'Poor sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d going around cutting up people's pets, cut up the wrong people's pets. This is the way I heard it.'

Gately wants to tell Ferocious Francis how he's discovered how no one second of even unnarcotized post-trauma-infection-pain is unendurable. That he can Abide if he must. He wants to share his experience with his Crocodile sponsor. And plus, now that somebody he trusts himself to need is here, Gately wants to weep about the pain and tell how bad the pain of it is, how he doesn't think he can stand it one more second.

'You saw yourself as in charge. Thought you'd step in. Protect your fellowman from his consequences. Which poor sick green Ennet House f.u.c.k was it?'

Gately struggles to try and get his knee up so he can see to write 'LENZ. WHITE WIG. ALWAYS NORTH. ALWAYS ON PHONE.' Again it looks cuneiform though, illegible. Ferocious Francis blows out a nostril and replaces the little tube. The tank in his lap makes no sound. It has a little valve but no dial or needles.

'You stepped in against six armed Hawaiians, I hear. Marshall Plan. Captain Courageous. G.o.d's personal Shane.' F.F. likes to send air through his nose's tubes in a mirthless burst, a kind of anti-laugh. His nose is large and cuc.u.mber-shaped and wide-pored, and pretty much its whole circulatory system is visible. 'Glenny Kubitz calls me and describes the thing blow by b.l.o.w.j.o.b. Says I should see the other guys. Says about breaking a Hawaiian's nose, shoving the bits up into the brain. The old chop-and-stiff-arm he says. Big Don G.'s a Satanically tough motherf.u.c.k: this was his a.s.sessment. Said the way he heard it you could fight like you was born in a barfight. I tell Glenny I say I'm sure you'll be proud to hear him say it.'

Gately was trying with maddening sinistral care to write out 'HURT? DEAD ANY? FINIST? WHO HAT IN HALL?,' more like drawing than writing, when without warning one of the day-shift Trauma M.D.s sweeps in, radiating brisk health and painless cheer. Gately remembers dealing with this one M.D. some days ago in a kind of gray post-surgical fog. This M.D. is Indian or Pakistani and is glossily dark but with a sort of weirdly cla.s.sically white-type face you could easily imagine profiling on a coin, plus teeth you could read by the gleam of. Gately hates him.

'So I am here with you again in this room!' The M.D. sings, kind of, when he talks. The name in gold piping on his white coat has a D D and a and a K K and a s.h.i.tload of vowels. Gately almost had to reach up and swat this M.D. after surgery to keep him from hooking up a Demerol drip. That was between let's say four and eight days ago. It's probably But for the Grace that his Crocodilian sponsor Ferocious Francis G.'s sitting here watching blandly when the Pakistani M.D. sweeps in this time. and a s.h.i.tload of vowels. Gately almost had to reach up and swat this M.D. after surgery to keep him from hooking up a Demerol drip. That was between let's say four and eight days ago. It's probably But for the Grace that his Crocodilian sponsor Ferocious Francis G.'s sitting here watching blandly when the Pakistani M.D. sweeps in this time.

Plus they all have this flourishy M.D. way of sweeping Gately's chart up off their hip and holding it up to read it. The Pakistani purses his lips and puffs them out absently and sucks off his pen a little.

'Grade-two toxemia. Synovial inflammation. The pain of the trauma is very much worse today, yes?' the M.D. says to the chart. He looks up, the teeth emerge. 'Synovial inflammation: nasty nasty. The pain of synovial inflammation is compared in the medical literature to renal calculus and ec-topic labor.' Partly it's the darkness of the cla.s.sic face around them that makes the teeth seem so high-watt. The smile widens steadily without seeming to run out of new teeth to expose. 'And so you are now ready to let us provide the level of a.n.a.lgesia the trauma warrants instead of Toradol, simple headache ibuprofen, which these medications are boys doing a large man's duty here, yes? There has been reconsidering in light of the level? Yes?'

Gately is inscribing an enormous vowel in the notebook with incredible care.

'I make you aware of synthetic anipyretic a.n.a.lgesics which are no higher than Category C-III 354 354 for dependence.' Gately imagines the M.D. smiling incandescently as he wields a shepherd's crook. The guy has that odd clipped singsong way of talking of skinny guys in loincloths on mountains in films. Gately superimposes a big skull and crossbones over the glossy face, mentally. He holds up a palsied page-high A and brandishes it at the M.D. and then brings the notebook back down and swiftly up again, spells it out, figuring Ferocious Francis will step in and set this ad-man for the Disease straight once and for all, so Gately'll never have to face this kind of Pakistani temptation again with maybe n.o.body supportive here next time. C-III his a.s.s. f.u.c.king for dependence.' Gately imagines the M.D. smiling incandescently as he wields a shepherd's crook. The guy has that odd clipped singsong way of talking of skinny guys in loincloths on mountains in films. Gately superimposes a big skull and crossbones over the glossy face, mentally. He holds up a palsied page-high A and brandishes it at the M.D. and then brings the notebook back down and swiftly up again, spells it out, figuring Ferocious Francis will step in and set this ad-man for the Disease straight once and for all, so Gately'll never have to face this kind of Pakistani temptation again with maybe n.o.body supportive here next time. C-III his a.s.s. f.u.c.king Talwin Talwin's C-III, too.

'Oramorph SR for an instance. Very safe, very much relief. Fast relief.'

This is just morphine sulfate with a fancy corporate name, Gately knows. This raghead doesn't know who he's dealing with, or what he's.

'Now I must tell tell, I would make the personal first choice of t.i.trated hydromorphone hydrochloride, in this case -'

Christ, this is Dilaudid. Blues. Fackelmann's Mount Doom. Kite's steep-angled decline, as well. Death on a Ritz. The Blue Bayou. Gene Fackelmann's killer, by and large. And also Gately pictures good old Nooch, tall skinny Vinnie Nucci, from the beach at Salem, who favored Dilaudid and spent over a year without ever taking the belt off his wing, dropping through Osco skylights at night on a rope with the belt all tight and ready just over his elbow already, Nucci never eating and getting skinnier and skinnier until he seemed to be just two cheekbones raised to a great silent height, even the whites of his eyes finally turning the blue of the bayou; and Fackelmann's eliminated map after the insane scam on Sorkin and a disastrous two nights of Dilaudid, when Sorkin'd - '- though I say yes, this in truth is a C-II medication, and I wish to respect all wishes and concerns,' the M.D. half-sings, inclined at the waist now by Gately's railings, looking closely at the shoulder's dressing but not seeming at all disposed to even touch it, his hands behind his back. His a.s.s is more or less right in Ferocious Francis's face, who's just sitting there. The M.D. doesn't even seem to be aware 34-year-sober Ferocious Francis is there. And Francis isn't making a peep.

It also occurs to Gately that esoteric esoteric is another ghostword he's got no rights to throw around, mentally. is another ghostword he's got no rights to throw around, mentally.

'For I am Moslem, and abstain also, by religious law, from all abusive compounds as well,' the M.D. says. 'Yet if I have suffered trauma, or the dentist of my teeth proposes to perform a painful process, I submit as a Moslem to the imperative of my pain and will accept relief, knowing no established religion's G.o.d wills needless suffering for His children.'

Gately has made two shaky smaller A's together on the next sheet and is stabbing emphatically at the sheet with his Bic. He wishes if the M.D. wouldn't shut up he'd at least move, so Gately could shoot a desperate Please-Jump-In-Here look at Ferocious Francis. The drug-question has nothing to do with established G.o.ds.

The M.D.'s bobbing a little as he leans, his face coming in and then receding. 'This is a Grade-II trauma we are looking at in this room. Allow me to explain that the discomfort of right now will only intensify as the synovial nerves begin to reanimate. The laws of trauma dictate that the pain will intensify as healing begins to commence. I am a professional at my job, sir, as well as a Moslem. Hydrocodone bitartrate 355 355 - C-III. Levorphanol tartrate - C-III. Levorphanol tartrate 356 356 - C-III. Oxymorphone hydrochloride - C-III. Oxymorphone hydrochloride 357 357 - admittedly, yes, C-II, but more than indicated in this degree of needless suffering.' - admittedly, yes, C-II, but more than indicated in this degree of needless suffering.'

Gately can hear Ferocious Francis blowing his nose again behind the M.D. Gately's mouth floods with spittle at the memory of the sick-sweet antiseptic taste of hydrochloride that rises to the tongue with an injection of Demerol, the taste Kite and the lesbian burglars and even Equus ('I'll Stick Anything in Any Part of My Body') Reese all gagged at but that poor old Nooch and Gene Fackelmann and Gately himself had loved, came to love like a mother's warm hand. Gately's eyes wobble and his tongue protrudes from a shiny mouth-corner as he draws a crude syringe and arm and belt and then tries to draw a skull-and-bones over the whole shaky ensemble, but the skull looks more like a plain old smiley-face. He holds it out to the foreigner anyway. The dextral pain's so bad he wants to throw up, throat-tube or no.

The M.D. studies the palsied drawing, nodding the exact way Gately used to nod at Alfonso Parias-Carbo the totally ununderstandable Cuban. 'Oxycodone-nalaxone compound, 358 358 with a short half-life but only a C-III grading of abuse.' There's no way the guy could be like intentionally making his voice this wheedly-sounding; it's got to be Gately's own Disease. The Spider. Gately envisions his brain struggling in a silk coc.o.o.n. He keeps summoning to mind the little detox-story Ferocious Francis tells from the Commitment podium, how they gave him Librium with a short half-life but only a C-III grading of abuse.' There's no way the guy could be like intentionally making his voice this wheedly-sounding; it's got to be Gately's own Disease. The Spider. Gately envisions his brain struggling in a silk coc.o.o.n. He keeps summoning to mind the little detox-story Ferocious Francis tells from the Commitment podium, how they gave him Librium 359 359 to help with the discomfort of Withdrawal, and how Francis says he just threw the Librium hard over his left shoulder, for luck, and has had very good luck ever since. to help with the discomfort of Withdrawal, and how Francis says he just threw the Librium hard over his left shoulder, for luck, and has had very good luck ever since.

'Likewise as well the time-tested pentazocine lactate, which I can offer with a.s.surances as a Moslem trauma-professional standing here in this room in person with you at your bed's side.'

Pentazocine lactate is Talwin, Gately's #2 trusted standard when he was Out There, which 120 mg. on an empty gut was like floating in oil the exact same temperature as your body, just like Percocet 360 360 except without the maddening back-of-the-eyeball itch that always wrecked a Percocet high for him. except without the maddening back-of-the-eyeball itch that always wrecked a Percocet high for him.

'Surrender your courageous fear of dependence and let us do our profession, young sir,' the Pakistani sums up, standing right up next to the bed, the left side, his professional lab-coat hiding F.F., hands behind his back, the dull glint of the metal corner of Gately's chart just visible between his legs, immaculate of posture, smiling cheerily down, the whites of his eyes as unG.o.dly white as his teeth. The memory of Talwin makes parts of his body Gately didn't know could drool drool. He knows what's coming next, Gately does. And if the Pakistani goes ahead and offers Demerol again Gately won't resist. And who the f.u.c.k'll be able to blame him, after all. Why should he have to resist? He'd received a bona fide Grade-Whatever dextral synovial trauma. Shot with a professionally modified .44 Item. He's post-trauma, in terrible pain, and everyone heard the guy say it: it was going to get worse, the pain. This was a trauma-pro in a white coat here making rea.s.surances of legitimate f.u.c.king use. Gehaney heard him; what the f.u.c.k did the Flaggers want from him? This wasn't hardly like slipping over to Unit #7 with a syringe and a bottle of Visine. This was a stop-term measure, a short-gap-type measure, the probable intervention of a compa.s.sionate unjudging G.o.d. A quick Rx-squirt of Demerol - probably at the outside two, three days of a Demerol drip, maybe even one where they'd hook the drip to a rubber bulb he could hold and self-administer the Demerol only As Needed. Maybe it was the Disease itself telling him to be scared a medically necessary squirt would pull all his old triggers again, put him back in the cage. Gately pictures himself trying to shunt through a magnetic-contact burglar alarm with a hand and a hook. But surely if Ferocious Francis thought a medically advised short-term squirt suspect, at all, the old reptilian b.a.s.t.a.r.d would say say something, do his f.u.c.king job as a Crocodile and sponsor, instead of just sitting there playing with his nostril's little noninvasive tube. something, do his f.u.c.king job as a Crocodile and sponsor, instead of just sitting there playing with his nostril's little noninvasive tube.

'Look kid, I'm gonna screw and let you settle this bulls.h.i.t and come back up later,' comes Francis's voice, subdued and neutral, signifying nothing, and then the rasp of the chair's legs and the system of grunts that always accompanies F.F.'s getting up from a chair. His white crew cut rises like a slow moon over the Pakistani's shoulder, which the M.D.'s only sign of acknowledgment of Francis is to sort of tuck his chin down into his shoulder like a violinist, addressing Gately's sponsor for the first time: 'Then perhaps you would please, Mr. Gately Senior, if you please help us help your concerned and brave boy here but a boy I believe whose cavalier att.i.tude underestimates the level of coming discomfort which is sadly unnecessary altogether if he will let us help him, sir,' the Pakistani sings over his shoulder to Ferocious Francis, as if they were the room's only adults. He's a.s.suming Ferocious Francis is Gately's organic Dad.

Gately knows a Crocodile never bothers to correct anybody's misimpression. He's halfway to the door, moving with maddening slow care like always, as if walking on ice, twisted and seeming to limp off both legs and heartbreakingly a.s.sless in the baggy seat-shiny wide-waled old man's corduroys he always wears, the back of his red neck complexly creased as he moves off away, lifting one hand in a gesture of acknowledgment and dismissal of the M.D.'s request: 'Not my business to say one way or the other. Kid's gonna do what he decides he needs to do for himself. He's the one that's feeling it. He's the only one can decide.' He either pauses or slows down even further at the open door, looking back at Gately but not meeting his wide eyes. 'You keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up, kid, and I'll bring some of the son of a b.i.t.c.hes by to look in again later.' He slips in 'Might want to Ask For Some Help, deciding.' The last of this comes from the white hall as the Pakistani's glossy head comes back in close with now a tight strained-patience smile, and Gately can hear him inhaling to get ready to say that of course in Grade-II traumas of this severe type the treatment of preferred indication is the admittedly C-II and highly abusable but unsurpa.s.sed for effectiveness and tightly controlled administration of one 50-mg. tab in a diluting saline drip q. 34 hours of mep- Gately's good left hand skins a knuckle shooting out between the bars of the bedside crib-railing and plunging under the M.D.'s lab-coat and fastening onto the guy's b.a.l.l.s and bearing down. The Pakistani pharmacologist screams like a woman. It isn't rage or the will to harm so much as just no other ideas for keeping the b.a.s.t.a.r.d from offering something Gately knows that he's powerless at this moment to refuse. The sudden exertion sends a blue-green sheet of pain over Gately that makes his eyes roll up as he bears down on the b.a.l.l.s, but not enough to crush. The Pakistani curtsies deeply and bends forward, crumpling around Gately's hand, showing all 112 teeth as he screams higher and higher until he hits a jagged high note like a big opera lady in a Viking helmet so shattering it makes the crib-railings and windowgla.s.s shiver and woke Don Gately up with a start, his left arm through the railing and twisted with the force of his attempt to sit up so that the pain now made him hit almost the same high note as the dream's foreign M.D. The sky outside the window was gorgeous, Dilaudid-colored; the room was full of serious A.M. light; no sleet on the window. The ceiling throbbed a little but did not breathe. The one visitor-chair was back over by the wall. He looked down. Either the stenographer's notebook and pen had got knocked off his bed or the dream had made up that part, too. The next bed was still empty and made up tight. It came to him all of a sudden why they called them hospital corners. But the railing Joelle van D. had folded down to sit on the bunk in the f.u.c.king Erdedy kid's sweats was still folded down, and the other railing was still up. So there was some like evidence of the one part, that she'd been really there, showing him the pictures. Gately brought his skinned hand gingerly back inside the railing and felt to make sure there really was a big invasive tube going into his mouth, and there was. He could roll his eyes way up and see his heart monitor going silently nuts. Sweat was coming off every part of him, and for the first time in the Trauma Wing he felt like he needed to take a s.h.i.t, and he had no idea what arrangements there were for taking a s.h.i.t but suspected they weren't going to be appetizing at all. Second. Second. He tried to Abide. No single second was past enduring. The intercom was giving triple dings. There really were sounds of other rooms' TPs, and of a meal cart being rolled down the hall, and the metally smell of food for the edible patients. He couldn't see anything like a hat-shadow in the hall, but it could have been all the sunlight.

The dream's vividness had been either fever or Disease, but either way it had f.u.c.king seriously rattled his cage. He heard the singsong voice promising about increasing discomfort. His shoulder beat like a big heart, and the pain was sickeninger than ever. No single second was past standing. Memories of good old Demerol rose up, clamoring to be Entertained. The thing in Boston AA is they try to teach you to accept occasional cravings, the sudden thoughts of the Substance; they tell you that sudden Substance-cravings will rise unbidden in a true addict's mind like bubbles in a toddler's bath. It's a lifelong Disease: you can't keep the thoughts from popping in there. The thing they try to teach you is just to Let Them Go, the thoughts. Let them come as they will, but do not Entertain Entertain them. No need to invite a Substance-thought or -memory in, offer it a tonic and your favorite chair, and chat with it about old times. The thing about Demerol wasn't just the womb-warm buzz of a serious narcotic. It was more like the, what, the aesthetics of the buzz. Gately'd always found Demerol with a slight Talwin kicker such a smooth and orderly buzz. A somehow deliciously them. No need to invite a Substance-thought or -memory in, offer it a tonic and your favorite chair, and chat with it about old times. The thing about Demerol wasn't just the womb-warm buzz of a serious narcotic. It was more like the, what, the aesthetics of the buzz. Gately'd always found Demerol with a slight Talwin kicker such a smooth and orderly buzz. A somehow deliciously symmetrical symmetrical buzz: the mind floats easy in the exact center of a brain that floats cushioned in a warm skull that itself sits perfectly centered on a cushion of soft air some neckless distance above the shoulders, and inside all is a somnolent hum. Chest rises and falls on its own, far away. The easy squeak of your head's blood is like bedsprings in the friendly distance. The sun itself seems to be smiling. And when you nod off, you sleep like a man of wax, and awaken in the same last position you remember falling asleep in. buzz: the mind floats easy in the exact center of a brain that floats cushioned in a warm skull that itself sits perfectly centered on a cushion of soft air some neckless distance above the shoulders, and inside all is a somnolent hum. Chest rises and falls on its own, far away. The easy squeak of your head's blood is like bedsprings in the friendly distance. The sun itself seems to be smiling. And when you nod off, you sleep like a man of wax, and awaken in the same last position you remember falling asleep in.

And pain of all sorts becomes a theory, a news-item in the distant colder climes way below the warm air you hum on, and what you feel is mostly grat.i.tude at your abstract distance from anything that doesn't sit inside concentric circles and love what's happening.

Gately takes advantage of the fact that he's already facing ceilingward to seriously Ask For Help with the obsession. He thinks hard about anything else at all. Heading out w/ old Gary Carty in the pre-dawn reek of low tide off Beverly to bring up lobster traps. The M.P. and the flies. His mother sleeping slack-mouthed on a chintz divan. Cleaning the very grossest corner of the Shattuck Shelter. The billow of the veiled girl's veil. The traps' little cages of cross-hatched bars, the lobsters' eyes' stalks always poking through the squares so the eyes looked out at open sea. Or the b.u.mper stickers on the M.P.'s old Ford - SEEEEE YAAAAAAA!! and DON'T TAILGATE ME OR I'LL FLICK A BOOGER ON YOUR WINDSHIELD! and MIA: FORGOTTEN and I HAVEN'T HAD s.e.x IN SO LONG I FORGET WHO GETS TIED UP! The fish asking about what's water. The sharp-nosed round-cheeked dead-eyed nurse with a weird Germanish accent that would sell Gately little sampler bottles of Sanofi-Winthrop Demerol syrup, 80 mg./bottle, vilely banana-flavored, then would lie back slack and dead-eyed while Gately X'd her, barely breathing, in an airless Ipswich apartment whose weird brown windowshades filled the place with light the color of weak tea. Named Egede or Egette, she eventually started telling Gately she couldn't come close to coming unless he burned her with a cigarette, which marked the first time Gately seriously tried to quit smoking.

Now a black outside-linebacker of a St. E.'s nurse rumbles in and checks his drips and writes on his chart and points the artillery of her t.i.ts down at him to ask how he's doing, and calls him 'Baby,' which n.o.body minds from enormous black nurses. Gately points at his lower abdomen in the area of his colon and tries to make a broad explosive gesture with just one arm, slightly less mortified than if it had been a human-size white nurse, at least.

Gately happened onto Demerol at age twenty-three when intra-ocular itching finally forced him to abandon Percocets and explore new vistas. Demerol was more expensive mg. for mg. than most synthetic narcs, but it was also easier to get, being the treatment of medical choice for mind-bending post-operative pain. Gately can't for the life of him remember who or just where in Salem he was first introduced to what the boys on the North Sh.o.r.e called Pebbles and Bams-Bams, 50 and 100 mg. Demerol tablets, respectively very tiny and tiny, chalky white scored discs with on one side and Sanofi-Winthrop Co.'s very-soon-beloved trademark, a kind of on one side and Sanofi-Winthrop Co.'s very-soon-beloved trademark, a kind of on the other, that rakish on the other, that rakish just puncturing the square envelope of itchy-eyed North-Sh.o.r.e life. And remembering even the just puncturing the square envelope of itchy-eyed North-Sh.o.r.e life. And remembering even the feels like Entertaining the obsession. He knows it was not long after Nooch's funeral, because he'd been alone and crewless at whatever moment whoever handed him two 50 mg. tablets way too tiny for his big-fingered hands, in lieu of whatever else it was he'd wanted, laughing when Gately said What the f.u.c.k and They look like Bufferin for ants or some s.h.i.t, saying: Trust Me. feels like Entertaining the obsession. He knows it was not long after Nooch's funeral, because he'd been alone and crewless at whatever moment whoever handed him two 50 mg. tablets way too tiny for his big-fingered hands, in lieu of whatever else it was he'd wanted, laughing when Gately said What the f.u.c.k and They look like Bufferin for ants or some s.h.i.t, saying: Trust Me.

It must have been his twenty-third summer Out There, because he remembers being shirtless and driving down 93 when he ran out of everything else and pulled off into the JFK Library lot to take them, so small and tasteless he had to check his open mouth in the rearview to make sure he'd gotten them down. And he remembers not wearing a shirt because he'd gotten to study his big bare hairless chest for a long time. And from that somnolent P.M P.M. in the JFK lot on he'd been a faithful attendant at the G.o.ddess Demerol's temple, right to the very finish.

Gately remembers crewing - for good bits of both the Percocet and Demerol eras - with two other North Sh.o.r.e narcotics addicts, who Gately'd grown up with one and had broke digits for Whitey Sorkin the migrainous bookie with the other. They weren't burglars, either of them, these guys: Fackelmann and Kite. Fackelmann had a background in creative-type checks, plus access to equipment for manufacturing I.D., and Kite's background was he'd been a computer-wienie at Salem State before he got the Shoe for hacking the phone bills of certain guys deep in trouble over 900 s.e.x-lines into the S.S. Administration's WATS account, and they became naturals at crewing together, F. and K., and had their own unambitious but elegant scam going that Gately was ever only marginally in on. What Fackelmann and Kite'd do, they'd rig up an ident.i.ty and credit record sufficient to rent them a luxury furnished apt., then they'd rent a lot of upscale-type appliances from like Rent-A-Center or Rent 2 Own down in Boston, then they'd sell the luxury appliances and furnishings off to one of a couple dependable fences, then they'd bring in their own air mattresses and sleeping bags and canvas chairs and little legit-bought TP and viewer and speakers and camp out in the empty luxury apartment, getting very high on the rented goods' net proceeds, until they got their second Overdue Notice on the rent; then they'd rig up another ident.i.ty and move on and do it all over. Gately took his turn being the one to bathe and shave and answer a luxury-apt.-rental ad in borrowed Yuppiewear and meet the property management people and sweep them off their Banfis with his I.D. and credit rating, and forge some name on the lease; and he usually crashed and got high in the apts. with Fackelmann and Kite, though he, Gately, had had his own digit-breaking and then later burglary career, and his own fences, and tended more and more to cop his own scrips and his own Percocets and then later Demerol.

Lying there, working on Abiding and not-Entertaining, Gately remembers how good old doomed Gene Fackelmann - that for a narcotics addict had had a truly raging libido - used to like to bring different girls home to whatever apt. they were scamming at the time, and how Fax'd open the door and look around in pretend-astonishment at the empty and carpetless luxury apt. and shout 'We been f.u.c.kin robbed!'

For Fackelmann and Kite, the rap on Gately was that he was a great and (for a narcotics addict, which places limits on rational trusting) stand-up guy, and a ferociously good friend and crewmate, but they just didn't for their lives see why Gately chose to be a narcotics man, why these were his Substances of his choice, because he was a great and cheerful stand-up jolly-type guy off the nod, but when he was Pebbled or narculated in any way he'd become this totally taciturn withdrawn dead-like person, they always said, like a totally different Gately, sitting for hours real low in his canvas chair, practically lying in this chair whose canvas bulged and legs bowed out, speaking barely at all, and then only the necessariest word or two, and then without ever seeming to open his mouth. He made whoever he got high with feel lonely. He got real, like, interior. Pamela Hoffman-Jeep's term was 'Other-Directed.' And it was worse when he shot anything up. You'd have to almost pry pry his chin off his chest. Kite used to say it was like Gately shot cement instead of narcotics. his chin off his chest. Kite used to say it was like Gately shot cement instead of narcotics.

McDade and Diehl come in around 1100h. from visiting Doony Glynn down somewheres in the Gastroenterology Dept. and try to give Gately's left hand archaic old unhip high fives as a goof and say the Bowel guys've got Glynn on a megadrip of a Levsin 361 361 -codeine diverticulitis compound, and the Doon seemed to have undergone a kind of spiritual experience vis-a-vis this compound, and was giving them ebubblient high fives and saying the Bowel M.D.s were saying that there was a chance the condition might be inoperable and chronic and that D.G.'d have to be on the compound for life, with a rubber bulb for Self-Administration, and the formerly fetal Doon was sitting up in a lotus position and seemed to be a very happy camper indeed. Gately makes pathetic sounds around his oral tube as McDade and Diehl start to interrupt each other apologizing for how it's looking like they might not be able to stand up and legally depose for Gately like they'd be ready to do in a f.u.c.king -codeine diverticulitis compound, and the Doon seemed to have undergone a kind of spiritual experience vis-a-vis this compound, and was giving them ebubblient high fives and saying the Bowel M.D.s were saying that there was a chance the condition might be inoperable and chronic and that D.G.'d have to be on the compound for life, with a rubber bulb for Self-Administration, and the formerly fetal Doon was sitting up in a lotus position and seemed to be a very happy camper indeed. Gately makes pathetic sounds around his oral tube as McDade and Diehl start to interrupt each other apologizing for how it's looking like they might not be able to stand up and legally depose for Gately like they'd be ready to do in a f.u.c.king hatbeat hatbeat if it weren't for various legal issues they're still under the clouds of that their P.D. and P.O. respectively say that walking voluntarily into Norfolk District Court in Enfield would be t.i.ttymount to like judicio-penal suicide, they're told. if it weren't for various legal issues they're still under the clouds of that their P.D. and P.O. respectively say that walking voluntarily into Norfolk District Court in Enfield would be t.i.ttymount to like judicio-penal suicide, they're told.

Diehl looks at McDade and then says there's also disparaging news about the .44 Item, that by everybody's reconstruction of events it's more than likely Lenz might have promoted the Item up off the lawn when he legged it off the E.M.P.H.H. complex just ahead of the Finest. Because it's f.u.c.king vanished, and n.o.body'd have rat-holed it and not given it up knowing what's at stake for the good old G-Man in the deal. Gately makes a whole new kind of noise.

McDade says the more upbeat news is that Lenz has been possibly spotted, that Ken E. and Burt F. Smith had seen what looked like either R. Lenz or C. Romero after a wasting illness on their way back from wheeling Burt F.S. to a meeting in Kenmore Square, mostly from the side of the back they'd seen him, wearing a back-split tux and sombrero w/ b.a.l.l.s, and apparently officially relapsed, back Out There, drunk as a maroon, so totally legless when they saw him he was doing a drunk's old hurricane-walk, fighting his way from parking meter to parking meter and clinging to each parking meter. Wade McDade here thinks to insert that the confirmed scuttleb.u.t.t is that E.M.P.H.H. is getting ready to rent out Unit #3 to a long-term mental-health agency caring for people with incapacitating agoraphobia, and that everybody at the House is speculating on what a constantly crowded and cabin-feverish place that's that's going to be, what with the terribleness of the predicted winter coming up. Diehl says his nasal sinus can always tell when it's going to snow, and his sinus is starting to predict at least flurries for maybe as early as tonight. They never think to tell Gately what day it is. That Gately can't communicate even this most basic of requests makes him want to scream. McDade, in what's either an intimate aside or a knife-twist at a Staffer who's in no position to enforce anything, confides that he and Emil Minty are arranging with Parias-Carbo - who works for an Ennet House alum at All-Bright Printing down near the Jackson-Mann School - for engraved-looking formal invitations for the agoraphobic folks in Unit #3 to all just come on out and over to Ennet House for a crowded noisy outdoor Welcome-to-the-E.M.P.H.H.-Neighborhood bash. And now Gately knows for sure it was McDade and Minty that put the HELP WANTED sign up under the window of the lady in Unit #4 that shouts for Help. The general level of tension in the room increases. Gavin Diehl clears his throat and says everybody says to say Gately's like wicked missed back at the House and everybody said to say ' 's up?' and that they hope the G-Man's up and back kicking residential a.s.s very soon; and McDade produces an unsigned Get Well card from his pocket and puts it carefully through the railing's bars, where it lies next to Gately's arm and begins to open up from being folded and shoved in a pocket. It's clear the thing was shoplifted. going to be, what with the terribleness of the predicted winter coming up. Diehl says his nasal sinus can always tell when it's going to snow, and his sinus is starting to predict at least flurries for maybe as early as tonight. They never think to tell Gately what day it is. That Gately can't communicate even this most basic of requests makes him want to scream. McDade, in what's either an intimate aside or a knife-twist at a Staffer who's in no position to enforce anything, confides that he and Emil Minty are arranging with Parias-Carbo - who works for an Ennet House alum at All-Bright Printing down near the Jackson-Mann School - for engraved-looking formal invitations for the agoraphobic folks in Unit #3 to all just come on out and over to Ennet House for a crowded noisy outdoor Welcome-to-the-E.M.P.H.H.-Neighborhood bash. And now Gately knows for sure it was McDade and Minty that put the HELP WANTED sign up under the window of the lady in Unit #4 that shouts for Help. The general level of tension in the room increases. Gavin Diehl clears his throat and says everybody says to say Gately's like wicked missed back at the House and everybody said to say ' 's up?' and that they hope the G-Man's up and back kicking residential a.s.s very soon; and McDade produces an unsigned Get Well card from his pocket and puts it carefully through the railing's bars, where it lies next to Gately's arm and begins to open up from being folded and shoved in a pocket. It's clear the thing was shoplifted.

It's probably the pathetic unsigned folded hot card, but Gately's suddenly stricken by the heat of the waves of self-pity and resentment he feels about not only the card but about the prospect of these booger-chewing clowns not standing up to eyewitness for his se offendendo se offendendo after he just tried to do his sober job on one of their behalf and is now lying here in a level of increasing dextral discomfort these limp punks couldn't imagine if they tried, getting ready to have to say no to grinning Pakistanis about his Disease's drug of choice with an invasive tube down his mouth and no notebook after he asked for one, and needing to s.h.i.t and to know the day and no big black nurse in view, and unable to move - it suddenly seems awful starry-eyed to be willing to look on the course of events as evidence of the protection and care of a Higher Power - it's a bit hard to see why a quote after he just tried to do his sober job on one of their behalf and is now lying here in a level of increasing dextral discomfort these limp punks couldn't imagine if they tried, getting ready to have to say no to grinning Pakistanis about his Disease's drug of choice with an invasive tube down his mouth and no notebook after he asked for one, and needing to s.h.i.t and to know the day and no big black nurse in view, and unable to move - it suddenly seems awful starry-eyed to be willing to look on the course of events as evidence of the protection and care of a Higher Power - it's a bit hard to see why a quote Loving G.o.d Loving G.o.d would have him go through the sausage-grinder of getting straight just to lie here in total discomfort and have to say no to medically advised Substances and get ready to go to jail just because Pat M. doesn't have the bra.s.s to make these selfish bottom-feeding dips.h.i.ts stand up and do the right thing for once. The resentment and fear make cords stand out on Gately's purple neck, and he looks ferocious but not at all jolly. - Because what if G.o.d is really the cruel and vengeful figurant Boston AA swears up and down He isn't, and He gets you straight just so you can feel all the more keenly every bevel and edge of the special punishments He's got lined up for you? - Because why the f.u.c.k say no to a whole rubber bulbful of Demerol's somnolent hum, if these are the quote would have him go through the sausage-grinder of getting straight just to lie here in total discomfort and have to say no to medically advised Substances and get ready to go to jail just because Pat M. doesn't have the bra.s.s to make these selfish bottom-feeding dips.h.i.ts stand up and do the right thing for once. The resentment and fear make cords stand out on Gately's purple neck, and he looks ferocious but not at all jolly. - Because what if G.o.d is really the cruel and vengeful figurant Boston AA swears up and down He isn't, and He gets you straight just so you can feel all the more keenly every bevel and edge of the special punishments He's got lined up for you? - Because why the f.u.c.k say no to a whole rubber bulbful of Demerol's somnolent hum, if these are the quote rewards rewards of sobriety and rabidly-active work in AA? The resentment, fear and self-pity are almost narcotizing. Way beyond anything he'd felt when hapless Canadians punched or shot him. This was a sudden total bitter impotent Job-type rage that always sends any sober addict falling back and up inside himself, like vapor up a chimney. Diehl and McDade were backing away from him. As well they f.u.c.king might. Gately's big head felt hot and cold, and his pulse-line on the overhead monitor started to look like the Rockies. of sobriety and rabidly-active work in AA? The resentment, fear and self-pity are almost narcotizing. Way beyond anything he'd felt when hapless Canadians punched or shot him. This was a sudden total bitter impotent Job-type rage that always sends any sober addict falling back and up inside himself, like vapor up a chimney. Diehl and McDade were backing away from him. As well they f.u.c.king might. Gately's big head felt hot and cold, and his pulse-line on the overhead monitor started to look like the Rockies.

The residents, between Gately and the door, wide-eyed, now suddenly parted to let someone pa.s.s. At first all Gately could see between them was the kidney-shaped plastic bedpan and a cylindrical syringe-snouted ketchup-bottlish thing with FLEET FLEET down the side in cheery green. It took this equipment a second to signify. Then he saw the nurse that came forward bearing the stuff, and his raging heart fell out of him with a thud. Diehl and McDade made hearty-farewell noises and melted out the door with the vague alacrity of seasoned drug-addicts. The nurse was no slot-mouthed penguin or booming mammy. This nurse looked like something out of a racy-nursewear catalogue, like somebody that had to detour blocks out of her way to avoid construction sites at lunchtime. Gately's projected image of his and this gorgeous nurse's union unfolded and became instantly grotesque: him p.r.o.ne and a.s.s-up on the porch swing, she white-haired and angelic and bearing something away in a kidney-shaped pan to the towering pile behind the retirement-cottage. Everything angry in him evaporated as he got ready to just f.u.c.king die of mortification. The nurse stood there and twirled the bedpan on one finger and flexed the long Fleet cylinder a couple times and made an arc of clear fluid come out the tip and hang in the windowlight, like a gunslinger twirling his six-shooter around to casually show off, smiling in a way that simply snapped Gately's spine. He began to mentally recite the Serenity Prayer. When he moved he could smell his own sour smell. Not to mention the time and pain involved in rolling onto his left side and exposing his a.s.s and pulling his knees to his chest with one arm - 'Hug those knees like they were your Sweetie, is what we say,' she said, putting a terribly soft cool hand on Gately's a.s.s - without jostling the catheter or I.V.s, or the thick taped tube that went down his mouth to G.o.d knows where. down the side in cheery green. It took this equipment a second to signify. Then he saw the nurse that came forward bearing the stuff, and his raging heart fell out of him with a thud. Diehl and McDade made hearty-farewell noises and melted out the door with the vague alacrity of seasoned drug-addicts. The nurse was no slot-mouthed penguin or booming mammy. This nurse looked like something out of a racy-nursewear catalogue, like somebody that had to detour blocks out of her way to avoid construction sites at lunchtime. Gately's projected image of his and this gorgeous nurse's union unfolded and became instantly grotesque: him p.r.o.ne and a.s.s-up on the porch swing, she white-haired and angelic and bearing something away in a kidney-shaped pan to the towering pile behind the retirement-cottage. Everything angry in him evaporated as he got ready to just f.u.c.king die of mortification. The nurse stood there and twirled the bedpan on one finger and flexed the long Fleet cylinder a couple times and made an arc of clear fluid come out the tip and hang in the windowlight, like a gunslinger twirling his six-shooter around to casually show off, smiling in a way that simply snapped Gately's spine. He began to mentally recite the Serenity Prayer. When he moved he could smell his own sour smell. Not to mention the time and pain involved in rolling onto his left side and exposing his a.s.s and pulling his knees to his chest with one arm - 'Hug those knees like they were your Sweetie, is what we say,' she said, putting a terribly soft cool hand on Gately's a.s.s - without jostling the catheter or I.V.s, or the thick taped tube that went down his mouth to G.o.d knows where.

I was going to go back up to see about Stice's defenestration, to check on Mario and change my socks and examine my expression in the mirror for unintentional hilarity, to listen to Orin's phone-messages and then the protracted-death aria from Tosca Tosca once or twice. There is no music for free-floating misery like once or twice. There is no music for free-floating misery like Tosca Tosca.

I was moving down the damp hall when it hit. I don't know where it came from. It was some variant of the telescopically self-conscious panic that can be so devastating during a match. I'd never felt quite this way off-court before. It wasn't wholly unpleasant. Unexplained panic sharpens the senses almost past enduring. Lyle had taught us this. You perceive things very intensely. Lyle's counsel had been to turn the perception and attention on the fear itself, but he'd shown us how to do this only on-court, in play. Everything came at too many frames per second. Everything had too many aspects. But it wasn't disorienting. The intensity wasn't unmanageable. It was just intense and vivid. It wasn't like being high, but it was still very: lucid lucid. The world seemed suddenly almost edible, there for the ingesting. The thin skin of light over the baseboards' varnish. The cream of the ceiling's acoustic tile. The deerskin-brown longitudinal grain in the rooms' doors' darker wood. The dull bra.s.s gleam of the k.n.o.bs. It was without the abstract, cognitive quality of Bob or Star. The turn-signal red of the stairwell's lit EXIT sign. Sleepy T. P. Peterson came out of the bathroom in a dazzling plaid robe, his face and feet salmon-colored from the showers' heat, and vanished across the hall into his room without seeing me wobbling, leaning against the cool mint wall of the hallway.

But the panic was there too, endocrinal, paralyzing, and with an overcognitive, bad-trip-like element that I didn't recognize from the very visceral on-court attacks of fear. Something like a shadow flanked the vividness and lucidity of the world. The concentration of attention did something to it. What didn't seem fresh and unfamiliar seemed suddenly old as stone. It all happened in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds. The familiarity of Academy routine took on a crushing c.u.mulative aspect. The total number of times I'd schlepped up the rough cement steps of the stairwell, seen my faint red reflection in the paint of the fire door, walked the 56 steps down the hall to our room, opened the door and eased it gently back flush in the jamb to keep from waking Mario. I reexperienced the years' total number of steps, movements, the breaths and pulses involved. Then the number of times I would have to repeat the same processes, day after day, in all kinds of light, until I graduated and moved away and then began the same exhausting process of exit and return in some dormitory at some tennis-power university somewhere. Maybe the worst part of the cognitions involved the incredible volume of food I was going to have to consume over the rest of my life. Meal after meal, plus snacks. Day after day after day. Experiencing this food in toto. Just the thought of the meat alone. One megagram? Two megagrams? I experienced, vividly, the image of a broad cool well-lit room piled floor to ceiling with nothing but the lightly breaded chicken fillets I was going to consume over the next sixty years. The number of fowl vivisected for a lifetime's meat. The amount of hydrochloric acid and bilirubin and glucose and glycogen and gloconol produced and absorbed and produced in my body. And another, dimmer room, filled with the rising ma.s.s of the excrement I'd produce, the room's double-locked steel door gradually bowing outward with the mounting pressure.... I had to put my hand out against the wall and stand there hunched until the worst of it pa.s.sed. I watched the floor dry. Its dull shine brightened behind me in the snowlight from the east window. The wall's baby blue was complexly filigreed with b.u.mps and clots of paint. An unmopped glob of Kenkle's spit sat by the corner of V.R.5's door's jamb, quivering slightly as the door rattled in its frame. There were scuffles and thumps from upstairs. It was still snowing like h.e.l.l.

I lay on my back on the carpet of Viewing Room 5, still on the second floor, fighting the sense that I'd either never been here before or had spent lifetimes just here. The entire room was panelled in a cool yellow shimmering material called Kevlon. The viewer took up half the south wall and was dead and gray-green. The carpet's green was close to this color, too. The instructional and motivational cartridges were in a large gla.s.s bookcase whose central shelves were long and whose top and bottom shelving tapered down to almost nothing. Ovoid Ovoid would convey the case's shape. I had the NASA gla.s.s with my toothbrush in it balanced on my chest. It rose whenever I inhaled. I'd had the NASA gla.s.s since I was a little boy, and its decal of white-helmeted figures waving authoritatively through the windows of a prototype shuttle was faded and incomplete. would convey the case's shape. I had the NASA gla.s.s with my toothbrush in it balanced on my chest. It rose whenever I inhaled. I'd had the NASA gla.s.s since I was a little boy, and its decal of white-helmeted figures waving authoritatively through the windows of a prototype shuttle was faded and incomplete.

After a time, Sleepy T.P. Peterson put his wet-combed head in the door and said LaMont Chu wanted to know whether what was happening outside qualified as a blizzard. It took over a minute of my not saying anything for him to go away. The ceiling panels were grotesquely detailed. They seemed to come after you like some invasive E.T.A. patron backing you up against the wall at a party. The ankle throbbed dully in the snowstorm's low pressure. I relaxed my throat and simply let the excess saliva run postnasally back and down. The Moms's mother had been ethnic Quebecois, her father Anglo-Canadian. The term used in the Yale Journal of Alcohol Studies Yale Journal of Alcohol Studies for this man was for this man was binge-drinker binge-drinker. All my grandparents were deceased. Himself's middle name had been Orin, his father's own father's name. The V.R.'s entertainment cartridges were arrayed on wall-length shelves of translucent polyethylene. Their individual cases were all either clear plastic or glossy black plastic. My full name is Harold James Incandenza, and I am 183.6 cm. tall in stocking feet. Himself designed the Academy's indirect lighting, which is ingenious and close to full-spectrum. V.R.5 contained a large couch, four reclining chairs, a midsized rec.u.mbency, six green corduroy spectation-pillows stacked in a corner, three end tables, and a coffee table of mylar with inlaid coasters. The overhead lighting in every E.T.A. room came from a small carbon-graphite spotlight directed upward at a complexly alloyed reflecting plate above it. No rheostat was required; a small joystick controlled the brightness by altering the little spot's angle of incidence to the plate. Himself's films were arranged on the third shelf of the entertainment-case. The Moms's full name is Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza, Ed.D., Ph.D. She is 197 cm. tall in flats and still came up only to Himself's ear when he straightened and stood erect. For almost a month in the weight room, Lyle had been saying that the most advanced level of Vaipa.s.sana or 'Insight' meditation consisted in sitting in fully awakened contemplation of one's own death. I had held Big Buddy sessions in V.R.5 throughout the month of September. The Moms had grown up without a middle name. The etymology of the term blizzard blizzard is essentially unknown. The full-spectrum lighting system had been a labor of love from Himself to the Moms, who'd agreed to leave Brandeis and head up the Academy's academics and had an ethnic Canadian's horror of fluorescent light; but by the time the system had been installed and de-bugged, the gestalt of the Moms's lumiphobia had extended to all overhead lighting, and she never used her office's spot-and-plate system. is essentially unknown. The full-spectrum lighting system had been a labor of love from Himself to the Moms, who'd agreed to leave Brandeis and head up the Academy's academics and had an ethnic Canadian's horror of fluorescent light; but by the time the system had been installed and de-bugged, the gestalt of the Moms's lumiphobia had extended to all overhead lighting, and she never used her office's spot-and-plate system.

Petropolis Kahn put his large s.h.a.ggy head in and asked what was all this brooha upstairs, the thumps and cryings-out. He asked whether I was going to breakfast. The scuttleb.u.t.t on breakfast was sausage-a.n.a.log and OJ with palpable pulp, he said. I closed my eyes and recalled that I'd known Petropolis Kahn for three years and three months. Kahn went away. I could feel his head's withdrawal from the doorway: a very slight suction in the room's air. I needed to fart but had not so far farted. The atomic weight of carbon is 12.01 and change. A small and carefully monitored game of Eschaton slated for the mid-A.M., with (according to rumor) Pemulis himself as game-master, was certain to be snowed out. It had begun to occur to me, driving back from Natick on Tuesday, that if it came down to a choice between continuing to play compet.i.tive tennis and continuing to be able to get high, it would be a nearly impossible choice to make. The distant way in which this fact appalled me itself appalled me. The founder of the sub-14's' Tunnel Club had been Heath Pearson as a very little boy. The rumor that Pemulis himself would don the beanie for the next Eschaton came from Kent Blott; Pemulis had been avoiding me ever since I returned from Natick on Tuesday - as if he sensed something. The woman behind the register at the Sh.e.l.l station last night had recoiled as I approached to present my card before pumping, as if she too had seen something in my expression I hadn't known was there. The North American Collegiate Dictionary North American Collegiate Dictionary claimed that any 'very heavy' snowstorm with 'high winds' qualified as a blizzard. Himself, for two years before his death, had had this delusion of silence when I spoke: I believed I was speaking and he believed I was not speaking. Mario averred that Himself had never accused him of not speaking. I tried to recall whether I had ever brought the subject up with the Moms. The Moms was at pains to be completely approachable on all subjects except Himself and what had been going on between her and Himself as Himself withdrew more and more. She never forbade questions about it; she just got so pained and blurry-faced that you felt cruel asking her anything. I considered whether Pemulis's cessation of the math-tutorials was perhaps an oblique affirmation, a kind of You Are Ready. Pemulis often communicated in a kind of esoteric code. It was true that I had kept mostly to myself in the room since Tuesday. The condensed claimed that any 'very heavy' snowstorm with 'high winds' qualified as a blizzard. Himself, for two years before his death, had had this delusion of silence when I spoke: I believed I was speaking and he believed I was not speaking. Mario averred that Himself had never accused him of not speaking. I tried to recall whether I had ever brought the subject up with the Moms. The Moms was at pains to be completely approachable on all subjects except Himself and what had been going on between her and Himself as Himself withdrew more and more. She never forbade questions about it; she just got so pained and blurry-faced that you felt cruel asking her anything. I considered whether Pemulis's cessation of the math-tutorials was perhaps an oblique affirmation, a kind of You Are Ready. Pemulis often communicated in a kind of esoteric code. It was true that I had kept mostly to myself in the room since Tuesday. The condensed O.E.D., O.E.D., in a rare bit of florid imprecision, defined in a rare bit of florid imprecision, defined blizzard blizzard as 'A furious blast of frost-wind and blinding snow in which man and beast frequently perish,' claiming the word was either a neologism or a corruption of the French as 'A furious blast of frost-wind and blinding snow in which man and beast frequently perish,' claiming the word was either a neologism or a corruption of the French blesser, blesser, coined in English by a reporter for Iowa's coined in English by a reporter for Iowa's Northern Vindicator Northern Vindicator in B.S. 1864. Orin alleged in Y.T.M.P. that when he took the Moms's car in the morning he sometimes observed the smeared prints of nude human feet on the inside of the windshield. V.R.5's heating duct's grille gave off a sterile hiss. All up and down the hall were sounds of the Academy coming to life, making compet.i.tive ablutions, venting anxiety and complaints at the possible blizzard outside - wanting to play. There was heavy foot-traffic in the third-floor hall above me. Orin was going through a period where he was attracted only to young mothers of small children. A hunched way: she hunches; you hunch. John Wayne had had a violent allergic reaction to a decongestant and had commandeered the WETA microphone and publicly embarra.s.sed himself on Troeltsch's Tuesday broadcast, apparently, and had been taken to St. Elizabeth's overnight for observation, but had recovered quickly enough to come home and then finish ahead even of Stice in Wednesday's conditioning run. I missed the entire thing and was filled in by Mario on my return from Natick - Wayne had apparently said unkind things about various E.T.A. staff and administration, none of which anyone who knew Wayne and all he stood for had taken seriously. Relief that he was OK had dominated everyone's accounts of the whole incident; the Moms herself had apparently stayed by Wayne's side late into the night at St. E.'s, which b.o.o.boo felt was estimable and just like the Moms. Simply imagining the total number of times my chest will rise and fall and rise. If you want prescriptive specificity you go to a hard-a.s.s: Sitney and Schneewind's in B.S. 1864. Orin alleged in Y.T.M.P. that when he took the Moms's car in the morning he sometimes observed the smeared prints of nude human feet on the inside of the windshield. V.R.5's heating duct's grille gave off a sterile hiss. All up and down the hall were sounds of the Academy coming to life, making compet.i.tive ablutions, venting anxiety and complaints at the possible blizzard outside - wanting to play. There was heavy foot-traffic in the third-floor hall above me. Orin was going through a period where he was attracted only to young mothers of small children. A hunched way: she hunches; you hunch. John Wayne had had a violent allergic reaction to a decongestant and had commandeered the WETA microphone and publicly embarra.s.sed himself on Troeltsch's Tuesday broadcast, apparently, and had been taken to St. Elizabeth's overnight for observation, but had recovered quickly enough to come home and then finish ahead even of Stice in Wednesday's conditioning run. I missed the entire thing and was filled in by Mario on my return from Natick - Wayne had apparently said unkind things about various E.T.A. staff and administration, none of which anyone who knew Wayne and all he stood for had taken seriously. Relief that he was OK had dominated everyone's accounts of the whole incident; the Moms herself had apparently stayed by Wayne's side late into the night at St. E.'s, which b.o.o.boo felt was estimable and just like the Moms. Simply imagining the total number of times my chest will rise and fall and rise. If you want prescriptive specificity you go to a hard-a.s.s: Sitney and Schneewind's Dictionary of Environmental Sciences Dictionary of Environmental Sciences required 12 cm./hour of continuous snowfall, minimum winds of 60 kph., and visibility of less than 500 meters; and only if these conditions obtained for more than three hours was it a blizzard; less than three hours was 'C-IV Squall.' The dedication and sustained energy that go into true perspicacity and expertise were exhausting even to think about. required 12 cm./hour of continuous snowfall, minimum winds of 60 kph., and visibility of less than 500 meters; and only if these conditions obtained for more than three hours was it a blizzard; less than three hours was 'C-IV Squall.' The dedication and sustained energy that go into true perspicacity and expertise were exhausting even to think about.

It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. G.o.d or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms blandly filled with excrement and meat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions why why and and to what to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way. Modern German is better equipped for combining gerundives and prepositions than is its mongrel cousin. The original sense of grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way. Modern German is better equipped for combining gerundives and prepositions than is its mongrel cousin. The original sense of addiction addiction involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one's life, plunge in. I had researched this. Stice had asked whether I believed in ghosts. It's always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. Never questions whether his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned. Stice had promised something boggling to look at. That is, whether Hamlet might be only involved being bound over, dedicated, either legally or spiritually. To devote one's life, plunge in. I had researched this. Stice had asked whether I believed in ghosts. It's always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. Never questions whether his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned. Stice had promised something boggling to look at. That is, whether Hamlet might be only feigning feigning feigning. I kept thinking of the Film and Cartridge Studies professor's final soliloquy in Himself's unfinished feigning. I kept thinking of the Film and Cartridge Studies professor's final soliloquy in Himself's unfinished Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms that Utilize Every Centimeter of Available s.p.a.ce with Mind-Boggling Efficiency, Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms that Utilize Every Centimeter of Available s.p.a.ce with Mind-Boggling Efficiency, the sour parody of academia that the Moms had taken as an odd personal slap. I kept thinking I really should go up and check on The Darkness. There seemed to be so many implications even to thinking about sitting up and standing up and exiting V.R.5 and taking a certain variable-according-to-stride-length number of steps to the stairwell door, on and on, that just the thought of getting up made me glad I was lying on the floor. the sour parody of academia that the Moms had taken as an odd personal slap. I kept thinking I really should go up and check on The Darkness. There seemed to be so many implications even to thinking about sitting up and standing up and exiting V.R.5 and taking a certain variable-according-to-stride-length number of steps to the stairwell door, on and on, that just the thought of getting up made me glad I was lying on the floor.

I was on the floor. I felt the Nile-green carpet with the back of each hand. I was completely horizontal. I was comfortable lying perfectly still and staring at the ceiling. I was enjoying being one horizontal object in a room filled with horizontality. Charles Tavis is probably not related to the Moms by actual blood. Her extremely tall French-Canadian mother died when the Moms was eight. Her father left their potato farm on 'business' a few months later and was gone for several weeks. He did this sort of thing with some frequency. A binge-drinker. Eventually there would be a telephone call from some distant province or U.S. state, and one of the hired men would go off to bail him out. From this disappearance, though, he returned with a new bride the Moms had known nothing about, an American widow named Elizabeth Tavis, who in the stilted Vermont wedding photo seems almost certainly to have been a dwarf - the huge square head, the relative length of the trunk compared to the legs, the sunken nasal bridge and protruding eyes, the stunted phocomelic arms around squire Mondragon's right thigh, one khaki-colored cheek pressed affectionately against his belt-buckle. C.T. was the infant son she'd brought to the new union, his father a ne'er-do-well killed in a freak accident playing compet.i.tive darts in a Brattleboro tavern just as they were trying to adjust the obstetric stirrups for the achondroplastic Mrs. Tavis's labor and delivery. Her smile in the wedding photo is h.o.m.odontic. According to Orin, though, C.T. and the Moms claim Mrs. T. was not a true h.o.m.odont the way - for instance - Mario is a true h.o.m.odont. E