Paradise 精彩片段：
15
HE lost nine pounds (a great blessing) dur?ing the eight months they lived in the apartment. They had not been slow to criticize his toes, teeth, belly, hair, or politics. "It seems to me," Veronica had said one day, "that you have no social responsibility." "My first social responsibility," he had said, "is that the building doesnt collapse." "Right right right," she said, "but you are after all a creature of the power structure. You work for the power structure." This was true enough, revolutionaries didnt build buildings, needed only clos?ets to oil their Uzis in, no work for architects there. On the other hand Veronica and the others derived their own politics from a K-Mart of sources, Thomas Aquinas marching shoulder-to-shoulder with Simone de Beauvoir and the weatherbeaten troopers of Sixty Minutes. They were often left and right during the same conversation, sometimes the same sentence.
His headaches had gone away but had been replaced by early-morning vomiting. A few ounces of yellow bile produced each morning. He meditated on too much, thought carefully about a sufficiency. When the women had been living with him he had thought of himself, very often, as insufficiently virile, or insuffi?ciently ambitious. Who needed this much excitation? On the other hand, who could resist it? Anne some?times looked like a twenty-year-old, especially when shed just bathed, the small breasts, the small hips, the dark hair. Dore was tall and bossy, there was no other word for it, and Veronica was, take your choice, sassy or critical, great lip on that kid, never without a spiked re?mark. He had the sense that he was a hotel, didnt mind being a hotel, okay Im a hotel. Two of them sucking his cock in the early mornings, taking turns, five or six oclock, he was drinking white wine, not very good white wine, and smoking, this went on for a long while, sometimes theyd turn to one another and one would begin to lick the inside of the others legs up near the cunt, quite near, Simon with his hands on that ones buttocks, around her waist and then moving down over the buttocks with slow appreciative strokes, raking them with his nails at intervals, but softly, little bites, but softly, the flesh is so delicious Dore said, or Anne said.
"YOUVE been bad Veronica."
"No I havent thats not bad thats hardly bad at all."
"I agree with her. Youve been bad."
"No I havent I dont call that --"
"Very bad."
"I dont call that bad thats not hardly bad at all you should see what Ive seen if you want to talk about --"
"Yes Veronica yes of course of course Veronica I didnt think youd admit it why should you? Cmon Anne theres no reasoning with her."
"Dore dont go I havent been bad shes just trying to tell you Ive been bad but I mean are you going to be?lieve her? Just because she says --"
"Well how do you feel?"
"Bad."
"You see."
"Oh God Dore now youve made her feel bad just talking about everything youve made her feel bad that shes done something some little something she shouldnt have done some little something that war?rants horrible contrition --"