【英文有声书】欲望都市sex and the city - 09（有文稿）

PERI: SIZE (EIGHT) MATTERS "It's like this," said Maeve. "As long as you're neurotic and crazy, he's great. But once he solves all your problems, he becomes the problem." "He gets incredibly mean," said one woman. The others nodded. "Once," said Jackie, "when I said I was a size eight, Peri said, 'There's no way you're a size eight. You're a size ten, at least. I know what a size eight looks like, and believe me, you're no size eight.'" "He was always telling me to lose fifteen pounds," said Sarah, "and when I went out with him, that was the thinnest I'd been in years." "I think when men tell women to lose weight, it's a diversion from their own lack of size in certain areas," one of the women added dryly. Maeve remembered a ski trip to Sun Valley. "Peri did everything right. He bought the tickets, he booked the condo. It was going to be great." But they started fighting in the limo to the airport—they wanted to sit on the same side. By the time they got on the plane, the stewardess had to separate them. ("By that time, we were arguing about who got to breathe more air," Maeve said.) They fought on the slopes. On the second day, Maeve began packing her bags. "He said, 'Ha ha ha, there's a blizzard outside, you can't leave,'" Maeve recalled. "I said, 'Ha ha ha, I'm going to take a bus.'" A month later, Maeve went back to her husband. Her situation was not unusual—many of the women ended up dumping Peri, only to go back to the men they had broken up with. But that didn't mean that Peri went away. "There were faxes, letters, and hundreds of phone calls," said Sapphire. "It was sort of awful. He does have a huge heart, and he's going to be a great guy someday." "I kept all his letters," Sarah said. "They were so touching. You could practically see the streaks of his tears on the pages." She left the room and returned seconds later holding a letter. She read aloud: " 'You don't owe me your love, but I hope you'll have the courage to step forward and embrace mine. I don't send you flowers because I don't want to share or demean your love with objects not of my creation.'" Sarah smiled. "WE'RE GETTING MARRIED" Post-Peri, the women claimed they had uniformly done well. Jackie said she was dating her personal trainer; Magda had published her first novel; Ramona was married and pregnant; Maeve had opened a cafe; Sapphire had rediscovered an old love; Sarah said she was happy to be pursuing a twentyseven- year-old boy-toy. As for Peri, he recently moved abroad, in search of fresh marriage prospects. One of the women had heard he got dumped by an English woman who had really wanted to marry a duke. "He always dates the wrong women," Sapphire said. Six months ago, Peri came back for a visit and took Sarah out to dinner. "He took my hand in his," she said, "and he was saying to his friend, 'She's the only woman I ever loved.' For old time's sake, I went back to his apartment for a drink, and he asked me to marry him so seriously, I couldn't believe it. I thought he was lying. So I decided to torture him. "He told me, T don't want you to see any other men, and I won't see any other women.' "I said, 'Okay,' thinking, How's that going to work? He lives in Europe and I live in New York. But the next morning, he called me up and said, 'You realize you're my girlfriend now.' "I said, 'Okay, Peri, that's cool.'" He went back to Europe, and, Sarah said, she forgot about the whole thing. One morning, she was in bed with her new boyfriend when the phone rang. It was Peri. While Sarah was talking to him, her boyfriend said, "Do you want some coffee?" Peri went nuts. "Who's there?" he said. "A friend," Sarah said. "At ten in the morning? You're sleeping with another guy? We're getting married and you're sleeping with another guy?" He hung up, but a week later he called back. "Are you ready?" he asked. "For what?" Sarah said. "We're getting married, aren't we? You're not still seeing someone, are you?" "Listen, Peri, I don't see a ring on my finger," Sarah said. "Why don't you send a messenger over to Harry Winston's to pick something up, and then we'll talk." Peri never called Harry Winston's, and he didn't call Sarah again for months. She said she sort of missed him. "I adore him," she said. "I feel compassion for him because he's totally fucked up." It was getting dark outside, but nobody wanted to leave. They all wanted to stay, transfixed by the idea of a man like Tom Peri, but not Tom Peri.