英语小说选读.docx

1、英语小说选读 文件编码（TTU-UITID-GGBKT-POIU-WUUI-0089）英语小说选读A&P by John UpdikeIn walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. Im in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I dont see them until theyre over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two

2、-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I r

3、ing it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. Shes one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. Shed been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before. By the

4、 time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag - she gives me a little snort in passing, if shed been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem - by the time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart, back

5、 my way along the counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins. They didnt even have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-piece - it was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the sui

6、t) - there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadnt quite frizzed卷曲 right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long - you know, the kind of girl ot

7、her girls think is very striking and attractive but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much - and then the third one, that wasnt quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didnt l

8、ook around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna（Italian, first lady） legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didnt walk in her bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she wa

9、s testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls minds work (do you really think its a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her

10、, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight. She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I dont know - bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her

11、 arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadnt been there you wouldnt have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top

12、of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty. She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was u

13、nravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose its the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didnt mind. The longer her neck was, the more of her there

14、was. She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie in the second slot watching, but she didnt tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the other two, who

15、 kind of huddled against her for relief, and they all three of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks- rackers-and- cookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter, and I watched them all

16、the way. The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back. The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle - the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything) - were pretty hilarious非常滑稽的. You could se

17、e them, when Queenies white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup打嗝, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and mutterin

18、g Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce! or whatever it is they do mutter. But there was no doubt, this jiggled them. A few house-slaves in pin curlers卷发夹子even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct. Yo

19、u know, its one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our che

20、ckerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor. Oh Daddy, Stokesie said beside me. I feel so faint. Darling, I said. Hold me tight. Stokesies married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell thats the only difference. Hes twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April. I

21、s it done he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I forgot to say he thinks hes going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when its called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something. What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer co

22、lony out on the Point, but were right in the middle of town, and the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care

23、 less. As I say, were right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twenty-seven old free-loaders食客 tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. Its not

24、as if were on the Cape; were north of Boston and theres people in this town havent seen the ocean for twenty years. The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed, they pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight peaches. All that wa

25、s left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldnt help it. Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says its sad but I dont think its sad myself. The stores pretty empty, i

26、t being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. The whole store was like a pinball machine and I didnt know which tunnel theyd come out of. After a while they come around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, re

27、cords at discount of the Caribbean Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, sixpacks of candy bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray j

28、ar in her hand. Slots Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice Ive often a

29、sked myself) so the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49. Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the moneys coming from. Still with that prim look

30、 she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute. Then everybodys luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that

31、 door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengels pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesnt miss that much. He comes over and says, Girls, this isnt the beach. Queenie blushes, though maybe its just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for t

32、he first time, now that she was so close. My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks. Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over pick up and snacks. All of a sudden I slid right down her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sp