinking good thoughts. Having right mind.
"It's good advice, most of it. It doesn't matter where it comes from or how it got there. What matters is that if you follow the Law, you get to where you're going, in good time, with little pain. You don't know why or how, but you do."
"It's like following the ants," she said, watching the stop-and-go traffic in the other direction. "Don't know why they tell us to go where they do, but they do, and it works."
"Well, I guess," he said, using the tone of voice that told her that he was avoiding telling her how wrong she was. She smiled.
"Anyway. The thing about Jews -- ethnic44 Jews, cultural Jews, forget the religion here -- is that we're pretty much on the melodramatic end of the grieving scale. We like to weep and tear at our hair and throw ourselves on top of the coffins45, right? So there's like 5,000 years of this, and during that time, a bunch of social scientists -- Rabbinical scholars -- have developed a highly evolved protocol46 for ensuring that you grieve your dead enough that you don't feel haunted by guilt47 for having failed to honor them, but not grieving so much that you become a drag on the tribe.
"When someone dies, you bury him right away, usually within 24 hours. This means that you spend an entire day running around like your ass7 was on fire, calling everyone, getting the word out, booking last-minute travel, ordering in from the caterers, picking out a box, fielding consoling phone-calls, getting the rabbi on the phone, booking the limo, so much crap that you can't spare even a second to fall to pieces. And then you bury him, and while you're at it, your family extrudes48 a volunteer to go over to your house and take all the cushions off of one of the sofas, hang sheets over all the mirrors, and set out enough food to feed the entire state, along with an urn16 of starbucks the size of an oil-drum.
"Before the service starts, the rabbi gives you a razor-blade and you slash49 a hole in your lapel, so that you've got the rent in your heart hanging out there in plain sight, and once you get back home, you spend seven days grieving. You pray two times a day with a quorum50 of ten men, facing east and singing the Kaddish, this really, really depressing song-prayer-dirge51 that's specially52 engineered to worm its way into the melancholy53 receptors of the Semitic hindbrain and make you feel really, really, really miserable54. Other people come over and cook for you, all three meals. You don't see yourself in the mirrors, you don't sit on cushions, you don't do anything except mourn for a whole week.
"Then it's over. You take a walk, leaving by one door and coming back in by the other. You put the mourning behind you and start your new life without your dear departed. You've given over your whole life for a whole week, done nothing but mourn, and you're completely sick of it by then, so you're almost glad to be done.
"Then, six months or a year later, usually just before Jewish New Year's, which is in the fall, you have a tombstone erected55 at the gravesite. The stone-cutters tie a white cloth around it, and everyone gathers there, and there's a sermon, and that dirge again, and more prayer, and everyone has a good hard cry as the scabs you've accumulated are ripped away and all your pain comes back fresh and scalding, and you feel it all again in one hot second, and realize with a guilty start that you have been neglecting the memory of the loved one, which is to say that you've gotten on with your life even though his is over, which is to say that you've done perfectly56 healthy, normal stuff, but you feel totally, completely overwhelmed with guilt and love, which are kind of flipsides of the same emotion --"
"You don't believe that, do you?" She held her breath.
"Well, kind of. Not that they should be, but hell they are, most of the time, then."
"Good thing we're not in love, then, right?" she said, in reference to their sixth date, when they'd decided57 that they would hold off on any declarations of love for at least an entire year, since they were most often moved to utter the Three Words of Significance when they were besotted with e.g. post-orgasmic brain-juice or a couple of cocktails58.
She shook her head. He knew she was an academic, not a practicing lawyer, but he loved to tease her about it, ever since she'd revealed (after third date, on the phone) that she'd spent about ten seconds in private practice after she'd worked for her congressman60 and before she'd joined the faculty61 at UCLA.
"You're out of order," she said.
"This whole damned car is out of order!" he said. "So that's the ritual. You said you wanted to meet the parents and sisters and aunts and grandmothers and cousins and uncles and nephews and in-laws the next time we all got together. This is it."
"Right," she said. "I asked for this." And she had, of course. Hadn't asked for the graveside elements, but she'd been curious to meet this big sprawling62 enterprise of a family that he was always nattering on about. This seemed as good an occasion as any. "So," she said. "Is this a traditional date among Your People?"
He chuckled63. "Yes, this is Yom Shiksa, the ritual bringing of the gentile woman to the family so that she may become the subject of intense, relentless64 scrutiny65 and speculation66."
She started to laugh, then saw that the tractors were stilled in the fields they were passing, that a train was stopped in its tracks, that the surfers were unable to get their roll-cage dune-buggies to take to the road.
"You all right, babe?" he said, after a couple minutes of this.
"Just wondering about the dead spot," she said. "I wish we knew what had happened."
"Nothing too bad, I'm sure," he said. "It's all self-healing. I'm sure we'll be back online soon enough."
#
They rolled into the parking lot for his family's shul's section of the giant graveyard67 a few minutes after 1PM, just over an hour late, along with the majority of the other attendees, all of whom had had to navigate68 manually.
"Where are your sisters?" Rainer's mother said, even before he'd kissed her cheek.
Rainer screwed his face up in a scowl69 and dug in his pocket for a yarmulke. "Do I know? Stuck in traffic, Ma. The grid's down everywhere."
Trish watched this bemusedly, in her cool loose cotton apron-trousers and blouse. She scuffed70 her toe conspicuously71 and Rainer turned to her, and it was as though he'd forgotten she was there. She felt a second's irritation72, then a wave of sympathy as she saw the spasm73 of anxiety cross his face. He was nervous about her meeting his fam, and nervous about who would arrive when, and nervous about where his sisters were with their enormous families and meek74 husbands, trapped somewhere on southern California's squillion-mile freeway network.
"Ma," he said. "This is my friend, Trish."
"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Feinstein," Trish said. The old woman was remarkably75 well-preserved, her soft skin glowing with heat-flush, her thick hair caught in a tight bun and covered with a little scarf that reminded Trish of Rainer's yarmulke. She wondered if she should be wearing one, too. Mrs. Feinstein's eyes flicked76 quickly to her shoes, up her legs and boobs, to her face and hair, and then back to her face. She opened her arms and drew Trish into a hug that smelled of good, subtle perfume, though Trish knew so little about scent10 that she couldn't have said which. "Call me Reba, darling," she said. "It's so good of you to come."
And then she was off, hustling77 to corral a wayward knot of horseplay-aged cousins, stopping to shake hands with the deceased great-uncle's poker78 buddies79 in their old-man pants, golf shirts and knit yarmulkes bobby-pinned to their thinning hair.
Trish took stock. Looked like every other graveyard she'd been in, which wasn't that many. At 35, she'd been to half a dozen family funerals, a couple of college buddies who OD'ed or cracked up their cars, and one favorite poli-sci teacher's service, so she was hardly an expert on boneyards, but something was amiss.
"What's with the pebbles81 on the headstones?" she whispered to Rainer, who was scanning the road for signs of his sisters.
"Huh? Oh. You drop those on the monument when you visit the grave, as a sign that someone's been there."
"Oh," she said, and began to cast about for a pebble80 she could put on his great-uncle's headstone once it was unveiled. There were none to be found. The ground had been picked completely clean. Looking at the thousands and thousands of ranged marble headstones, each topped with a cairn of stones -- and not just stones, either, toys and seashells and small sculptures, she saw now -- and she understood why.
"What are you doing?" Rainer asked. He might have been irritated, or just nervous. It was hard to tell when he was Fretting, and he was clearly going coo-coo for coco-puffs.
"Looking for pebbles," she said.
He said :fuck: very quietly. "I meant to bring some. Damnit. I've got twenty relatives buried here and we're going to go past every single tombstone before we get to leave and I don't have a single rock."
"Can you leave toys or other stuff, like on those stones?"
"Yeah," he said. "I suppose. If I had other stuff."
She opened her purse and pulled out the dolphin-dildo cellphone. "You still need this?" she said.
He smiled and his forehead uncreased. "You're a genius," he said.
She set it down on the pavement and brought her heel down on it hard, breaking it into dozens of fragments. "All the pebbles we'll ever need," she said, picking them up and handing them to Rainer.
He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. "I'm awfully82 fond of you, Counselor," he said, kissing her earlobe. His breath tickled83 her ear and made her think of the crazy animal new-relationship-energy sex they'd had the night before -- she was still limping, and so was he -- and she shivered.
"You too, steakypaste," she said. "Now, introduce me to all of your relatives."
"Introduce you?" He groaned85. "You don't think I remember all of their names, do you?"
#
Afterward86, they formed a long convoy87 back to the nearest family member's house -- a great aunt? a second cousin? Rainer was vague -- navigating by keeping everyone in sight, snaking along the traffic jam that appeared to have engulfed88 the entire state, if not the whole coast.
"You made that law, yes? We've all heard about you." This was the sixth time someone had said this to her since they'd arrived and Rainer had made her a plate of blintzes, smoked salmon89, fresh bagels, boiled eggs, and baby greens salad with raspberry dressing90, then had been spirited away into an endless round of cheek-pinching and intense questioning. She'd been left on her own, and after having a couple of grave conversations with small children about the merits of different toys, she'd been latched91 upon by one of the Relatives and passed from hand to hand.
"I was involved in it, but I didn't write the law," she said.
"Look at you, so modest, you're blushing!" the Relative said. She reached out to steady a cut-glass vase as it wobbled in the wake of two small boys playing keep-away with a third's yarmulke, and Trish realized that this was probably the hostess.
"This place is just supercalafragilistic," she said, with an economical gesture at the tasteful Danish furnishings, the paper books in a handsome oak bookcase, the pretty garden out one side window and the ocean out the back window.
"Thank you," the great-aunt said. "My Benny loved it here." She misted up. Trish finally added two and two, remembered the BENJAMIN chiseled92 into the marble headstone, and the blank spot on the other half of the tombstone, realized that this wasn't just the hostess, this was the widow, and felt about for a thing to say.
"It was a beautiful ceremony," she said. She had a couple napkins tucked in the waistband of her pants, and without thinking, she extracted one and folded an angle into it, reaching for the corner of the great-aunt's eye. "Look up," she said, and blotted93 the tear before it could draw a line of mascara down the widow's cheek.
The old woman smiled a well-preserved smile that reminded Trish of Rainer's mom. "You're a sweet girl," she said. "Me, I'm not so good with names, and so I've forgotten yours."
"I'm Trish," Trish said, bemusedly. Rainer's grammar got yiddishized when he wasn't paying attention, and she adored the contrast between its shtetl credibility and his witty94, smooth public banter-persona. It had attuned95 her to little phrases like, "Me, I'm not so good."
The widow shook her hand. "I'm Dorothy. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Would you like to come out to the garden with me?"
#
Once they were seated, young male Relatives materialized and set up shade-umbrellas and brought out trays of iced juice.
"They're not after the inheritance, you know," the old woman said with a snort. "Their parents are very well-off. They don't need from money. They just adore me because I've spoiled them rotten since they were babies and I'd take them swimming and to Disneyland."
"You have a beautiful family," Trish said.
"Do you have a big family, too?" The old woman put on a pair of enormous sunglasses and sipped96 at her pink grapefruit juice.
"Not like this one," she said. There were a couple hundred people in the house, and Rainer had spent the whole car-ride back from the cemetery Fretting about all the relations who hadn't made it.
"Oh, this one! Well, this is a special case. This family accumulates other families. My Benny had a small family, and when he married me, they just joined us. All the high holidays, we ate here, or at my parents' place, God rest them. Your family is in DC?"
"All over."
"But you're from DC, no?"
"Not really. I grew up in Chicago and Seattle."
"But you made that law --"
"I really didn't, honestly! I was clerking for a Supreme97 Court judge when the case was heard, and I wrote his dissenting98 opinion, and when we lost, I quit and went to work for a PAC that was agitating99 for copyright reform to accommodate free expression, and then when Senator Sandollar got voted in and they started the Intellectual Property committee and made her chairman, I joined her staff as a policy wonk. So I worked on it, along with a couple thousand other people, not counting the millions who contributed to the campaign and the people who knocked on doors and so on."
"How old are you, darling?"
"35," she said.
"At 35, I was having babies. You -- listen to you. Listen to what you've accomplished100! I'm proud just to listen to you. Rainer is lucky to have you. You two will get married?"
Trish squirmed and felt her face grow hot. Neither of them really believed in marriage. Whenever anyone brought the subject up around Rainer, he'd grimace101 and say, "Are you kidding? It'd make my mother far too happy -- she'd keel over from joy."
There was some kind of disturbance102 down the beach, one that had been growing steadily103 over the past several minutes, and now the Relatives were all turning their attention that way, to a couple of small boys in miniature suits who were ruining the shine on their shoes running in the sand like lunatics.
Something in the way they were running, the distant expressions she couldn't quite make out on their faces. It made her think back to high-school, to working as a beach lifeguard on Lake Michigan in the summers, and before she knew what she was doing, she'd kicked off her shoes and was running for the shore, her legs flashing immodestly through the vents104 in her apron-trousers.
She was still yards away from the hissing105 surf when she began to assess the situation. There was the small boy, bobbing in the ocean, where the undertow had spit him up after sucking him under. There was the swimmer, unconscious on the beach, face down. Couldn't tell if his chest was moving, but the small boy was in a suit, not swim-trunks like the swimmer, and that meant that he was part of Rainer's Family, which she had begun (on the eighth date, no less!) to think of as her own, and so she had him as her primary target before she reached the sea.
She didn't bother finicking with the buttons on her top, just grabbed her collar and yanked, leaving her in a bra that revealed less than some bikinis she owned, but did so through a cunning arrangement of lace, mesh23, and structural106 engineering that was probably illegal in Texas. She undid107 the bows on each hip84 holding up her pants and stepped out of them, leaving behind a very small pair of white panties whose primary design consideration had been to avoid showing lines through thin trousers, with modest coverage108 of all her nethers coming in a distant second.
She plunged109 into the water without hesitation110, moving swiftly but surely, taking care to keep her feet dug in against the undertow as she waded111 out toward the young boy. She was a strong swimmer, but the water was shockingly cold after the heat of the garden and the buzzing afternoon and it sucked at her calves112 and legs like a jacuzzi intake113. Her breath roared in her ears as she rode the swells114, and then she was soaked by a succession of breakers, and then she had the boy's little hand.
She hauled him to her, seeing that he was only five or six, and that his pouting115 lips were alarmingly blue and that his skin was as pale as cream. She scooped116 the water out of his mouth, hooked her arm around his neck and tilted117 his head back and began to slosh back toward shore. When she was waist-deep -- immodestly revealed in a bra that she was quite certain had gone completely transparent118 -- she pinched his nose and blew into his mouth, not quite getting her mouth out of the way before he vomited119 up a gush120 of salt-water, blintzes, diet coke, and bile. She spat121 and wished that she could duck her head and get a mouthful of ocean to rinse122 with, but she couldn't without dunking the boy, too, so she hauled him up out of the water and handed him to the Relative who was standing123 with his arms on the shore, his fine leather shoes soaked with cold seawater.
She looked for the swimmer, and saw that he was still face-down in the sand. "You, you and you," she said, pointing at three young cousins whose wide eyes were flicking124 from her boobs to her crotch -- white underwear, Christ, why white underwear today? -- to the boy on the sand, who was mobbed now with Relatives whose hubbub125 had reached deafening126 proportions, "Go to the house, find an old-fashioned phone and call emergency services. Tell them where we are, and that we have two drowning victims, one a child, neither breathing. What are you going to do?"
The tallest of the three managed to make eye-contact long enough to say, "Find a cell-phone, call emergency, tell them where we are, two drownings, not breathing."
"Right," she said. "Come back when you're done and tell me that it's done."
"You, you," she said, picking out two tall uncles who looked like they'd worked out or played sports before they found whatever careers had paid for the nice suits they were wearing, "Carry him here and lay him down on his side."
She looked for Rainer and found his ass sticking out of the scrum around the boy. She snagged him by the belt and dragged him back. "Rainer," she shouted. His forehead was scrunched127, but he was clear-eyed and grim and looked like he was listening to her, which she found very pleasing. "You need to get everyone back at least five steps from that kid, and make them quiet down," she said.
"Right," he said, and took off his jacket and handed it to her.
"Hold it yourself," she snapped, "I've got things to do."
"It's to wear," he said.
She surprised herself with a grin. "Thanks,"
The Relatives were murmuring, or crying, or bickering128, but Rainer hollered. "LISTEN UP," he said. "All of you get over there by that rock, NOW, or my girlfriend won't be able to save Jory's life. GO!"
And they went, amazingly, crushing back so quickly they looked like a receding129 tide. The tall uncles deposited the swimmer in the sand between them, and she checked his breathing and saw that it was good.
"Turn him on his side and tell me if he starts to choke," she said, and turned to the little boy, struggling to remember her rescue breathing.
收听单词发音 |
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cascade
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| n.小瀑布，喷流；层叠；vi.成瀑布落下 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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massages
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的名词复数 ) | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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neurotic
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| adj.神经病的，神经过敏的；n.神经过敏者，神经病患者 | |
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grid
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| n.高压输电线路网；地图坐标方格；格栅 | |
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chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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16
urn
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| n.（有座脚的）瓮；坟墓；骨灰瓮 | |
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17
leeches
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| n.水蛭( leech的名词复数 )；蚂蟥；榨取他人脂膏者；医生 | |
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18
obsidian
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| n.黑曜石 | |
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19
pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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20
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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21
constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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22
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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23
mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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24
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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25
ruffling
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| 弄皱( ruffle的现在分词 )； 弄乱； 激怒； 扰乱 | |
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26
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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27
vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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28
scrunch
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| v.压，挤压；扭曲（面部） | |
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29
whoops
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| int.呼喊声 | |
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30
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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31
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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32
pedantic
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| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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33
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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34
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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35
glumly
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| adv.忧郁地，闷闷不乐地；阴郁地 | |
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36
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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37
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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38
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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39
renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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40
navigating
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| v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的现在分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃 | |
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41
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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42
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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43
plodded
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| v.沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 )；努力从事；沉闷地苦干；缓慢进行（尤指艰难枯燥的工作） | |
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44
ethnic
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| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
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45
coffins
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| n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物 | |
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46
protocol
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| n.议定书，草约，会谈记录，外交礼节 | |
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47
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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48
extrudes
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| v.挤压出( extrude的第三人称单数 )；挤压成；突出；伸出 | |
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49
slash
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| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
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50
quorum
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| n.法定人数 | |
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51
dirge
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| n.哀乐，挽歌，庄重悲哀的乐曲 | |
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52
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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53
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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54
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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55
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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56
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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58
cocktails
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| n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物 | |
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59
counselor
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| n.顾问，法律顾问 | |
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60
Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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61
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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62
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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63
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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65
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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66
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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67
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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68
navigate
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| v.航行，飞行；导航，领航 | |
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69
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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70
scuffed
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| v.使磨损( scuff的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚走 | |
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71
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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72
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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73
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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74
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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75
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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76
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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77
hustling
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| 催促（hustle的现在分词形式） | |
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78
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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79
buddies
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| n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人 | |
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80
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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81
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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82
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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83
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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84
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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85
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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86
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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87
convoy
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| vt.护送，护卫，护航；n.护送；护送队 | |
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88
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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89
salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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90
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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91
latched
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| v.理解( latch的过去式和过去分词 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上） | |
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92
chiseled
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| adj.凿刻的，轮廓分明的v.凿，雕，镌( chisel的过去式 ) | |
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93
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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94
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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95
attuned
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| v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 )；调音 | |
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96
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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98
dissenting
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| adj.不同意的 | |
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99
agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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100
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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101
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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102
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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103
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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104
vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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105
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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106
structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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107
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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108
coverage
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| n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖 | |
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109
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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110
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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111
waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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112
calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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113
intake
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| n.吸入，纳入；进气口，入口 | |
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114
swells
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| 增强( swell的第三人称单数 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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115
pouting
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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116
scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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117
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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118
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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119
vomited
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120
gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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121
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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122
rinse
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| v.用清水漂洗，用清水冲洗 | |
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123
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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124
flicking
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的现在分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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125
hubbub
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| n.嘈杂；骚乱 | |
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126
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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127
scrunched
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| v.发出喀嚓声( scrunch的过去式和过去分词 )；蜷缩；压；挤压 | |
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128
bickering
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| v.争吵( bicker的现在分词 )；口角；（水等）作潺潺声；闪烁 | |
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129
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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