從來不缺課的 TEA 感冒缺課了！（而且她沒去學務處請假，卻跑來老師的部落格請假。哈哈哈哈哈哈！！！！！好像應該請求學/教務處對 PChome 補助。）

好吧！我們來幫她上課！希望她一笑就立刻痊癒！

今天的【短篇小說選讀】是一篇文字極精簡的名作。前三句一出來就把敘事者這個少不更事的十八歲女孩介入別人家庭的全部關係說清楚了。一本可以用五年的日記是男人送的禮物，可是他彷彿很清楚自己沒多久就會被女孩甩掉，因為這女孩不管多浪漫、委屈求全、不曉世事，對男人而言，她只是暫時沖昏頭的自我欺騙。他們在車上唱的那一首歌，已經標明：儘管相識兩年，他倆沒有明天。（更別說五年了！）

女孩一逕浪漫，但是男人認為他知道的才是實情，因為沒有任何人是一個謎團。太清楚了！

YV 懷疑，Elizabeth Tallant 能寫這麼精簡的文字可能是她的人類學背景專業養成。也許她是 Levi Strauss 一派的訓練??

老師上課只有唸這首歌而已，現在還貼給病人閱讀。夠義氣吧？！

_____________________________________________________________________

No One’s a Mystery by Elizabeth Tallent

For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a
little key, light as a dime. I was sitting beside him scratching at the lock,
which didn’t seem to want to work, when he thought he saw his wife’s
Cadillac in the distance, coming toward us. He pushed me down onto the
dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the
musk of his cigarettes in the dashboard ashtray and sang along with Rosanne
Cash on the tape deck. We’d been drinking tequila and the bottle was
between his legs, resting up against his crotch, where the seam of his
Levi’s was bleached linen-white, though the Levi’s were nearly new. I
don’t know why his Levi’s always bleached like that, along the seams
and at the knees. In a curve of cloth his zipper glinted, gold.

”It’s her,” he said. ”She keeps the lights on in the daytime. I can’t think of
a single habit in a woman that irritates me more than that.” When he saw that I
was going to stay still he took his hand from my head and ran it through his
own dark hair.

”Why does she?” I said.

”She thinks it’s safer. Why does she need to be safer? She’s driving
exactly fifty-five miles an hour. She believes in those signs:

`Speed Monitored by Aircraft.’ It doesn’t matter that you can look up
and see that the sky is empty.”

”She’ll see your lips move, Jack. She’ll know you’re talking to
someone.”

”She’ll think I’m singing along with the radio.”

He didn’t lift his hand, just raised the fingers in salute while the
pressure of his palm steadied the wheel, and I heard the Cadillac honk twice,
musically; he was driving easily eighty miles an hour. I studied his boots. The
elk heads stitched into the leather were bearded with frayed thread, the toes
were scuffed, and there was a compact wedge of muddy manure between
the heel and the sole—the same boots he’d been wearing for the two years
I’d known him. On the tape deck Rosanne Cash sang, ”Nobody’s into me,
no one’s a mystery.”

”Do you think she’s getting famous because of who her daddy is or for
herself?” Jack said.

”There are about a hundred pop tops on the floor, did you know that?
Some little kid could cut a bare foot on one of these, Jack.”

”No little kids get into this truck except for you.”

”How come you let it get so dirty?”

” `How come,’ he mocked. ”You even sound like a kid. You can get
back into the seat now, if you want. She’s not going to look over her
shoulder and see you.”

”How do you know?”

”I just know,” he said. ”Like I know I’m going to get meat loaf for
supper. It’s in the air. Like I know what you’ll be writing in that diary.”

”What will I be writing?” I knelt on my side of the seat and craned
around to look at the butterfly of dust printed on my jeans. Outside the
window Wyoming was dazzling in the heat. The wheat was fawn and
yellow and parted smoothly by the thin dirt road. I could smell the water in
the irrigation ditches hidden in the wheat.

”Tonight you’ll write, ’ I love Jack. This is my birthday present from
him. I can’t imagine anybody loving anybody more than I love Jack.”

”I can’t.”

”In a year you’ll write, `I wonder what I ever really saw in Jack. I
wonder why I spent so many days just riding around in his pickup. It’.s true
he taught me something about sex. It’s true there wasn’t ever much else to
do in Cheyenne.’ ”

”I won’t write that.”

”In two years you’ll write, `I wonder what that old guy’s name was, the
one with the curly hair and the filthy dirty pickup truck and time on his
hands.’ ”

”I won’t write that.”

”No?”

”Tonight I’ll write, `I love Jack. This is my birthday present from
him. I can’t imagine anybody loving anybody more than I love Jack.’ ”

”No, you can’t,” he said. ”You can’t imagine it.”

”In a year I’ll write, `Jack should be home any minute now. The
table’s set—my grandmother’s linen and her old silver and the yellow
candles left over from the wedding—but I don’t know if I can wait until
after the trout a la Navarra to make love to him.’ ”

”It must have been a fast divorce.”

”In two years I’ll write, `Jack should be home by now. Little Jack is
hungry for his supper. He said his first word today besides ”Mama” and
”Papa.” He said ”kaka.” ’ ”

Jack laughed. ”He was probably trying to finger-paint with kaka
on the bathroom wall when you heard him say it.”

”In three years I’ll write, `My nipples are a little sore from nursing
Eliza Rosamund.’

”Rosamund. Every little girl should have a middle name she hates.”

” `Her breath smells like vanilla and her eyes are just Jack’s color of
blue.’

”That’s nice.” Jack said.

”So, which one do you like?”

”I like yours,” he said. ”But I believe mine.”

”It doesn’t matter. I believe mine.”

”Not in your heart of hearts, you don’t.”

”You’re wrong.”

”I’m not wrong,” he said. ”And her breath would smell like your milk,
and it’s kind of a bittersweet smell, if you want to know the truth.”

*************************************************


It Hasn’t Happened Yet Lyrics By John Hiatt
You said that I would be sorry if you went away
You said I wouldn’t be happy without hell to pay
You said the teardrops would fall
Between the bedroom walls
You said that I would regret
Well It Hasn’t Happened Yet

Your friends come over and offer to take me to eat
They all seem so sorry I’m sufferin’ so much misery
They said to just give a call
Next time that I start to crawl
I always say yeah, you bet
But It Hasn’t Happened Yet

I don’t have anyone
I’m havin’ fun
No one is into me
No one’s a mystery
I see you on the street
My heart don’t skip no beat
Lovers’ hostility
Don’t mean a thing to me

I find it hard to remember the good times we had
Call me insensitive now that it’s over I’m glad
You said when big shadows fell
It would be too hard to tell
My light from your silhouette
Well it hasn’t happened yet


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpQjT1XKMfY
Rosanne Cash singing ”Black Cadillac”