《渺小一生》:“就这么说定了。”

　 “That’s nice of you to say. But they won’t if I don’t move out, and soon.”

“谢谢你的好意。可是如果我不赶快搬出去，他们就不会喜欢我了。”

　 Malcolm was the only one of the four of them who lived at home, and as JB liked to say, if he had Malcolm’s home, he would live at home too. It wasn’t as if Malcolm’s house was particularly grand—it was, in fact, creaky and ill-kept, and Willem had once gotten a splinter simply by running his hand up its banister—but it was large: a real Upper East Side town house. Malcolm’s sister, Flora, who was three years older than him, had moved out of the basement apartment recently, and Jude had taken her place as a short-term solution: Eventually, Malcolm’s parents would want to reclaim the unit to convert it into offices for his mother’s literary agency, which meant Jude (who was finding the flight of stairs that led down to it too difficult to navigate anyway) had to look for his own apartment.

马尔科姆是他们四个人里头唯一还住在家里的，而且一如杰比老爱说的，如果他家像马尔科姆家那样，他也会住家里。马尔科姆家的房子并不是多么豪华（其实很老旧，又维护得很差，威廉有回只是扶着栏杆上楼，手就被碎木片刺伤了），但很宽敞：真正的上东城独栋房。大马尔科姆三岁的姐姐弗洛拉最近搬出了地下室公寓，于是裘德就住进了这个让他暂时落脚的地方：总有一天，马尔科姆的父母会想收回这个空间。他母亲是文学经纪人，想把这里改装成自己的办公室，到时候裘德就得找新的住处（反正他觉得那段下楼的楼梯实在太吃力了）。

　 And it was natural that he would live with Willem; they had been roommates throughout college. In their first year, the four of them had shared a space that consisted of a cinder-blocked common room, where sat their desks and chairs and a couch that JB’s aunts had driven up in a U-Haul, and a second, far tinier room, in which two sets of bunk beds had been placed. This room had been so narrow that Malcolm and Jude, lying in the bottom bunks, could reach out and grab each other’s hands. Malcolm and JB had shared one of the units; Jude and Willem had shared the other.

而他打算跟威廉同住，也是很自然的事，他们大学时代当了四年室友。第一年，他们四个人合住宿舍里的一间套房，包括一个煤渣砖砌的起居室，放着他们的书桌椅和一张杰比的阿姨们租了U-Haul搬家卡车运来的沙发，以及另一间小很多的寝室，里头放着两张双层床。这寝室太小了，小到睡下铺的马尔科姆和裘德伸手就能够到，甚至握住对方的手。马尔科姆的上铺睡的是杰比，裘德的上铺则是威廉。

　 “It’s blacks versus whites,” JB would say.

“这是黑人对抗白人。”杰比会说。

　 “Jude’s not white,” Willem would respond.

“裘德不是白人。”威廉会回答。

　 “And I’m not black,” Malcolm would add, more to annoy JB than because he believed it.

“我也不是黑人。”马尔科姆会补上一句，主要是为了逗杰比，而不是因为他真这么想。

　 “Well,” JB said now, pulling the plate of mushrooms toward him with the tines of his fork, “I’d say you could both stay with me, but I think you’d fucking hate it.” JB lived in a massive, filthy loft in Little Italy, full of strange hallways that led to unused, oddly shaped cul-de-sacs and unfinished half rooms, the Sheetrock abandoned mid-construction, which belonged to another person they knew from college. Ezra was an artist, a bad one, but he didn’t need to be good because, as JB liked to remind them, he would never have to work in his entire life. And not only would he never have to work, but his children’s children’s children would never have to work: They could make bad, unsalable, worthless art for generations and they would still be able to buy at whim the best oils they wanted, and impractically large lofts in downtown Manhattan that they could trash with their bad architectural decisions, and when they got sick of the artist’s life—as JB was convinced Ezra someday would—all they would need to do is call their trust officers and be awarded an enormous lump sum of cash of an amount that the four of them (well, maybe not Malcolm) could never dream of seeing in their lifetimes. In the meantime, though, Ezra was a useful person to know, not only because he let JB and a few of his other friends from school stay in his apartment—at any time, there were four or five people burrowing in various corners of the loft—but because he was a good-natured and basically generous person, and liked to throw excessive parties in which copious amounts of food and drugs and alcohol were available for free.

“好吧。”杰比这会儿说，用叉尖把那盘蘑菇拉近，“其实你们俩都可以来跟我住，但我想你们他妈的一定不肯。”杰比住在小意大利那一带一个巨大又肮脏的LOFT，里头充满了怪异的走道，通向废弃的、歪来扭去的死巷和没完工的房间，隔间的石膏板装到一半就被弃置不管。这层楼是他们大学时代另一个朋友埃兹拉的。埃兹拉是艺术家，很差的那种，不过他也不必很好，因为就像杰比总提醒他们的，埃兹拉这辈子都不必工作。而且不光是他，他小孩的小孩的小孩也永远不必工作：他们可以一代接一代做那些很烂、卖不掉、毫无价值的艺术作品，但照样有财力，一时兴起就去买他们想要的顶级油彩，或是在曼哈顿闹市区买下大而无用的LOFT，胡乱改装到一半就放着烂掉。而且等到他们厌烦了艺术家生活（杰比相信，埃兹拉总有一天会这样），只要打电话给他们的信托基金管理人，就可以拿到一大笔现金；那个金额是他们四个人（好吧，或许马尔科姆除外）这辈子连做梦都不会梦到的。不过同时，认识埃兹拉好处不少，不光因为他让杰比和其他几个老同学住在他的公寓（任何时候去那里，总有四五个人窝在LOFT的各个角落），也是因为他是个脾气很好、基本上很大方的人，而且他喜欢开狂欢派对，免费供应大量食物、迷幻药物和酒。

　 “Hold up,” JB said, putting his chopsticks down. “I just realized—there’s someone at the magazine renting some place for her aunt. Like, just on the verge of Chinatown.”

“慢着，”杰比说，放下筷子，“我刚刚才想到——我们杂志社里有个人在帮她阿姨找房客。好像就在唐人街这附近。”

　 “How much is it?” asked Willem.

“房租是多少？”威廉问。

　 “Probably nothing—she didn’t even know what to ask for it. And she wants someone in there that she knows.”

“大概很低——她根本不晓得该开价多少，而且她想找认识的人当房客。”

　 “Do you think you could put in a good word?”

“你可以帮我们说点好话吗？”

　 “Better—I’ll introduce you. Can you come by the office tomorrow?”

“不止——我来介绍你们认识。你们明天可以来我办公室吗？”

　 Jude sighed. “I won’t be able to get away.” He looked at Willem.

裘德叹了口气。“我明天走不开。”他看着威廉。

　 “Don’t worry—I can. What time?”

“没关系，我可以去。几点？”

　 “Lunchtime, I guess. One?”

“午餐时间吧。1点？”

　 “I’ll be there.”

“就这么说定了。”

　 Willem was still hungry, but he let JB eat the rest of the mushrooms. Then they all waited around for a bit; sometimes Malcolm ordered jackfruit ice cream, the one consistently good thing on the menu, ate two bites, and then stopped, and he and JB would finish the rest. But this time he didn’t order the ice cream, and so they asked for the bill so they could study it and divide it to the dollar.

威廉还是饿，不过他让杰比吃了剩下的蘑菇。然后他们又等了一会儿——有时马尔科姆会点餐馆常年的招牌甜点菠萝蜜冰淇淋，吃两口就不吃了，让他和杰比解决剩下的。但这回他没点冰淇淋，于是他们跟服务生要了账单，好拆账付钱。

　 The next day, Willem met JB at his office. JB worked as a receptionist at a small but influential magazine based in SoHo that covered the downtown art scene. This was a strategic job for him; his plan, as he’d explained to Willem one night, was that he’d try to befriend one of the editors there and then convince him to feature him in the magazine. He estimated this taking about six months, which meant he had three more to go.

次日，威廉去杰比的办公室和他会合。杰比在苏荷区一家杂志社当前台，杂志主要报道这一带的艺术圈动态，规模虽小却颇具影响力。对杰比来说，这是一份策略性的工作：有天晚上他跟威廉解释，他计划跟杂志社的某位编辑交上朋友，然后说服他报道自己。他估计这个任务要花六个月，这表示他还需要三个月。

　 JB wore a perpetual expression of mild disbelief while at his job, both that he should be working at all and that no one had yet thought to recognize his special genius. He was not a good receptionist. Although the phones rang more or less constantly, he rarely picked them up; when any of them wanted to get through to him (the cell phone reception in the building was inconsistent), they had to follow a special code of ringing twice, hanging up, and then ringing again. And even then he sometimes failed to answer—his hands were busy beneath his desk, combing and plaiting snarls of hair from a black plastic trash bag he kept at his feet.

杰比上班时，总是摆出一副略带怀疑的表情，既不相信自己竟然在工作，也不相信居然还没有人看出他的特殊天赋。他不是个称职的前台，电话铃声响个不停，但他很少接。要是任何人想找他（这栋大楼里面的手机信号不太稳），就得遵循一套特殊的暗号：拨通电话后等铃响两声，挂掉，再重打一次。但即使如此，他有时候还是不会接——因为他的双手在办公桌下头，正忙着梳理、编织从脚边一个黑色塑料袋里拿出来的一团团头发。

　 JB was going through, as he put it, his hair phase. Recently he had decided to take a break from painting in favor of making sculptures from black hair. Each of them had spent an exhausting weekend following JB from barbershop to beauty shop in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan, waiting outside as JB went in to ask the owners for any sweepings or cuttings they might have, and then lugging an increasingly awkward bag of hair down the street after him. His early pieces had included The Mace, a tennis ball that he had de-fuzzed, sliced in half, and filled with sand before coating it in glue and rolling it around and around in a carpet of hair so that the bristles moved like seaweed underwater, and “The Kwotidien,” in which he covered various household items—a stapler; a spatula; a teacup—in pelts of hair. Now he was working on a large-scale project that he refused to discuss with them except in snatches, but it involved the combing out and braiding together of many pieces in order to make one apparently endless rope of frizzing black hair. The previous Friday he had lured them over with the promise of pizza and beer to help him braid, but after many hours of tedious work, it became clear that there was no pizza and beer forthcoming, and they had left, a little irritated but not terribly surprised.

以杰比自己的说法，他正在经历他的“头发时期”。最近他决定暂停画画，专心用黑色头发做雕塑。他们每个人都曾花一个周末的时间，辛辛苦苦地跟着杰比去皇后区、布鲁克林、布朗克斯，以及曼哈顿的理发店和美发店。他们在外头等，杰比则进店里，问店主能不能把要丢掉的头发给他，然后他们提着一大袋越来越重的头发，跟在他后头走。他早期的作品包括《令牌》，那是一个去掉绒毛的网球，剖开来填入沙子，外头涂上黏胶，然后在一块头发地毯上滚了一圈又一圈，于是黏在上面的那些短短的头发就像水里的海藻般晃动。还有一个“日常”系列，是用头发包裹各种家用小工具——一个订书机、一把奶油刀、一个茶杯。现在他正在进行一项大计划，他不肯跟他们讨论，只零星透露过一点——他计划将许多鬈曲的黑发梳理并编织起来，最后做出一条漫长无尽的绳子。上个星期五，他保证要请吃披萨加啤酒，哄骗他们去帮他编辫子，但辛苦编了几小时之后，他们意识到显然不会有披萨和啤酒，就离开了，有点不高兴，倒也不是太意外。