'Serious slithering. They took wire and bound our arms and legs.'

'At least your wire wasn't barbed.'

'I finally felt too cleansed to stay.'

'Meaning over-pure, I can I.D. totally.'

'It was too much love somehow to take.'

'I'm like feeling the Identification all over, this is -'

'Plus I was up to three bags a day, at the end.'

'And then our Divinely Chosen's Love Squads made us chop wood with our teeth when it got cold. As in like subzero wintertime.'

'Yours let you keep your teeth?'

'Only the ones for gnawing. See?'

'Sheesh.'

'Just the ones for gnawing.'

Remy Marathe sat veiled and blanket-lapped in the much crowded living room evening of this Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, the last demi-maison demi-maison on his portion of the list for this day. The hills of upper Enfield, they were on his portion of the list for this day. The hills of upper Enfield, they were de l'infere de l'infere of difficulty, but the of difficulty, but the demi-maison demi-maison itself had a ramp. A person with authority was conducting interviews to fill some vacancies of recent time in the place's Office, of which its locked door was visible from this sitting. Marathe and others were invited to sit in the living room with a cup of unpleasant coffee. Urged to smoke if he liked. Everyone else was smoking. The living room smelled like an ashtray, and its ceiling was yellow like the fingers of long smokers. Also the living room evening resembled an anthill which had been stirred with a stick; it was too full of persons, all of them restless and loud. There were itself had a ramp. A person with authority was conducting interviews to fill some vacancies of recent time in the place's Office, of which its locked door was visible from this sitting. Marathe and others were invited to sit in the living room with a cup of unpleasant coffee. Urged to smoke if he liked. Everyone else was smoking. The living room smelled like an ashtray, and its ceiling was yellow like the fingers of long smokers. Also the living room evening resembled an anthill which had been stirred with a stick; it was too full of persons, all of them restless and loud. There were demi-maison demi-maison patients viewing a cartridge of martial arts conflict, former patients and persons of the upper Enfield area cohabiting on the furniture, conversing. A damaged woman, also in a patients viewing a cartridge of martial arts conflict, former patients and persons of the upper Enfield area cohabiting on the furniture, conversing. A damaged woman, also in a fauteuil de rollent fauteuil de rollent like Marathe, slumped like Marathe, slumped inutile inutile next to the cartridge's viewer, while a male person of advanced pallor mimed the kicks and thrusts of martial arts at her motionless head, trying to force the woman to twitch or cry out. Also a man without hands and feet trying to negotiate the stairway. Other persons, presumably addicted, waiting in the room to seek admittance to the Recovery House. The room was loud and hot. Marathe could hear a person who will seek admittance vomiting in the shrubberies just outside the window. Marathe's chair was locked down next to a divan's arm and directly before a window. The window, one could wish it was open more than a crack, he felt. Upon the dull-colored carpet a tormented-appearing man scuttling like the crab while two hooligans in leather played a cruel game of jumping over him. Persons reading cartoon books and painting the nails of their extremities. A tall-haired woman brought her foot to her mouth to blow upon her toes. Another young girl seemed to remove her eye from her head and placed it in her mouth. No other in the room wore the veil of the Entertainment's performer's organization U.H.I.D. The smell of the U.S.A. cigarettes permeated his veil and made Marathe's eyes water, and he thought of vomiting also. Two additional windows were open, but the room lacked all air. next to the cartridge's viewer, while a male person of advanced pallor mimed the kicks and thrusts of martial arts at her motionless head, trying to force the woman to twitch or cry out. Also a man without hands and feet trying to negotiate the stairway. Other persons, presumably addicted, waiting in the room to seek admittance to the Recovery House. The room was loud and hot. Marathe could hear a person who will seek admittance vomiting in the shrubberies just outside the window. Marathe's chair was locked down next to a divan's arm and directly before a window. The window, one could wish it was open more than a crack, he felt. Upon the dull-colored carpet a tormented-appearing man scuttling like the crab while two hooligans in leather played a cruel game of jumping over him. Persons reading cartoon books and painting the nails of their extremities. A tall-haired woman brought her foot to her mouth to blow upon her toes. Another young girl seemed to remove her eye from her head and placed it in her mouth. No other in the room wore the veil of the Entertainment's performer's organization U.H.I.D. The smell of the U.S.A. cigarettes permeated his veil and made Marathe's eyes water, and he thought of vomiting also. Two additional windows were open, but the room lacked all air.

During the time of his sitting, several persons approached Marathe, but they would say to him only the whispers 'Pet the dogs' or 'Make sure and pet the dogs.' This idiomatic expression was not in Marathe's knowledge of U.S.A. idiom.

Also one person approached of a face whose skin seemed that it was rotting away from him in some way and asked him if he, Marathe, was court-ordered court-ordered.

Marathe was one of few persons not smoking. He noted that none of the room's persons appeared to regard the cheesecloth veil he wore over his face as unusual or curious or to be questioned. The old sportcoat he wore over a turtleneck sweater of Desjardin's made Marathe more formally dressed than other of the applicants for treatment. Two of the Ennet House demi-maison demi-maison current patients wore neckties, however. Marathe kept pretending to sniff; he did not know why. He sat up next to a divan of false velour at whose end beside him two women who had sought previous treatment of addiction in religious cults were meeting and speaking together of their unenjoyable existences when in cults. current patients wore neckties, however. Marathe kept pretending to sniff; he did not know why. He sat up next to a divan of false velour at whose end beside him two women who had sought previous treatment of addiction in religious cults were meeting and speaking together of their unenjoyable existences when in cults.

To whomever approached, Marathe carefully recited the introductory lines he and M. Fortier quickly had developed: 'Good night, I am addicted and deformed, seeking residential treatment for addiction, desperately.' Persons' responses to his introductory lines were difficult to interpret. One of the older two men in neckties who had approached, he had clapped a hand to his soft face's cheek and responded 'How extraordinarily nice for you,' in which Marathe could detect sarcasm. The two women of cult experience were inclined closely toward each other upon the divan. They touched each other's arms several times in a kind of excitement as they conversed. When they laughed in delight they seemed to chew at the air. One's laughter involved also a snorting noise. A clatter and two shrieks: these came from one end of the dining room, in the demi-maison demi-maison's floor plans a large kitchen. The sounds were then followed by a roiling cloud of steam, with repeated obscenities from unseen persons. A bald large black man in a white cotton undershirt's laughing became coughing that would not cease. The two patients in neckties and the girl whose eye could be removed spoke together intensively and also audibly at the end of one other divan.

'But consider this quality of portability with respect to, say, a car. Is a car portable? With respect to a car it's more as though I'm I'm portable.' portable.'

'They're portable when they're on one of them semis where they got new cars stacked on with prices in the windows like a good couple dozen on them semis that swing all to f.u.c.k all over I-93 and make you think the cars are going to start falling out all over the road when you're wanting to try and pa.s.s.'

The plump one who had been ironic toward Marathe, he was nodding: 'Or, say, too, with respect to a tow truck or wrecker, if you suffer a breakdown. One might be in a position to say that a deactivated car can be quote portable, but that with respect to a functional car it is I who am portable.'

The girl's nod caused the particular eye to wheel queasily in the socket of it. 'I'll buy that, Day.'

'If we're jot-and-t.i.ttling with all possible precision regarding portable, portable, that is.' that is.'

The other man continually rubbed at his shine of the shoes with a facial tissue, causing his necktie to touch the floor.

These conversers formed this triad on an unevenly sloped divan of leather-colored plastic across the room, which was now more airless yet from the roiling steam from the kitchen, infiltrating. Directly facing Marathe in a yellow chair against the wall by these conversers' divan most directly across the living room from Marathe was an addicted man waiting for seeking treatment by admission. This one, he appeared to have several cigarettes burning at one time. He held a metal ashtray in his lap and jiggled the boot of his crossed leg with vigor. For Marathe, it was not difficult to ignore the fact that the addicted man was glaring at him. He noted it, and did not understand because of what the man glared, but he was unconcerned. Marathe was prepared to die violently at any time, which rendered him free to choose among emotions. U.S.A.'s B.S.S.'s M. Steeply had verified that U.S.A.s did not comprehend this or appreciate it; it was foreign to them. The veil allowed Marathe the liberty of staring calmly back at the addicted man without the man's knowledge, which Marathe found he enjoyed. Marathe felt sick to his body, from the smoky room's smoke. Marathe had once, as a child, with legs, bent himself over and overturned a decaying log in the forests of the Lac de Deux Montaignes region of his four-limbed childhood, before Le Culte du Prochain Train. Le Culte du Prochain Train.304 The pallor of the things which had writhed and scuttled beneath the wet log was the pallor of this addicted man, who wore a square of the facial hair between lower lip and chin and had also a needle run through the flesh of the top of an ear, which the needle, it glistened and did not glisten rapidly in succession as it vibrated with the jiggle of the jiggling boot. Marathe gazed at him calmly through the veil while rehearsing his prepared lines within his head. The more idiomatic would be that the needle jiggled sympathetically with the jiggle of the boot, which was dull black and square-heeled, the motorcycle boot of persons who did not own motorcycles but wore the boots of those who did. The pallor of the things which had writhed and scuttled beneath the wet log was the pallor of this addicted man, who wore a square of the facial hair between lower lip and chin and had also a needle run through the flesh of the top of an ear, which the needle, it glistened and did not glisten rapidly in succession as it vibrated with the jiggle of the jiggling boot. Marathe gazed at him calmly through the veil while rehearsing his prepared lines within his head. The more idiomatic would be that the needle jiggled sympathetically with the jiggle of the boot, which was dull black and square-heeled, the motorcycle boot of persons who did not own motorcycles but wore the boots of those who did.

The addicted man rose slowly and carried the burning ashtray with him nearer to Marathe, trying to kneel. His Blue Jeans of Levi #501 were strangely torn in spots with tattered white strings which showed the pallor of the knees; the torn holes had the size and perimeter-damage of holes that Marathe recognized had been made by shotgun-blasts of the high gauge. Marathe was mentally memorizing every detail of all things, for both his reports. The addicted man kneeling before him, he leaned in closer, trying to remove something he believed was on his lip. Close in, the expression that through the veil had appeared as glaring corrected itself: the expression was more truly that the man's eyes had the vacant intensity of those who have violently died.

The man whispered: 'You real?' Marathe looked through the veil at his facial square. 'Are you real?' again the man whispered. All the time leaning more and more in, slowly.

'You're real I can tell ain't you,' the man whispered. Quickly he looked behind him at the uproaring room before leaning once more in. 'Listen then.'

Marathe kept his hands calmly in his lap, his machine pistol holstered securely to his right stump beneath the blanket. The whispering man's searching fingers were leaving small bits of filth on the lip.

''s these poor f.u.c.kers' - the man gestured slightly with indicating the room - 'most of them ain't real. So watch your six. Most of these f.u.c.kers are -: metal people.'

'I am Swiss," Marathe experimentally said. It was the second of his lines of introduction.

'Walking around, make you think they're alive.' The addicted man had the way with subtleness of looking all around himself which Marathe a.s.sociated with intelligence professionals. One of his eyes had an exploded vein within it. 'But that's just the layer,' he said. He leaned in so far Marathe could see pores through the veil. 'There's a micro-thin layer of skin. But underneath, it's metal. Heads full of parts. Under a organic layer that's micro-thin.' The eyes of men violently dead were also the eye of a fish in a vendor's crushed ice, studying nothing. The man's smell suggested livestock on a hot day, a goatish, even through the smoke of the room. Trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid was a material, M. Broullime had lectured to pa.s.s times in long surveillances, a chemical material in the sweat of grave mental illness. Marathe, he had no trouble timing his breath so his exhalation matched the addicted man's, who leaned more in.

'There's one way to tell,' he said. 'Get right up close. Like right up flush next to: you can hear a whir. Micro-faint. This whirring. It's the processors' gears. It's their flaw. Machines always whir. They're good. They can quiet down the whir.'

'I have no six.'

'But they can't - can not not - eliminate it.' - eliminate it.'

'I am Swiss, seeking residential treatment with desperation.'

'Not under no micro-thin tissue-layer they can't.' If the gaze were not vacant the gaze would be grim, frightened. Marathe distantly remembered the emotion fear.

'Did you hear what she said?' the ironic man on the divan laughed. 'Potable means drinkable. It's not even the same means drinkable. It's not even the same root root. Did you hear what she said?'

The man's breath, it smelled of trans-3-methyl acid as well. 'I'm clueing y'in,' he whispered. 'They're there to fool you. The real ones of us're getting fooled fooled. Nine-nine-plus per cent of the time.' The flesh of the knees through the holes in the Blue Jeans was the white of long death. 'But you, I could tell you were real.' He indicated the veil. 'No micro-thin layer. The metal ones - have faces.' The smoke of his cigarette in the ashtray rose in a motion of corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g. 'Which this is why' - feeling the lip - 'why the ones on the T or in the street - they won't let you right up close. Try it. They'll never let you right up close. It's programming. They know to look scared and - like - offended and back away and move to another seat. The real advanced ones, they'll give you change, even, to let 'em back off. Try it. Get right - up - like this - close.' Marathe sat calmly behind the veil, feeling the veil move with the man's breath, waiting patiently to inhale. The women with experiences in cults had smelled the odor of the man's trans-3 odor and relocated farther away upon the divan. The man's face smiled with one knowing side only of his mouth, acknowledging their movement away. He was so close that the nose of him touched the veil when Marathe finally inhaled. Marathe was prepared for death in all forms. The smells were trans-3-methyl-2 and of digested cheese and the under of an arm, from the facial skin. Marathe ignored impulses to impale the eyesockets with one two-finger motion. The man had his hand to his ear in a mime of to listen closely. His smile disclosed what might have once been teeth. 'Nothing,' he smiled. 'I knew. Not a sound.'

'The Swiss, we are a quiet people, and reserved. In addition, I am deformed.'

The man waved his cigarette with impatience. 'Listen up. This is why. You're how come I was here. I only thought it was the habit. They can fool fool you.' He scrubbed at the lip of his mouth. 'I'm here to tell you. Listen. You ain't here.' you.' He scrubbed at the lip of his mouth. 'I'm here to tell you. Listen. You ain't here.'

'I have emigrated from my native Swiss.'

Still whispering: 'You ain't here here. These f.u.c.kers are metal metal. Us - us that are real - there's not many - they're fooling fooling us. We're all in one room. The real ones. One room all the time. Everything's pro - jected. They can do it with machines. They pro - ject. To fool us. The pictures on the walls change so's we think we're going places. Here and there, this and that. That's just they change the pro - jections. It's all the same place all the time. They fool your mind with machines to think you're moving, eating, cooking up, doing this and that.' us. We're all in one room. The real ones. One room all the time. Everything's pro - jected. They can do it with machines. They pro - ject. To fool us. The pictures on the walls change so's we think we're going places. Here and there, this and that. That's just they change the pro - jections. It's all the same place all the time. They fool your mind with machines to think you're moving, eating, cooking up, doing this and that.'

'I have come desperately here.'

'The real world's one room. These so-called people, so-called' - with again the flourish - 'they're everybody you know. You've met 'em before, hunnerts times, with different faces. There's only 26 total. They play different characters, that you think you know. They wear different faces with different pictures they pro - ject on the wall. You get me?'

'This Recovery House was recommended highly.'

'You follow? Count. Coincidence? There's 26 here, counting the one without feet on the stairs. Coincidence? Chance? This here's every machine that's played everbody you ever met. Are you hearin' me? They fool us. They take the machines in the back room and they - like -'

The visible door of the locked Office opened and an addicted patient emerged with a person in authority holding a clipboard. The addicted patient limped and leaned far to a side, though was attractive in the blond stereotype of the U.S.A. image-culture.

'- change them change them. The thin organic layers. All the different people you know. So-called. They're the same machines same machines.'

'Physically challenged foreign person with unp.r.o.nounceable name!' the authority called with the clipboard.

'I am being indicated,' Marathe said, bending to release the clamps on his fauteuil fauteuil's wheels.

'- why I'm in this pro - jection, to clue you. So that now you know.' Marathe manipulated the fauteuil fauteuil to the right with its trusty left wheel. 'I must be excused to plead for treatment.' to the right with its trusty left wheel. 'I must be excused to plead for treatment.'

'Get right up close.'

'Good night,' over his left shoulder. The inutile inutile woman seemed to twitch slightly in her heavy woman seemed to twitch slightly in her heavy fauteuil fauteuil as he pa.s.sed. as he pa.s.sed.

'You only think you're goin' someplace!' the addicted man called, still one-half kneeling.

Marathe rolled up to the person in authority as slowly as possible, hunched deep into the sportcoat and pathetically tacking. With significance, the large and clipboarded woman seemed without faze at the veil of U.H.I.D. Marathe extended a large hand in greeting which he made tremble. 'Good night.'

The insane-smelling man on the carpet called out after: 'Make sure and pet the dogs!'

Joelle used to like to get really high and then clean. Now she was finding she just liked to clean. She dusted the top of the fiberboard dresser she and Nell Gunther shared. She dusted the oval top of the dresser's mirror's frame and cleaned off the mirror as best she could. She was using Kleenex and stale water from a gla.s.s by Kate Gompert's bed. She felt oddly averse to putting on socks and clogs and going down to the kitchen for real cleaning supplies. She could hear the noise of all the post-meeting nighttime residents and visitors and applicants down there. She could feel their voices in the floor. When the dental nightmare tore her upright awake her mouth was open to scream out, but the scream was Nell G. down in the living room, whose laugh always sounds like she's being eviscerated. Nell preempted Joelle's own scream. Then Joelle cleaned. Cleaning is maybe a form of meditation for addicts too new in recovery to sit still. The 5-Woman's scarred wood floor had so much grit all over she could sweep a pile of grit together with just an unappliqued b.u.mper sticker she'd won at B.Y.P. Then she could use damp Kleenex to get up most of the pile. She had only Kate G.'s little bedside lamp on, and she wasn't listening to any YYY tapes, out of consideration for Charlotte Treat, who was unwell and missed her Sat.u.r.day Night Lively Mtng. on Pat's OK and was now asleep, wearing a sleep mask but not her foam earplugs. Expandable foam earplugs were issued to every new Ennet resident, for reasons the Staff said would clarify for them real quick, but Joelle hated to wear them - they shut out exterior noise, but they made your head's pulse audible, and your breath sounded like someone in a s.p.a.ce suit - and Charlotte Treat, Kate Gompert, April Cortelyu, and the former Amy Johnson had all felt the same way. April said the foam plugs made her brain itch.

It had started with Orin Incandenza, the cleaning. When relations were strained, or she was seized with anxiety at the seriousness and possible impermanence of the thing in the Back Bay's co-op, the getting high and cleaning became an important exercise, like creative visualization, a preview of the discipline and order with which she could survive alone if it came to that. She would get high and visualize herself solo in a dazzlingly clean s.p.a.ce, every surface twinkling, every possession in place. She saw herself being able to pick, say, dropped popcorn up off the rug and ingest it with total confidence. An aura of steely independence surrounded her when she cleaned the co-op, even with the little whimpers and anxious moans that exited her writhing mouth when she cleaned high. The place had been provided nearly gratis by Jim, who said so little to Joelle on their first several meetings that Orin kept having to rea.s.sure her that it wasn't disapproval - Himself was missing the part of the human brain that allowed for being aware enough of other people to disapprove of them, Orin had said - or dislike. It was just how The Mad Stork was. Orin had referred to Jim as 'Himself' or 'The Mad Stork' - family nicknames, both of which gave Joelle the creeps even then.

It'd been Orin who introduced her to his father's films. The Work was then so obscure not even local students of serious film knew the name. The reason Jim kept forming his own distribution companies was to ensure distribution. He didn't become notorious until after Joelle'd met him. By then she was closer to Jim than Orin had ever been, part of which caused part of the strains that kept the brownstone co-op so terribly clean.

She'd barely thought consciously of any Incandenzas for four years before Don Gately, who for some reason kept bringing them bubbling up to mind. They were the second-saddest family Joelle'd ever seen. Orin felt Jim disliked him to the precise extent that Jim was even aware of him. Orin had spoken about his family at length, usually at night. On how no amount of punting success could erase the psychic stain of basic fatherly dislike, failure to be seen or acknowledged. Orin'd had no idea how ba.n.a.l and average his same-s.e.x-parent-issues were; he'd felt they were some hideous exceptional thing. Joelle'd known her mother didn't much like her from the first time her own personal Daddy'd told her he'd rather take Pokie to the pictures alone. Much of the stuff Orin said about his family was dull, gone stale from years of never daring to say it. He credited Joelle with some strange generosity for not screaming and fleeing the room when he revealed the ba.n.a.l stuff. Pokie Pokie had been Joelle's family nickname, though her mother'd never called her anything but Joelle. The Orin she knew first felt his mother was the family's pulse and center, a ray of light incarnate, with enough depth of love and open maternal concern to almost make up for a father who barely existed, parentally. Jim's internal life was to Orin a black hole, Orin said, his father's face any room's fifth wall. Joelle had struggled to stay awake and attentive, listening, letting Orin get the stale stuff out. Orin had no idea what his father thought or felt about anything. He thought Jim wore the opaque blank facial expression his mother in French sometimes jokingly called had been Joelle's family nickname, though her mother'd never called her anything but Joelle. The Orin she knew first felt his mother was the family's pulse and center, a ray of light incarnate, with enough depth of love and open maternal concern to almost make up for a father who barely existed, parentally. Jim's internal life was to Orin a black hole, Orin said, his father's face any room's fifth wall. Joelle had struggled to stay awake and attentive, listening, letting Orin get the stale stuff out. Orin had no idea what his father thought or felt about anything. He thought Jim wore the opaque blank facial expression his mother in French sometimes jokingly called Le Masque Le Masque. The man was so blankly and irretrievably hidden that Orin said he'd come to see him as like autistic, almost catatonic. Jim opened himself only to the mother. They all did, he said. She was there for them all, psychically. She was the family's light and pulse and the center that held tight. Joelle could yawn in bed without looking like she was yawning. The children's name for their mother was 'the Moms.' As if there were more than one of her. His younger brother was a hopeless r.e.t.a.r.d, Orin had said. Orin recalled the Moms used to tell him she loved him about a hundred times a day. It nearly made up for Himself's blank stare. Orin's basic childhood memory of Jim had been of an expressionless stare from a great height. His mother had been really tall, too, for a girl. He'd said he'd found it secretly odd that none of the brothers were taller. His r.e.t.a.r.ded brother was stunted to about the size of a fire hydrant, Orin reported. Joelle cleaned behind the filthy room's radiator as far as she could reach, being careful not to touch the radiator. Orin described his childhood's mother as his emotional sun. Joelle remembered her own personal Daddy's Uncle T.S. talking about how her own personal Daddy'd thought his own Momma 'Hung the G.o.d d.a.m.n Moon,' he'd said. The radiators on Ennet House's female side stayed on at all times, 24/7/365. At first Joelle had thought Mrs. Avril Incandenza's high-watt maternal love had maybe damaged Orin by bringing into sharper relief Jim's remote self-absorption, which would have looked, by comparison, like neglect or dislike. That it had maybe made Orin too emotionally dependent on his mother - why else would he have been so traumatized when a younger brother had suddenly appeared, specially challenged from birth and in need of even more maternal attention than Orin? Orin, late one night on the co-op's futon, recalled to Joelle his skulking in and dragging a wastebasket over and inverting it next to his infant brother's special crib, holding a heavy box of Quaker Oats high above his head, preparing to brain the needy infant. Joelle had gotten an A- in Developmental Psych. the semester before. And also dependent psychologically, Orin, it seemed, or even metaphysically - Orin said he'd grown up, first in a regular house in Weston and then at the Academy in Enfield, grown up dividing the human world into those who were open, readable, trustworthy, v. those so closed and hidden that you had no clue what they thought of you but could pretty d.a.m.n well imagine it couldn't be anything all that marvelous or else why hide it? Orin had recounted that he'd started to see himself getting closed and blank and hidden like that, as a tennis player, toward the end of his junior career, despite all the Moms's frantic attempts to keep him from hiddenness. Joelle had thought of B.U.'s Nickerson Field's 30,000 voices' openly roared endors.e.m.e.nt, the sound rising with the punt to a kind of amniotic pulse of pure positive noise. Versus tennis's staid and reserved applause. It had all been so easy to figure and see, then, listening, loving Orin and feeling for him, poor little rich and prodigious boy - all this was before she came to know Jim and the Work.

Joelle scrubbed at the discolored square of fingerprints around the light-switch until the wet Kleenex disintegrated into greebles.

Never trust a man on the subject of his own parents. As tall and ba.s.so as a man might be on the outside, he nevertheless sees his parents from the perspective of a tiny child, still, and will always. And the unhappier his childhood was, the more arrested will be his perspective on it. She's learned this through sheer experience.

Greebles had been her own mother's word for the little bits of sleepy goo you got in your eyes' corners. Her own personal Daddy called them 'eyeboogers' and used to get them out for her with the twisted corner of his hankie. had been her own mother's word for the little bits of sleepy goo you got in your eyes' corners. Her own personal Daddy called them 'eyeboogers' and used to get them out for her with the twisted corner of his hankie.

Though it's not as if you could trust parents on the subject of their memory of their children either.

The cheap gla.s.s shade over the ceiling's light was black with interior grime and dead bugs. Some of the bugs looked like they might have been from long-extinct species. The loose grime alone filled half an empty Carefree box. The more stubborn crud would take a scouring pad and ammonia. Joelle put the shade aside for until she'd shot down to the kitchen to toss out different boxes of crud and wet Kleenex and grab some serious Ch.o.r.e-type supplies from under the sink.

Orin had said she was the third-neatnikest person he knew after his Moms and a former player he'd played with with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a dual diagnosis with which the U.H.I.D. membership was rife. But at the time the import had missed her. At that time it had never occurred to her that Orin's pull toward her could have had anything either pro or con to do with his mother. Her biggest worry was that Orin was pulled only by what she looked like, which her personal Daddy'd warned her the sweetest syrup draws the nastiest flies, so to watch out.

Orin hadn't been anything like her own personal Daddy. When Orin was out of the room it had never seemed like a relief. When she was home, her own Daddy never seemed to be out of the room for more than a few seconds. Her mother said she hardly even tried to talk to him when his Pokie was home. He kind of trailed her around from room to room, kind of pathetically, talking batons and low-pH chemistry. It was like when she exhaled he inhaled and vice versa. He was all through the house. He was real present at all times. His presence penetrated a room and outlasted him there. Orin's absence, whether for cla.s.s or practice, emptied the co-op out. The place seemed vacuumed and buffed sterile before the cleaning even started, when he went. She didn't feel lonely in the place without him, but she did feel alone, what alone was going to feel like, and she, no one's fool, 305 305 was erecting fortifications real early into it. was erecting fortifications real early into it.

It was Orin, of course, who'd introduced them. He'd had this stubborn idea that Himself would want to use her. In the Work. She was too pretty for somebody not to want to arrange, capture. Better Himself than some weak-chinned academic. Joelle'd protested the whole idea. She had a brainy girl's discomfort about her own beauty and its effect on folks, a caution intensified by the repeated warnings of her personal Daddy. Even more to the immediate point, her filmic interests lay behind the lens. She'd do the capturing thank you very much. She wanted to make things, not appear in them. She had a student filmmaker's vague disdain for actors. Worst, Orin's idea's real project was developmentally obvious: he thought he could somehow get to his father through her. That he pictured himself having weighty, steeple-fingered conversations with the man, Joelle's appearance and performance the subjects. A three-way bond. It made her real uneasy. She theorized that Orin unconsciously wished her to mediate between himself and 'Himself,' just as it sounded like his mother had. She was uneasy about the excited way Orin predicted that his father wouldn't be able to 'resist using' her. She was extra uneasy about how Orin referred to his father as 'Himself.' It seemed painfully blatant, developmental-arrest-wise. Plus she felt - only a little less than she made it sound, on the futon at night, protesting - she'd felt uneasy at the prospect of any sort of connection with the man who had hurt Orin so, a man so monstrously tall and cold and remotely hidden. Joelle heard a howl and a crash from the kitchen, followed by McDade's tubercular laugh. Twice Charlotte Treat sat up in sleep, glistening with fever, and said in a flat dead voice something that sounded for all the world like 'Trances in which she did not breathe,' and then fell back, out. Joelle was trying to pin down a queer rancid-cinnamon smell that came from the back of a closet stuffed with luggage. It was especially hard to clean when you weren't supposed to be allowed to touch any other resident's stuff.

She might have known from the Work. The man's Work was amateurish, she'd seen, when Orin had had his brother - the unr.e.t.a.r.ded one - lend them some of The Mad Stork's Read-Only copies. Was amateurish amateurish the right word? More like the work of a brilliant optician and technician who was an amateur at any kind of real communication. Technically gorgeous, the Work, with lighting and angles planned out to the frame. But oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic the right word? More like the work of a brilliant optician and technician who was an amateur at any kind of real communication. Technically gorgeous, the Work, with lighting and angles planned out to the frame. But oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic towardness towardness - no narrative movement toward a real story; no emotional movement toward an audience. Like conversing with a prisoner through that plastic screen using phones, the uppercla.s.sman Molly Notkin had said of Incandenza's early oeuvre. Joelle thought them more like a very smart person conversing with himself. She thought of the significance of the moniker 'Himself.' Cold. - no narrative movement toward a real story; no emotional movement toward an audience. Like conversing with a prisoner through that plastic screen using phones, the uppercla.s.sman Molly Notkin had said of Incandenza's early oeuvre. Joelle thought them more like a very smart person conversing with himself. She thought of the significance of the moniker 'Himself.' Cold. Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and h.e.l.l Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and h.e.l.l - mordant, sophisticated, campy, hip, cynical, technically mind-bending; but cold, amateurish, hidden: no risk of empathy with the Job-like protagonist, whom she felt like the audience was induced to regard like somebody sitting atop a dunk-tank. The lampoons of 'inverted' genres: archly funny and sometimes insightful but with something provisional about them, like the finger-exercises of someone promising who refused to really sit down and play something to test that promise. Even as an undergrad Joelle'd been convinced that parodists were no better than camp-followers in ironic masks, satires usually the work of people with nothing new themselves to say. - mordant, sophisticated, campy, hip, cynical, technically mind-bending; but cold, amateurish, hidden: no risk of empathy with the Job-like protagonist, whom she felt like the audience was induced to regard like somebody sitting atop a dunk-tank. The lampoons of 'inverted' genres: archly funny and sometimes insightful but with something provisional about them, like the finger-exercises of someone promising who refused to really sit down and play something to test that promise. Even as an undergrad Joelle'd been convinced that parodists were no better than camp-followers in ironic masks, satires usually the work of people with nothing new themselves to say. 306 306 ' 'The Medusa v. the Odalisque' - cold, allusive, inbent, hostile: the only feeling for the audience one of contempt, the meta-audience in the film's theater presented as objects long before they turn to blind stone.

But there had been flashes of something else. Even in the early oeuvre, before Himself made the leap to narratively anticonfluential but unironic melodrama she helped prolong the arc of, where he dropped the technical fireworks and tried to make characters move, however inconclusively, and showed courage, abandoned everything he did well and willingly took the risk of appearing amateurish (which he had). But even in the early Work - flashes of something. Very hidden and quick. Almost furtive. She noticed them only when alone, watching, without Orin and his rheostat's dimmer, the living room's lights up high like she liked them, liked to see herself and everything else in the room with the viewer - Orin liked to sit in the dark and enter what he watched, his jaw slackening, a child raised on multi-channel cable TV. But Joelle began - on repeated viewing whose original purpose was to study how the man had blocked out scenes, for an Advanced Storyboard course she went the extra click in - she began to see little flashes of something. The M v. O. M v. O.'s three quick cuts to the sides of the gorgeous combatants' faces, twisted past recognition with some kind of torment. Each cut to a flash of pained face had followed the crash of a petrified spectator toppling over in her chair. Three split-seconds, no more, of glimpses of facial pain. And not pain at wounds - they never touched each other, whirling with mirrors and blades; the defenses of both were impenetrable. More like as if what their beauty was doing to those drawn to watch it ate them alive, up there on stage, the flashes seemed to suggest. But just three flashes, each almost subliminally quick. Accidents? But not one shot or cut in the whole queer cold film was accidental - the thing was clearly s-boarded frame by frame. Must have taken hundreds of hours. Astounding technical a.n.a.lity. Joelle kept trying to Pause the cartridge on the flashes of facial torment, but these were the early days of InterLace cartridges, and the Pause still distorted the screen just enough to keep her from seeing what she wanted to study. Plus she got the creepy feeling the man had upped the film-speed in these few-frame human flashes, to thwart just such study. It was like he couldn't help putting human flashes in, but he wanted to get them in as quickly and unstudyably as possible, as if they compromised him somehow.

Orin Incandenza had been only the second boy ever to approach her in a male-female way. 307 307 The first had been shiny-chinned and half blind on Everclear punch, an All-Kentucky lineman for the Shiny Prize Biting Shoats team back in Shiny Prize KY, at a cookout to which the Boosters had invited the Pep and Baton girls; and the lineman had looked like a little shy boy as he confessed, by way of apologizing for almost splashing her when he threw up, that she was just too G.o.dd.a.m.n-all petrifyingly pretty to approach any other way but liquored up past all horror. The lineman'd confessed the whole team's paralyzing horror of the prettiness of varsity Pep's top twirler, Joelle. Orin confessed to his private name for her. The memory of that H.S. afternoon remained real strong. She could smell the mesquite smoke and the blue pines and the YardGuard spray, hear the squeals of the stock they butchered and cleaned in symbolic prep for the opener against the N. Paducah Technical H.S. Rivermen. She could still see the swooning line-man, wet-lipped and confessing, keeping himself upright against an immature blue pine until the blue pine's trunk finally gave with a snap and crash. The first had been shiny-chinned and half blind on Everclear punch, an All-Kentucky lineman for the Shiny Prize Biting Shoats team back in Shiny Prize KY, at a cookout to which the Boosters had invited the Pep and Baton girls; and the lineman had looked like a little shy boy as he confessed, by way of apologizing for almost splashing her when he threw up, that she was just too G.o.dd.a.m.n-all petrifyingly pretty to approach any other way but liquored up past all horror. The lineman'd confessed the whole team's paralyzing horror of the prettiness of varsity Pep's top twirler, Joelle. Orin confessed to his private name for her. The memory of that H.S. afternoon remained real strong. She could smell the mesquite smoke and the blue pines and the YardGuard spray, hear the squeals of the stock they butchered and cleaned in symbolic prep for the opener against the N. Paducah Technical H.S. Rivermen. She could still see the swooning line-man, wet-lipped and confessing, keeping himself upright against an immature blue pine until the blue pine's trunk finally gave with a snap and crash.

Until that cookout and confession she'd somehow thought it was her own personal Daddy, somehow, discouraging dates and male-female approaches. The whole thing had been queer, and lonely, until she'd been approached by Orin, who made no secret of the fact that he had b.a.l.l.s of unrejectable steel where horrifyingly pretty girls were concerned.

But it wasn't even the subjective identification she felt, watching, she felt, somehow, for the flashes and seeming non-seqs that betrayed something more than cold hip technical abstraction. Like e.g. the 240-second motionless low-angle shot of Gianlorenzo Bernini's 'Ecstasy of St. Teresa,' which - yes - ground Pre-Nuptial... Pre-Nuptial...'s dramatic movement to an annoying halt and added nothing that a 15- or 30-second still shot wouldn't have added just as well; but on the fifth or sixth reviewing Joelle started to see the four-minute motionless shot as important for what was absent: the whole film was from the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman's POV, 308 308 and the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman - or rather his head - was on-screen every moment, even when split-screened against the t.i.tanic celestial marathon seven-card-stud-with-Tarot-cards game - his rolling eyes and temples' dents and rosary of upper-lip sweat was imposed nonstop on the screen and viewer... except for the four narrative minutes the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman stood in the Vittorio's Bernini room, and the climactic statue filled the screen and pressed against all four edges. The statue, the sensuous presence of the thing, let the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman escape himself, his tiresome ubiquitous involuted head, she saw, was the thing. The four-minute still shot maybe wasn't just a heavy-art gesture or audience-hostile herring. Freedom from one's own head, one's inescapable P.O.V. - Joelle started to see here, oblique to the point of being hidden, an emotional thrust, since the mediated transcendence of self was just what the apparently decadent statue of the o.r.g.a.s.mic nun claimed for itself as subject. Here then, after studious (and admittedly kind of boring) review, was an unironic, almost and the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman - or rather his head - was on-screen every moment, even when split-screened against the t.i.tanic celestial marathon seven-card-stud-with-Tarot-cards game - his rolling eyes and temples' dents and rosary of upper-lip sweat was imposed nonstop on the screen and viewer... except for the four narrative minutes the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman stood in the Vittorio's Bernini room, and the climactic statue filled the screen and pressed against all four edges. The statue, the sensuous presence of the thing, let the alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman escape himself, his tiresome ubiquitous involuted head, she saw, was the thing. The four-minute still shot maybe wasn't just a heavy-art gesture or audience-hostile herring. Freedom from one's own head, one's inescapable P.O.V. - Joelle started to see here, oblique to the point of being hidden, an emotional thrust, since the mediated transcendence of self was just what the apparently decadent statue of the o.r.g.a.s.mic nun claimed for itself as subject. Here then, after studious (and admittedly kind of boring) review, was an unironic, almost moral moral thesis to the campy abstract mordant cartridge: the film's climactic statue's stasis presented the theoretical subject as the emotional effect - self-forgetting as the Grail - and - in a covert gesture almost moralistic, Joelle thought as she glanced at the room-lit screen, very high, mouth writhing as she cleaned - presented the self-forgetting of alcohol as inferior to that of religion/art (since the consumption of bourbon made the salesman's head progressively swell, horrendously, until by the film's end its dimensions exceeded the frame, and he had a nasty and humiliating time squeezing it through the front door of the Vittorio). thesis to the campy abstract mordant cartridge: the film's climactic statue's stasis presented the theoretical subject as the emotional effect - self-forgetting as the Grail - and - in a covert gesture almost moralistic, Joelle thought as she glanced at the room-lit screen, very high, mouth writhing as she cleaned - presented the self-forgetting of alcohol as inferior to that of religion/art (since the consumption of bourbon made the salesman's head progressively swell, horrendously, until by the film's end its dimensions exceeded the frame, and he had a nasty and humiliating time squeezing it through the front door of the Vittorio).

It didn't much matter once she'd met the whole family anyhow, though. The Work and reviewings were just an inkling - usually felt on the small manageable bits of c.o.ke that helped her see deeper, harder, and so maybe not even objectively accessible in the Work itself - a lower-belly intuition that the punter's hurt take on his father was limited and arrested and maybe unreal.

With Joelle makeupless and stone-sober and hair up in a sloppy knot, the introductory supper with Orin and Himself at Legal Seafood up in Brookline 309 309 betrayed nothing much at all, save that the director seemed more than able to resist 'using' Joelle in any capacity - she saw the tall man slump and cringe when Orin told him the P.G.O.A.T. majored in F&C betrayed nothing much at all, save that the director seemed more than able to resist 'using' Joelle in any capacity - she saw the tall man slump and cringe when Orin told him the P.G.O.A.T. majored in F&C 310 310 - Jim'd told her later she'd seemed too conventionally, commercially pretty to consider using in any of that period's Work, part of whose theoretical project was to militate against received U.S. commercial-prettiness-conventions - and that Orin was so tense in 'Himself' 's presence that there wasn't room for any other real emotion at the table, Orin gradually beginning to fill up silences with more and faster nonstop blather until both Joelle and Jim were embarra.s.sed at the fact that the punter hadn't touched his steamed grouper or given anyone else s.p.a.ce for a word of reply. - Jim'd told her later she'd seemed too conventionally, commercially pretty to consider using in any of that period's Work, part of whose theoretical project was to militate against received U.S. commercial-prettiness-conventions - and that Orin was so tense in 'Himself' 's presence that there wasn't room for any other real emotion at the table, Orin gradually beginning to fill up silences with more and faster nonstop blather until both Joelle and Jim were embarra.s.sed at the fact that the punter hadn't touched his steamed grouper or given anyone else s.p.a.ce for a word of reply.

Jim later told Joelle that he simply didn't know how to speak with either of his undamaged sons without their mother's presence and mediation. Orin could not be made to shut up, and Hal was so completely shut down in Jim's presence that the silences were excruciating. Jim said he suspected he and Mario were so easy with each other only because the boy had been too damaged and arrested even to speak to until he was six, so that both he and Jim had got a chance to become comfortable in mutual silence, though Mario did have an interest in lenses and film that had nothing to do with fathers or needs to please, so that the interest was something truly to share, the two of them; and even when Mario was allowed to work crew on some of Jim's later Work it was without any of the sort of pressures to interact or bond via film that there'd been with Orin and Hal and tennis, at which Jim (Orin informed her) had been a late-blooming junior but a top collegian.

Jim referred to the Work's various films as 'entertainments.' He did this ironically about half the time.

In the cab (that Jim had hailed for them), on the way back home from Legal Seafood, Orin had beaten his fine forehead against the plastic part.i.tion and wept that he couldn't seem to communicate with Himself without his mother's presence and mediation. It wasn't clear how the Moms mediated or facilitated communication between different family-members, he said. But she did. He didn't have one f.u.c.king clue how Himself felt about his abandoning a decade's tennis for punting, Orin wept. Or about Orin's being truly great at it, at something, finally. Was he proud, or jealously threatened, or judgmental that Orin had quit tennis, or what?

The 5-Woman's room's mattresses were too skinny for their frames, and the rims of the frames between the slats were appallingly clotted with dust, with female hair entwined and involved in the dust, so that it took one Kleenex just to wet the stuff down, several dry ones to wipe the muck out. Charlotte Treat had been too sick to shower for days, and her frame and slats were hard to be near.

At Joelle's first interface with the whole sad family unit - Thanksgiving, Headmaster's House, E.T.A., straight up Comm. Ave. in Enfield - Orin's Moms Mrs. Incandenza ('Please do call me Avril, Joelle') had been gracious and warm and attentive without obtruding, and worked un.o.btrusively hard to put everyone at ease and to facilitate communication, and to make Joelle feel like a welcomed and esteemed part of the family gathering - and something about the woman made every follicle on Joelle's body pucker and distend. It wasn't that Avril Incandenza was one of the tallest women Joelle had ever seen, and definitely the tallest pretty older woman with immaculate posture (Dr. Incandenza slumped something awful) she'd ever met. It wasn't that her syntax was so artless and fluid and imposing. Nor the near-sterile cleanliness of the home's downstairs (the bathroom's toilet seemed not only scrubbed but waxed to a high shine). And it wasn't that Avril's graciousness was in any conventional way fake. It took a long time for Joelle even to start to put a finger on what gave her the howling fantods about Orin's mother. The dinner itself - no turkey; some politico-familial in-joke about no turkey on Thanksgiving - was delicious without being grandiose. They didn't even sit down to eat until 2300h. Avril drank champagne out of a little fluted gla.s.s whose level somehow never went down. Dr. Incandenza (no invitation to call him Jim, she noticed) drank at a tri-faceted tumbler of something that made the air above it shimmer slightly. Avril put everyone at ease. Orin did credible impressions of famous figures. He and little Hal made dry fun of Avril's Canadian p.r.o.nunciation of certain diphthongs. Avril and Dr. Incandenza took turns cutting up Mario's salmon. Joelle had a weird half-vision of Avril hiking her knife up hilt-first and plunging it into Joelle's breast. Hal Incandenza and two other lopsidedly muscular boys from the tennis school ate like refugees and were regarded with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt. Avril dabbed her mouth in a patrician way after every bite. Joelle wore girl-clothes, her dress's neckline very high. Hal and Orin looked vaguely alike. Avril directed every fourth comment to Joelle, to include her. Orin's brother Mario was stunted and complexly deformed. There was a spotless doggie-dish under the table, but no dog, and no mention was ever made of a dog. Joelle noticed Avril also directed every fourth comment to Orin, Hal, and Mario, like a cycle of even inclusion. There was New York white and Albertan champagne. Dr. Incandenza drank his drink instead of wine, and got up several times to freshen his drink in the kitchen. A ma.s.sive hanging garden behind Avril's and Hal's captains' chairs cut complex shadows into the UV light that made the table's candles' glow a weird bright blue. The director was so tall he seemed to rise forever, when he rose with his tumbler. Joelle had the queerest indefensible feeling that Avril wished her ill; she kept feeling different areas of hair stand up. Everybody Please-and-Thank-You'd in a way that was sheer Yankee WASP. After his second trip to the kitchen, Dr. Incandenza molded his twice-baked potatoes into an intricate futuristic cityscape and suddenly started to discourse animatedly on the 1946 breakup of Hollywood's monolithic Studio system and the subsequent rise of the Method actors Brando, Dean, Clift et al., arguing for a causal connection. His voice was mid-range and mild and devoid of accent. Orin's Moms had to be over two meters tall, way taller than Joelle's own personal Daddy. Joelle could somehow tell Avril was the sort of female who'd been ungainly as a girl and then blossomed and but who'd only become really beautiful later in life, like thirty-five. She'd decided Dr. Incandenza looked like an ecologically poisoned crane, she told him later. Mrs. Incandenza put everyone at ease. Joelle imagined her with a conductor's baton. She never did tell Jim that Orin called him The Mad or Sad Stork. The whole Thanksgiving table inclined very subtly toward Avril, very slightly and subtly, like heliotropes. Joelle found herself doing it too, the inclining. Dr. Incandenza kept shading his eyes from the UV plant-light in a gesture that resembled a salute. Avril referred to her plants as her Green Babies. At some point out of nowhere, little Hal Incandenza, maybe ten, announced that the basic unit of luminous intensity is the Candela, which he defined for no one in particular as the luminous intensity of 1/600,000 of a square meter of a cavity at the freezing-temperature of platinum. All the table's males wore coats and ties. The larger of Hal's two tennis partners pa.s.sed out dental stimulators, and no one made fun of him. Mario's grin seemed both obscene and sincere. Hal, whom Joelle wasn't crazy about, kept asking wasn't anybody going to ask him the freezing-temperature of platinum. Joelle and Dr. Incandenza found themselves in a small conversation about Bazin, a film-theorist Himself detested, making a tormented face at the name. Joelle intrigued the optical scientist and director by explaining Bazin's disparagement of self-conscious directorial expression as historically connected to the neo-Thomist Realism of the 'Personalistes,' an aesthetic school of great influence over French Catholic intellectuals circa 19301940 - many of Bazin's teachers had been eminent Personalistes. Personalistes. Avril encouraged Joelle to describe rural Kentucky. Orin did a long impression of late pop-astronomer Carl Sagan expressing televisual awe at the cosmos' scale. 'Billions and billions,' he said. One of the tennis friends burped just awfully, and no one reacted to the sound in any way. Orin said ' Avril encouraged Joelle to describe rural Kentucky. Orin did a long impression of late pop-astronomer Carl Sagan expressing televisual awe at the cosmos' scale. 'Billions and billions,' he said. One of the tennis friends burped just awfully, and no one reacted to the sound in any way. Orin said 'Billions and and billions billions and and billions billions' in the voice of Sagan. Avril and Hal had a brief good-natured argument about whether the term circa circa could modify an interval or only a specific year. Then Hal asked for several examples of something called Haplology. Joelle kept fighting urges to slap the sleek little show-offy kid upside the head so hard his bow-tie would spin. 'The universe:' - Orin continued long after the wit had worn thin - 'cold, immense, incredibly universal.' The subjects of tennis, baton-twirling, and punting never came up: organized sports were never once mentioned. Joelle noticed that n.o.body seemed to look directly at Dr. Incandenza except her. A curious flabby white mammarial dome covered part of the Academy's grounds outside the dining room's window. Mario plunged his special fork into Dr. Incandenza's potato-cityscape, to general applause and certain grating puns on the term could modify an interval or only a specific year. Then Hal asked for several examples of something called Haplology. Joelle kept fighting urges to slap the sleek little show-offy kid upside the head so hard his bow-tie would spin. 'The universe:' - Orin continued long after the wit had worn thin - 'cold, immense, incredibly universal.' The subjects of tennis, baton-twirling, and punting never came up: organized sports were never once mentioned. Joelle noticed that n.o.body seemed to look directly at Dr. Incandenza except her. A curious flabby white mammarial dome covered part of the Academy's grounds outside the dining room's window. Mario plunged his special fork into Dr. Incandenza's potato-cityscape, to general applause and certain grating puns on the term deconstruction deconstruction from the insufferable Hal kid. Everyone's teeth were dazzling in the candlelight and UV. Hal wiped Mario's snout, which seemed to run continuously. Avril invited Joelle by all means to make a Thanksgiving call home to her family in rural Kentucky if she wished. Orin said the Moms was herself originally from rural Quebec. Joelle was on her seventh gla.s.s of wine. Orin's fingering his half-Windsor kept looking more and more like a signal to somebody. Avril urged Dr. Incandenza to find a way to include Joelle in a production, since she was both a film student and a now a heartily welcome honorary addition to the family. Mario, reaching for the salad, fell out of his chair, and was helped up by one of the tennis players amid much hilarity. Mario's deformities seemed wide-ranging and hard to name. Joelle decided he looked like a cross between a puppet and one of the big-headed carnivores from Spielberg's old special-effects orgies about reptiles. Hal and Avril hashed out whether from the insufferable Hal kid. Everyone's teeth were dazzling in the candlelight and UV. Hal wiped Mario's snout, which seemed to run continuously. Avril invited Joelle by all means to make a Thanksgiving call home to her family in rural Kentucky if she wished. Orin said the Moms was herself originally from rural Quebec. Joelle was on her seventh gla.s.s of wine. Orin's fingering his half-Windsor kept looking more and more like a signal to somebody. Avril urged Dr. Incandenza to find a way to include Joelle in a production, since she was both a film student and a now a heartily welcome honorary addition to the family. Mario, reaching for the salad, fell out of his chair, and was helped up by one of the tennis players amid much hilarity. Mario's deformities seemed wide-ranging and hard to name. Joelle decided he looked like a cross between a puppet and one of the big-headed carnivores from Spielberg's old special-effects orgies about reptiles. Hal and Avril hashed out whether misspoke misspoke was a bona fide word. Dr. Incandenza's tall narrow head kept inclining toward his plate and then slowly rising back up in a way that was either meditative or tipsy. Deformed Mario's broad smile was so constant you could have hung things from the corners of it. In a fake Southern-belle accent that was clearly no jab at Joelle, more like a Scarlett O'Hara accent, Avril said she did declare that Albertan champagne always gave her 'the vapors.' Joelle noticed that pretty much everybody at the table was smiling, broadly and constantly, eyes shiny in the plants' odd light. She was doing it herself, too, she noticed; her cheek muscles were starting to ache. Hal's larger friend kept pausing to use his dental stimulator. n.o.body else was using their dental stimulator, but everyone held one politely, as if getting ready to use it. Hal and the two friends made odd spasmic one-handed squeezing motions, periodically. No one seemed to notice. Not once in Orin's presence did anyone mention the word was a bona fide word. Dr. Incandenza's tall narrow head kept inclining toward his plate and then slowly rising back up in a way that was either meditative or tipsy. Deformed Mario's broad smile was so constant you could have hung things from the corners of it. In a fake Southern-belle accent that was clearly no jab at Joelle, more like a Scarlett O'Hara accent, Avril said she did declare that Albertan champagne always gave her 'the vapors.' Joelle noticed that pretty much everybody at the table was smiling, broadly and constantly, eyes shiny in the plants' odd light. She was doing it herself, too, she noticed; her cheek muscles were starting to ache. Hal's larger friend kept pausing to use his dental stimulator. n.o.body else was using their dental stimulator, but everyone held one politely, as if getting ready to use it. Hal and the two friends made odd spasmic one-handed squeezing motions, periodically. No one seemed to notice. Not once in Orin's presence did anyone mention the word tennis tennis. He had been up half the previous night vomiting with anxiety. Now he challenged Hal to name the freezing-point of platinum. Joelle couldn't for the life of her remember either of the names of poor old Spielberg's old computer-enhanced celluloid dinosaur things, though her own Daddy'd personally taken her to each one. At some point Orin's father got up to go freshen his drink and never returned.

Just before dessert - which was on fire - Orin's Moms had asked whether they could perhaps all join hands secularly for a moment and simply be grateful for all being together. She made a special point of asking Joelle to include her hands in the hand-holding. Joelle held Orin's hand and Hal's smaller friend's hand, which was so callused up it felt like some sort of rind. Dessert was Cherries Jubilee with gourmet New Brunswick ice cream. Dr. Incandenza's absence from the table went unmentioned, almost unnoticed, it seemed. Both Hal and his nonstimulating friend pleaded for Kahlua, and Mario flapped pathetically at the tabletop in imitation. Avril made a show of gazing at Orin in mock-horror as he produced a cigar and clipper. There was also a blancmange. The coffee was decaf with chickory. When Joelle looked over again, Orin had put his cigar away without lighting it.

The dinner ended in a kind of explosion of goodwill.

Joelle'd felt half-crazed. She could detect nothing fake about the lady's grace and cheer toward her, the goodwill. And at the same time felt sure in her guts' pit that the woman could have sat there and cut out Joelle's pancreas and thymus and minced them and prepared sweetbreads and eaten them chilled and patted her mouth without batting an eye. And unremarked by all who leaned her way.

On the way back home, in a cab whose company's phone-number Hal had summoned from memory, Orin hung his leg over Joelle's crossed legs and said that if anybody could have been counted on to see that the Stork needed to use Joelle somehow, it was the Moms. He asked Joelle twice how she'd liked