Wardine say her momma aint treat her right. Reginald he come round to my blacktop at my building where me and Delores Epps jump double dutch and he say, Clenette, Wardine be down at my crib cry say her momma aint treat her right, and I go on with Reginald to his building where he live at, and Wardine be sit deep far back in a closet in Reginald crib, and she be cry. Reginald gone lift Wardine out the closet and me with him crying and I be rub on the wet all over Wardine face and Reginald be so careful when he take off all her shirts she got on, tell Wardine to let me see. Wardine back all beat up and cut up. Big stripes of cut all up and down Wardine back, pink stripes and around the stripes the skin like the skin on folks lips be like. Sick down in my insides to look at it. Wardine be cry. Reginald say Wardine say her momma aint treat her right. Say her momma beat Wardine with a hanger. Say Wardine momma man Roy Tony be want to lie down with Wardine. Be give Wardine candy and 5s. Be stand in her way in Wardine face and he aint let her pa.s.s without he all the time touching her. Reginald say Wardine say Roy Tony at night when Wardine momma at work he come in to the mattresses where Wardine and William and Shantell and Roy the baby sleep at, and he stand there in the dark, high, and say quiet things at her, and breathe. Wardine momma say Wardine tempt Roy Tony into Sin. Wardine say she say Wardine try to take away Roy Tony into Evil and Sin with her young tight self. She beat Wardine back with hangers out the closet. My momma say Wardine momma not right in her head. My momma scared of Roy Tony. Wardine be cry. Reginald he down and beg for Wardine tell Reginald momma how Wardine momma treat Wardine. Reginald say he Love his Wardine. Say he Love but aint never before this time could understand why Wardine wont lie down with him like girls do their man. Say Wardine aint never let Reginald take off her shirts until tonight she come to Reginald crib in his building and be cry, she let Reginald take off her shirts to see how Wardine momma beat Wardine because Roy Tony. Reginald Love his Wardine. Wardine be like to die of scared. She say no to Reginald beg. She say, if she go to Reginald momma, then Reginald momma go to Wardine momma, then Wardine momma think Wardine be lie down with Reginald. Wardine say her momma say Wardine let a man lie down before she sixteen and she beat Wardine to death. Reginald say he aint no way going to let that happen to Wardine.

Roy Tony kill Dolores Epps brother Columbus Epps at the Brighton Projects four years gone. Roy Tony on Parole. Wardine say he show Wardine he got some thing on his ankle send radio signals to Parole that he still here in Brighton. Roy Tony cant be leave Brighton. Roy Tony brother be Wardine father. He gone. Reginald try to hush Wardine but he can not stop Wardine cry. Wardine look like crazy she so scared. She say she kill herself if me or Reginald tell our mommas. She say, Clenette, you my half Sister, I am beg that you do not tell you momma on my momma and Roy Tony. Reginald tell Wardine to hush herself and lie down quiet. He put Shedd Spread out the kitchen on Wardine cuts on her back. He run his finger with grease so careful down pink lines of her getting beat with a hanger. Wardine say she do not feel nothing in her back ever since spring. She lie stomach on Reginald floor and say she aint got no feeling in her skin of her back. When Reginald gone to get the water she asks me the truth, how bad is her back look when Reginald look at it. Is she still pretty, she cry.

I aint tell my momma on Wardine and Reginald and Wardine momma and Roy Tony. My momma scared of Roy Tony. My momma be the lady Roy Tony kill Columbus Epps over, four years gone, in the Brighton Projects, for Love.

But I know Reginald tell. Reginald say he gone die before Wardine momma beat Wardine again. He say he take his self up to Roy Tony and say him to not mess with Wardine or breathe by her mattress at night. He say he take his self on down to the playground at the Brighton Projects where Roy Tony do business and he go to Roy Tony man to man and he make Roy Tony make it all right.

But I think Roy Tony gone kill Reginald if Reginald go. I think Roy Tony gone kill Reginald, and then Wardine momma beat Wardine to death with a hanger. And then n.o.body know except me. And I am gone have a child.

In the eighth American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a cla.s.smate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk. The name was unlikely because if ever an eighth-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk. She was the kind of fatally pretty and nubile wraithlike figure who glides through the sweaty junior-high corridors of every nocturnal emitter's dreamscape. Hair that Green had heard described by an over-wrought teacher as 'flaxen'; a body which the fickle angel of p.u.b.erty - the same angel who didn't even seem to know Bruce Green's zip code - had visited, kissed, and already left, back in sixth; legs which not even orange Keds with purple-glitter-encrusted laces could make unserious. Shy, iridescent, coltish, pelvically anfractuous, amply busted, given to diffident movements of hand brushing flaxen hair from front of dear creamy forehead, movements which drove Bruce Green up a private tree. A vision in a sun-dress and silly shoes. Mildred L. Bonk.

And then but by tenth grade, in one of those queer when-did-that-happen metamorphoses, Mildred Bonk had become an imposing member of the frightening Winchester High School set that smoked full-strength Marlboros in the alley between Senior and Junior halls and that left school altogether at lunchtime, driving away in loud low-slung cars to drink beer and smoke dope, driving around with sound-systems of illegal wattage, using Visine and Clorets, etc. She was one of them. She chewed gum (or worse) in the cafeteria, her dear diffident face now a bored mask of Att.i.tude, her flaxen locks now teased and gelled into what looked for all the world like the consequence of a finger stuck into an electric socket. Bruce Green saved up for a low-slung old car and practiced Att.i.tude on the aunt who'd taken him in. He developed a will.

And, by the year of what would have been graduation, Bruce Green was way more bored, imposing, and frightening than even Mildred Bonk, and he and Mildred Bonk and tiny incontinent Harriet Bonk-Green lived just off the Allston Spur in a shiny housetrailer with another frightening couple and with Tommy Doocey, the infamous harelipped pot-and-sundries dealer who kept several large snakes in unclean uncovered aquaria, which smelled, which Tommy Doocey didn't notice because his upper lip completely covered his nostrils and all he could smell was lip. Mildred Bonk got high in the afternoon and watched serial-cartridges, and Bruce Green had a steady job at Leisure Time Ice, and for a while life was more or less one big party.

YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.

'Hal?'

'Hey Hal?'

'Yes Mario?'

'Are you asleep?'

'b.o.o.boo, we've been over this. I can't be asleep if we're talking.'

'That's what I thought.'

'Happy to rea.s.sure you.'

'Boy were you on today. Boy did you ever make that guy look sick. When he hit that one down the line and you got it and fell down and hit that drop-volley Pemulis said the guy looked like he was going to be sick all over the net, he said.'

'Boo, I kicked a kid's a.s.s is all. End of story. I don't think it's good to rehash it when I've kicked somebody's a.s.s. It's like a dignity thing. I think we should just let it sort of lie in state, quietly. Speaking of which.'

'Hey Hal?'

'Hey Hal?'

'It's late, Mario. It's sleepy-time. Close your eyes and think fuzzy thoughts.'

'That's what the Moms always says, too.'

'Always worked for me, Boo.'

'You think I think fuzzy thoughts all the time. You let me room with you because you feel sorry for me.'

'b.o.o.boo I'm not even going to dignify that. I'll regard it as like a warning sign. You always get petulant when you don't get enough sleep. And here we are seeing petulance already on the western horizon, right here.'

'When I asked if you were asleep I was going to ask if you felt like you believed in G.o.d, today, out there, when you were so on, making that guy look sick.'

'This again?'

'Really don't think midnight in a totally dark room with me so tired my hair hurts and drills in six short hours is the time and place to get into this, Mario.' don't think midnight in a totally dark room with me so tired my hair hurts and drills in six short hours is the time and place to get into this, Mario.'

'You ask me this once a week.'

'You never say, is why.'

'So tonight to shush you how about if I say I have administrative bones to pick with G.o.d, Boo. I'll say G.o.d seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. G.o.d looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.'

'You're talking about since Himself pa.s.sed away.'

'See? You never say.'

'I do too say. I just did.'

'I just didn't happen to say what you wanted to hear, b.o.o.boo, is all.'

'There's a difference.'

'I don't get how you couldn't feel like you believed, today, out there. It was so right there right there. You moved like you totally believed.'

'How do you feel inside, not?'

'Mario, you and I are mysterious to each other. We countenance each other from either side of some unbridgeable difference on this issue. Let's lie very quietly and ponder this.'

'Hal?'

'Hey Hal?'

'I'm going to propose that I tell you a joke, Boo, on the condition that afterward you shush and let me sleep.'

'Is it a good one?'

'Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic.'

'I give.'

'You get somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.'

'That's a good one!'

'Shush.'

'Hey Hal? What's an insomniac?'

'Somebody who rooms with you, kid, that's for sure.'

'Hey Hal?'

'How come the Moms never cried when Himself pa.s.sed away? I cried, and you, even C.T. cried. I saw him personally cry.'

'You listened to Tosca Tosca over and over and cried and said you were sad. We all were.' over and over and cried and said you were sad. We all were.'

'Hey Hal, did the Moms seem like she got happier after Himself pa.s.sed away, to you?'

'It seems like she got happier. She seems even taller. She stopped travelling everywhere all the time for this and that thing. The corporate-grammar thing. The library-protest thing.'

'Now she never goes anywhere, Boo. Now she's got the Headmaster's House and her office and the tunnel in between, and never leaves the grounds. She's a worse workaholic than she ever was. And more obsessive-compulsive. When's the last time you saw a dust-mote in that house?'

'Hey Hal?'

'Now she's just an agoraphobic agoraphobic workaholic and obsessive-compulsive. This strikes you as happification?' workaholic and obsessive-compulsive. This strikes you as happification?'

'Her eyes are better. They don't seem as sunk in. They look better. She laughs at C.T. way more than she laughed at Himself. She laughs from lower down inside. She laughs more. Her jokes she tells are better ones than yours, even, now, a lot of the time.'

'How come she never got sad?'

'She did get sad, b.o.o.boo. She just got sad in her way instead of yours and mine. She got sad, I'm pretty sure.'

'Hal?'

'You remember how the staff lowered the flag to half-mast out front by the portcullis here after it happened? Do you remember that? And it goes to half-mast every year at Convocation? Remember the flag, Boo?'

'Hey Hal?'

'Don't cry, b.o.o.boo. Remember the flag only halfway up the pole? b.o.o.boo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you listening? Because no s.h.i.t I really have to sleep here in a second. So listen - one way to lower the flag to half-mast is just to lower the flag. There's another way though. You can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me? You understand what I mean, Mario?'

'Hal?'

'She's plenty sad, I bet.'

At 2010h. on 1 April Y.D.A.U., the medical attache is still watching the unlabelled entertainment cartridge.

OCTOBER - YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT

For Orin Incandenza, #71, morning is the soul's night. The day's worst time, psychically. He cranks the condo's AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic darkness where you're dreading whatever you think of.

Hal Incandenza's brother Orin wakes up alone at 0730h. amid a damp scent of Ambush and on the other side's dented pillow a note with phone # and vital data in a loopy schoolgirlish hand. There's also Ambush on the note. His side of the bed is soaked.

Orin makes honey-toast, standing barefoot at the kitchen counter, wearing briefs and an old Academy sweatshirt with the arms cut off, squeezing honey from the head of a plastic bear. The floor's so cold it hurts his feet, but the double-pane window over the sink is hot to the touch: the beastly metro Phoenix October A.M. heat just outside.

Home with the team, no matter how high the AC or how thin the sheet, Orin wakes with his own impression sweated darkly into the bed beneath him, slowly drying all day to a white salty outline just slightly off from the week's other faint dried outlines, so his fetal-shaped fossilized image is fanned out across his side of the bed like a deck of cards, just overlapping, like an acid trail or timed exposure.

The heat just past the gla.s.s doors tightens his scalp. He takes breakfast out to a white iron table by the condo complex's central pool and tries to eat it there, in the heat, the coffee not steaming or cooling. He sits there in dumb animal pain. He has a mustache of sweat. A bright beach ball floats and b.u.mps against one side of the pool. The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of h.e.l.l. No one else out here. The complex is a ring with the pool and deck and Jacuzzi in the center. Heat shimmers off the deck like fumes from fuel. There's that mirage thing where the extreme heat makes the dry deck look wet with fuel. Orin can hear cartridge-viewers going from behind closed windows, that aerobics show every morning, and also someone playing an organ, and the older woman who won't ever smile back at him in the apartment next to his doing operatic scales, m.u.f.fled by drapes and sun-curtains and double panes. The Jacuzzi chugs and foams.

The note from last night's Subject is on violet bond once folded and with a circle of darker violet dead-center where the subject's perfume-spritzer had hit it. The only interesting thing about the script, but also depressing, is that every single circle - o's, d's, p's, the #s 6 and 8 - is darkened in, while the i's are dotted not with circles but with tiny little Valentine hearts, which are not darkened in. Orin reads the note while he eats toast that's mainly an excuse for the honey. He uses his smaller right arm to eat and drink. His oversized left arm and big left leg remain at rest at all times in the morning.

A breeze sends the beach ball skating all the way across the blue pool to the other side, and Orin watches its noiseless glide. The white iron tables have no umbrellas, and you can tell where the sun is without looking; you can feel right where it is on your body and project from there. The ball moves tentatively back out toward the middle of the pool and then stays there, not even bobbing. The same small breezes make the rotted palms along the condominium complex's stone walls rustle and click, and a couple of fronds detach and spiral down, hitting the deck with a slap. All the plants out here are malevolent, heavy and sharp. The parts of the palms above the fronds are tufted in sick stuff like coconut-hair. Roaches and other things live in the trees. Rats, maybe. Loathsome high-alt.i.tude critters of all kinds. All the plants either spiny or meaty. Cacti in queer tortured shapes. The tops of the palms like Rod Stewart's hair, from days gone by.

Orin returned with the team from the Chicago game two nights ago, redeye. He knows that he and the place-kicker are the only two starters who are not still in terrible pain, physically, from the beating.

The day before they left - so like five days ago - Orin was out by himself in the Jacuzzi by the pool late in the day, caring for the leg, sitting in the radiant heat and b.l.o.o.d.y late-day light with the leg in the Jacuzzi, absently squeezing the tennis ball he still absently squeezes out of habit. Watching the Jacuzzi funnel and bubble and foam around the leg. And out of nowhere a bird had all of a sudden fallen into the Jacuzzi. With a flat matter-of-fact plop plop. Out of nowhere. Out of the wide empty sky. Nothing overhung the Jacuzzi but sky. The bird seemed to have just had a coronary or something in flight and died and fallen out of the empty sky and landed dead in the Jacuzzi, right by the leg. He brought his sungla.s.ses down onto the bridge of his nose with a finger and looked at it. It was an undistinguished kind of bird. Not a predator. Like a wren, maybe. It seems like no way could it have been a good sign. The dead bird bobbed and barrel-rolled in the foam, sucked under one second and reappearing the next, creating an illusion of continued flight. Orin had inherited none of the Moms's phobias about disorder, hygiene. (Not crazy about bugs though - roaches.) But he'd just sat there squeezing the ball, looking at the bird, without a conscious thought in his head. By the next morning, waking up, curled and entombed, it seemed like it had to have been a bad sign, though.