MAY DAY XI

In a bedroom of a small hotel just off Sixth Avenue Gordon Sterrett awoke with a pain in the back of his head and a sick throbbing in all his veins. He looked at the dusky gray shadows in the corners of the room and at a raw place on a large leather chair in the corner where it had long been in use. He saw clothes, dishevelled, rumpled clothes on the floor and he smelt stale cigarette smoke and stale liquor. The windows were tight shut. Outside the bright sunlight had thrown a dust-filled beam across the sill—a beam broken by the head of the wide wooden bed in which he had slept. He lay very quiet—comatose, drugged, his eyes wide, his mind clicking wildly like an unoiled machine.

It must have been thirty seconds after he perceived the sunbeam with the dust on it and the rip on the large leather chair that he had the sense of life close beside him, and it was another thirty seconds after that before that he realized that he was irrevocably married to Jewel Hudson.

He went out half an hour later and bought a revolver at a sporting goods store. Then he took a took a taxi to the room where he had been living on East Twenty-seventh Street, and, leaning across the table that held his drawing materials, fired a cartridge into his head just behind the temple.

五一节 十一

就在第六大街旁边，有一家小旅馆。戈登·斯特雷特在旅馆的客房里醒来，后脑勺很疼，浑身的脉搏都在病恹恹地抽动。他看着屋角落满灰尘的阴影，看着旮旯里那张陈旧的大皮椅上的破洞，椅子已经使用很久了。他看着地板上乱七八糟、皱皱巴巴的衣服，闻着香烟和酒精的污浊气味。窗户紧紧地闭着，外面明亮的阳光已经将灰尘飞扬的一束光柱照到窗台上——他躺在木床上，宽大的床头挡住了光束。他静静地躺着——昏昏沉沉、迷迷糊糊，眼睛睁得很大，大脑像一台没有上油的机器嗡嗡作响。

他看到灰尘飞舞的光束和大皮椅上的破洞后，一定又过了三十秒才意识到，他身边还躺着一个人；又过了三十秒，他才意识到他已经不可挽回地和朱沃尔·哈德森结婚了。

半小时后，他出去到体育用品店买了一把左轮手枪。然后，他乘着出租车来到东二十七大街上他的住处，躺在摆着绘画材料的桌子上，将一颗子弹从太阳穴正后方射进了头颅。

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(1) 指纽约。

(2) 菲尔是菲利浦的昵称（Phil），熟人或亲人之间常用昵称。

(3) 戈迪（Gordy）是戈登（Gordon）的昵称。