这个mp3是从去年NPR的This American Life里截获的，当时南卡州长正在闹婚外练，This American Life及时地做了一组关于infidelity的节目。这篇微型小说很短，可以当故事听,有兴趣的朋友也可以用来朗读练习，对我有些快。文字材料是我听写下来的，（也是个不错的练习），里面误听一定很多，请大家多揪错.




The Memoir

Etgar Keret

The man who knew what I was about to say sat next to me on the plane. A stupid smile plastered across his face. That’s what so nerve-racking about him. Smart? He wasn’t. Nor sensitive either. But still, he knew those lines and managed to say them. All the lines I meant to say, three seconds before me.
“Do you sell Guerlain Mystic?” He asked the flight attendant a minute before I could, and she gave him an orthodox smile and said there is just one last bottle left.
” My wife goes crazy for that perfume,” he said.
“She is positively addicted, and if I come back from a trip without a bottle of Mystic from the duty-free, she said I don’t love her anymore. If I dare coming into this house without at least one of these, I am in deep [beep].”
That was supposed to be my line. But the man who knew what I was about to say stole it from me, without missing a beep. As soon as the wheels touched the ground, he switched on his mobile a second before I did, and called his wife.
“I just landed”, he told her.
“I am sorry. I know it was supposed to be yesterday. The flight was canceled. “
“You don’t believe me? Check it out yourself. Call Eric. I know you don’t. I can give you his number right now.”
I also have a travel agent called Eric. He’d lie for me too.
When the plane reached the gate, he was still talking on his mobile, giving all the answers I would have given, without a trace of emotion, like a parrot, in a world where times flows backwards, repeating whatever is about to be said instead of what’s been said already. His answers were the best ones under the circumstances. His circumstances weren’t too hot, not too hot at all. Mine weren’t neither. Nobody was answering my call, but just listening to the man who knew I was about to say made me stop trying. Just listening to him, I could tell, this was hole, and even if I dug my way out of, it would be to a different reality. She’d never forgive me. She’d never trust me, ever. All my coming trips would be hell on Earth and the time in between would be even worse.
He went on talking and talking and talking, all those sentences I had thought up and hadn’t said yet. It just kept flowing. He stepped it up, changing the intonation, like a drowning man struggling desperately to stay afloat. People began getting off. He got up, still talking, scooped up his laptop in the other hand and headed for the exit. I could see him forgetting it behind. The bag he had put in the overhead compartment, I could see him forgetting it. I didn’t say anything. I just stay put. Gradually everyone walked out until the only one out there was an overweight religious woman with a million children, and me. I got up and opened the overhead compartment above me. As if nothing, I took out the duty-free bag like it had always been mine. Inside it were a receipt and a bottle of Guerlain Mystic. My wife goes crazy for that perfume. She is positively addicted. If I come back from a trip without a bottle of Mystic from the duty-free, she says I don’t love her anymore.