小妹妹

他们健康平静的脸上写满了他们经历过的沧桑。他们的眼睛老是一个样，阴沉沉灰蒙蒙像在结冰的水。抿的紧紧的嘴，眼角细细的皱纹，瞪着人的空洞的眼神--谈不上冷酷，但离慈悲有十万八千里，成品店里买来的衣服，没什么格调，生活清苦但又以权力自豪，时时刻刻要别人感受到他们的权力，把权力推给你，摊给你看，狞笑着看着你满地打滚，无情但没有恶意，残酷但偶发善心。你又希望他们怎么样？文明对他们没有意义，他们整天看到的就是文明里的失败、灰烬、渣滓、无序以及混乱。

她淡淡一笑。贵族化的疲惫。

“是可以断绝他们的毒品来源。等受尽折磨以后，他们最终是可以戒掉。不过那不叫治好，朋友，那可治不好当初让他们染上毒瘾的神经衰弱或者感情创伤。戒毒只是让他们变得消沉，整天坐在太阳底下看手指，然后无聊空虚地死去。”

“我一直不明白为什么有人愿意付钱给勒索者。其实什么也买不到，可他们还是照样付钱，有时候甚至一付再付，到头来还不是白搭。” “眼前的恐惧，”他说，“永远大过将来的恐惧。就像看戏的人，感情永远会战胜理智。如果你在银幕上看到大明星处境危险，你会用你心智的某一部分——感性的那部分——为她担心，虽然你的理性告诉你；她是这部电影里的大明星，一定可以化险为夷的。如果悬疑和紧张胜不了理智的话，恐怕拍戏的就没饭吃了。”

总是有这样的日子，你遇到的每个人都是神经病，于是你会开始照镜子，暗自纳闷。

我们都很恶毒，有些人笑得比别人开心，如此而已。

我仔细审视他，但看不到他的灵魂。他安静、阴郁、封闭，生命所有的不幸都在他的眼里，但他仍然温文有礼。

我点点头，走了出去。总是有这样的日子，你遇到的每个人都是神经病，于是你会开始照镜子，暗自纳闷。

她轻轻地喷着烟，眼睛眨巴着。然后，又伸手扶了扶烟卷。过了那么多年了，我已经不能在一个姑娘要抽烟的时候，将一个烟卷塞到她嘴上适当的位置了。

Her voice was as cool as boarding-house soup.

Her voice faded off into a sort of sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.

The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.

I left him to his thoughts, which were probably as small, ugly and frightened as the man himself.

She looked almost as hard to get as a haircut.

She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.

She made a couple of drinks in a couple of glasses you could almost have stood umbrellas in.

“Never the time and place and the loved one all together,” “What’s that?” She tried to throw me out with the point of her chin, but even she wasn’t that good. “Browning. The poet, not the automatic. I feel sure you’d prefer the automatic.”

California, the department-store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing.

He asked brokenly in a hushed voice, like a six-hundred-dollar funeral.

The silence hung in the room as acrid as the smoke of the cigarette.

The smell of old dust hung in the air as flat and stale as a football interview.

I opened the inner door and inside there it was the same dead air, the same dust along the veneer, the same broken promise of a life of ease.

The boss mortician fluttered around making elegant little gestures and body movements as graceful as a Chopin ending.

“You have been drinking,” he said slowly. “Only Chanel No. 5, and kisses, and the pale glow of lovely legs, and the mocking invitation in deep blue eyes. Innocent things like that.”

I got up on my feet. I was as dizzy as a dervish, as weak as a worn-out washer, as low as a badger’s belly, as timid as a titmouse, and as unlikely to succeed as a ballet dancer with a wooden leg.

Another still slower sigh, languid and peaceful as a summer breeze drifting past the nodding roses.

The orange queen wrote without looking up. To say she had a face that would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a runaway horse.

The room was suddenly full of heavy silence, like a fallen cake.

I went on out, parting the silence as if I was pushing my way through water.

The sound of my voice fell on silence like a tired head on a swans-down pillow.