'Oh I definitely definitely I'd suspect some kind of conspiracy or trap. It's obvious everything's pointing toward getting you in a cell belting out Merma.n.a.lia. Inc, I think your hinges are starting to squeak. I think this is what plateaux-hopping up to the top does to somebody. I think a meaningful transcendent DMZ-type non-uremic-fallout interlude before Tucson is just what the carpenter ordered, for the old hinges. Keep you from going back to just smoking that Bob Hope day in day out when the test's up. s.h.i.t'll kill your lungs. s.h.i.t'll make you fat, soft, moist and pale, Inc. Seen it happen. You need something more than a 30-day cleanout. The I'd suspect some kind of conspiracy or trap. It's obvious everything's pointing toward getting you in a cell belting out Merma.n.a.lia. Inc, I think your hinges are starting to squeak. I think this is what plateaux-hopping up to the top does to somebody. I think a meaningful transcendent DMZ-type non-uremic-fallout interlude before Tucson is just what the carpenter ordered, for the old hinges. Keep you from going back to just smoking that Bob Hope day in day out when the test's up. s.h.i.t'll kill your lungs. s.h.i.t'll make you fat, soft, moist and pale, Inc. Seen it happen. You need something more than a 30-day cleanout. The tu-sais-que tu-sais-que could be just the reconfiguration you need to start branching out, leave the Bob Hope alone, find something you can take to college or the Show and not get paralyzed. s.h.i.t'll paralyze you over time, Incblob. Saw it happen time and over, back in the neighborhood. Once-promising stand-up guys spending their lives in front of the TP, eating Nutter b.u.t.ters and whacking off into an old sock. The s.h.i.t-fairy moves in with luggage for an extended stay, Inc. Plus indecisive? You haven't seen indecisive til you've seen a guy with little fat-t.i.tties slumped in a chair in his tenth year of nonstop Bob Hope. It's not pretty. Incster my friend it's not pretty at all. A transcendent experience with me and the Axhandle could be just what the hinges are squeaking for. Be around some other people for a change. Don't make me sit there with just Axhandle babbling about Yale. Leave the Visine at home.' could be just the reconfiguration you need to start branching out, leave the Bob Hope alone, find something you can take to college or the Show and not get paralyzed. s.h.i.t'll paralyze you over time, Incblob. Saw it happen time and over, back in the neighborhood. Once-promising stand-up guys spending their lives in front of the TP, eating Nutter b.u.t.ters and whacking off into an old sock. The s.h.i.t-fairy moves in with luggage for an extended stay, Inc. Plus indecisive? You haven't seen indecisive til you've seen a guy with little fat-t.i.tties slumped in a chair in his tenth year of nonstop Bob Hope. It's not pretty. Incster my friend it's not pretty at all. A transcendent experience with me and the Axhandle could be just what the hinges are squeaking for. Be around some other people for a change. Don't make me sit there with just Axhandle babbling about Yale. Leave the Visine at home.'

'Was it transcendent? transcendent? The term in Struck's literature? Or was it The term in Struck's literature? Or was it transcendental? transcendental?'

' 's the difference for Christ's sake?'

'Mike, what if I said I've been moving toward more than just a month off.'

'Abandon All Hope. a a This what I was talking.' This what I was talking.'

'I mean maybe make a decision. Forever. What if it was that I was doing it more and more and it was getting less fun but I was still doing it more and more, and the only way to moderate would be to like wave a hankie at it altogether.'

'I applaud. Some low-risk transcendentalism with me and the Human Hatchet could be just the impotence for this kind of like major re-'

'But it'd be everything. Blue Flames, the odd 'drine. If I do anything I know I'd go back to the Bob. I'd drop Madame Psychosis with you guys and all my firmest resolve would melt and I'd have the one-hitter out and be sniveling at you to spring some eternal Hope on me.'

'You're so naive, Inc. You're so sharp in one way and such a little bald little fat-legged baby in the woods in others. You think you're just going to go Here I go, deciding, and reverse total thrust and quit everything?'

'What I said was what if.'

'Hal, you are my friend, and I've been friends to you in ways you don't even have a clue. So brace yourself for a growth-spurt. You want to quit because you're starting to see you need it, and -'

'That's exactly it. Peems, think how horrible that'd be, if somebody needed needed it. Not just it. Not just liked liked it a great great great deal. Needing it becomes a whole separate order of. ... It seems horrific. It seems like the difference between really loving something and being -' it a great great great deal. Needing it becomes a whole separate order of. ... It seems horrific. It seems like the difference between really loving something and being -'

'Say the word, Inc.'

'Because you know why? What if it's true? The word. What if you are? So the answer's just walk away? If you're addicted you need need it, Hallie, and if you it, Hallie, and if you need need it what do you imagine happens if you just hoist the white flag and try to go on without it, without anything?' it what do you imagine happens if you just hoist the white flag and try to go on without it, without anything?'

'You lose your mind, Inc. You die inside. What happens if you try and go without something the machine needs? needs? Food, moisture, sleep, O Food, moisture, sleep, O2? What happens to the machine? Think about it.'

'You were just now applauding the idea of Abandoning All Hope. You were just invoking an image of me with b.r.e.a.s.t.s, masturbating into laundry, with cobwebs between my a.s.s and a chair.'

'That's the Bob Bob. I didn't hear me say everything everything. If you need the Bob, Inc, you can only quit the Bob if you move onward and up to something else.'

'Harder drugs. Just like those old filmstrips about pot opening the door to larger drugs, where Jiminy Cricket -'

'Oh f.u.c.k you. It doesn't have to be harder. It just has to be something. I know guys quit heroin, c.o.ke. How? They make the strategic move to a case a day of Coors. Or to methadone, whatever. I know hard-drinking guys Inc that got off the booze by switching to the Bob Hope. Me myself, you've seen, I switch all the time. The trick is the right switch for a man's wiring. I'm saying a real cobweb-blaster with me and Axford after the Fundraiser could help you get some serious perspective, cut the babytalk and sweeping bulls.h.i.t decisions there's no way you can do and start getting a real handle on how you're going to branch out away from this Bob thing, which I applaud the getting away from the Bob for you, Inc, it's not your thing, you were starting to get that look of a guy that'll end up with t.i.ts.'

'So you're in a very subtle way lobbying for a DMZ-drop by saying you don't believe I could simply quit everything. Since you sure don't plan to quit. With your left eye wobbling all over the place. You haven't even quit the Tenuate. "Winners don't ever have to quit" and all deLint's little -'

'I didn't hear me say none of that. And I think you probably could quit it all. For a while. You're not a p.u.s.s.y. You've got b.a.l.l.s, I know. I bet you could gut it out.'

'For a while, you're saying.'

'And but what do you think would happen after a while, though? Without something you need? need?'

'What, you're saying I'd grab my chest and keel over? Clutch my head in the middle of a Tap & Whack and die of an aneurism like that girl last year at Atwood?'

'No. But you'd die inside. Maybe outside too. But what I've seen, if you're the real thing and need need it and just cut yourself off of it altogether, you die inside. You lose your mind. I've seen it happen. Cold Turkey they call it, the Bird. White-knuckling. Guys that'd just quit everything because they were in too deep and quit it all and just died.' it and just cut yourself off of it altogether, you die inside. You lose your mind. I've seen it happen. Cold Turkey they call it, the Bird. White-knuckling. Guys that'd just quit everything because they were in too deep and quit it all and just died.'

'A Clipperton, you mean? You're saying Himself killed himself because he got sober? Because he didn't get sober. There was a thing of Wild Turkey right there on the counter by the oven he blew his f.u.c.king head up with. So don't try to kertw.a.n.g me with him, him, Mike.' Mike.'

'Inc, what I know about your Da could be inscribed with a blunt crayon along the rim of a shot gla.s.s. I'm talking guys I know know. Wolf Spiders. Allston guys, that quit. Some did a Clipperton, yes. Some ended up in the Mental Marriott. Some got through by they joined NA or a cult or some bug-eyed church and went around with ties talking about Jesus or Surrendering, but that s.h.i.t's not going to work for you because you're too sharp to ever buy the G.o.d-Squad s.h.i.t. Most nothing big happened, that needed it and quit. They got up and went to work and came home and ate and went to sleep and got up, day after day. But dead. Like machines; you could almost see the keys in their backs. You looked into their maps and something was gone. The walking dead. They loved it so much they needed it and gave it up and now they were waiting to die. Something was all over, inside.'

'Their joie de vivre. joie de vivre. The fire in the belly.' The fire in the belly.'

'Hal, it's been what, now, for you, two-and-a-half days without? three days? How you feeling in there already, brother?'

'I'm all right.'

'Uh-huh. Incpuddle, all I know's I'm your friend. I am. You don't want to communate with the Madame, you can hold me and Ax's purses for us. You do what you want and point me toward whoever tells you different. I'm just giving you the advice to look a little further past that second of deciding something I know you won't let yourself take back.'

'Some vital part of my like personhood would die without something to ingest. This is your view.'

'Sometimes you don't listen real well, Hallie. That's all right. Spend some time figuring out this needing needing. Like what part of you's come to need need it, do you think.' it, do you think.'

'You're alleging that's the part that'll die.'

'Just whatever part you feel has come to need need what you're planning to take away from it.' what you're planning to take away from it.'

'The part that's dependent or incomplete, you mean. The addict addict.'

'That's just a word.' (back to text) (back to text) 322. Johnette F., whose very first stepmother had been a Chelsea MA police officer, was conditioned in early childhood to refer to police as 'police' or 'the Law,' since most B.P.D. personnel find the street term the Finest the Finest sardonic. sardonic. (back to text) (back to text) 323. People outside the Boston AA community always use The The and say and say The Ennet House; The Ennet House; this is one way to always tell somebody new or from outside the community. this is one way to always tell somebody new or from outside the community. (back to text) (back to text) 324.

17 NOVEMBER - YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT Sometimes at odd little times of day the E.T.A. males' locker room downstairs in Comm.-Ad. is empty, and you can go in there and sort of moon around and listen to the showers drip and the drains gurgle. You can feel the odd stunned quality customarily crowded places have at empty times. You can take your time dressing, flex in front of the big plate mirror over the sink; the mirror has projecting side-mirrors so you can check out the old biceps from either side, see the jawline in profile, practice expressions, try to look all natural and uncomposed so you can try to see what you really might normally look like to other people. The air in the locker room hangs heavy with the smells of underarms, deodorant, benzoin, camphonated powder, serious feet, old steam. Also Lemon Pledge and a slight smell of electrical burn from overused blow-dryers. Traces of powder and fuller's earth a a on the blue carpeting, down in too deep to get out without a steamer. You can take a comb out of the big jar of Barbicide on the shelf by the sink, and like a .38-caliber blow-dryer, and experiment boldly. It's the best mirror in the Academy, intricately lit from all perspectives. Dr. J. O. Incandenza knew his adolescents. At slack times, sometimes head custodian Dave ('F.D.V.') Harde can be found in here, taking a tiny nap on one of the benches that run in front of the lockers, which he claims the benches do something palliative for his spinal funiculi. More often there's one of Dave's incredibly old and interchangeable menial-task janitors in here running a carpet sweeper or spraying industrial disinfectant in the urinals. You can go into the shower area and not turn the water on and sing, really let go. Michael Pemulis's own vocals sound pro-quality good to him, but only when he's surrounded by shower-tile. Sometimes when it's empty in here you can catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of voices and intriguing feminine-hygienic noises from the females' locker room on the other side of the lockers' wall. on the blue carpeting, down in too deep to get out without a steamer. You can take a comb out of the big jar of Barbicide on the shelf by the sink, and like a .38-caliber blow-dryer, and experiment boldly. It's the best mirror in the Academy, intricately lit from all perspectives. Dr. J. O. Incandenza knew his adolescents. At slack times, sometimes head custodian Dave ('F.D.V.') Harde can be found in here, taking a tiny nap on one of the benches that run in front of the lockers, which he claims the benches do something palliative for his spinal funiculi. More often there's one of Dave's incredibly old and interchangeable menial-task janitors in here running a carpet sweeper or spraying industrial disinfectant in the urinals. You can go into the shower area and not turn the water on and sing, really let go. Michael Pemulis's own vocals sound pro-quality good to him, but only when he's surrounded by shower-tile. Sometimes when it's empty in here you can catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of voices and intriguing feminine-hygienic noises from the females' locker room on the other side of the lockers' wall.

At most other times of day, your certain type of more delicately const.i.tuted E.T.A. jr. uses the primitive subdorm hall showers and sinks and avoids the packed locker room at almost all costs. No way Western man ever should have conceived of commodes and hot showers in the same crowded air-s.p.a.ce. T. Schacht can clear out most of a steamy locker room just by lumbering into a commode-stall and driving the latch home with a certain purposeful force.

The prorectors have their own showers in a kind of lounge near their rooms in the secondary tunnel, with a Viewer and recliners and a little fridgelet and a d.i.c.ky-proof door.

When M. M. Pemulis came down to dress for P.M.s at about 1420h., b b the only people in the locker room were 14-A lobber nonpareil Todd Possalthwaite, hunched and weeping, and Keith Freer, whom Pemulis was to play and who looked in no hurry to get dressed and out there to play, and could very possibly have been the thing that was making Postal Weight weep. The so-called 'Viking' was shirtless and had a towel around his neck and was at the mirror ministering to his skin. He had high hard white-blond hair and an extremely muscular neck and lower jaw, with a certain type of protrusive gonions that made his upper face look tapered and sly. His hair always reminded Hal Incandenza of frozen surf, Hal said. Todd Possalthwaite was near-nude and hunched on the bench under his locker, his face in his hands, with its nose's white bandages visible through spread fingers, weeping softly, shoulders trembling. the only people in the locker room were 14-A lobber nonpareil Todd Possalthwaite, hunched and weeping, and Keith Freer, whom Pemulis was to play and who looked in no hurry to get dressed and out there to play, and could very possibly have been the thing that was making Postal Weight weep. The so-called 'Viking' was shirtless and had a towel around his neck and was at the mirror ministering to his skin. He had high hard white-blond hair and an extremely muscular neck and lower jaw, with a certain type of protrusive gonions that made his upper face look tapered and sly. His hair always reminded Hal Incandenza of frozen surf, Hal said. Todd Possalthwaite was near-nude and hunched on the bench under his locker, his face in his hands, with its nose's white bandages visible through spread fingers, weeping softly, shoulders trembling.

Pemulis, who's Postal Weight's Big Buddy and sort of lob-and-Eschaton-mentor and genuinely likes the kid, dropped his gear and gave him a sort of male-affectionate fake one-two punch like Think Fast. ' 's the nose, Todder?' Like all of them, Pemulis could do his locker's combination by feel, from months and years of constant combination-doing. He was looking all around himself and the room. Freer made a slight noise when Pemulis asked the Postman if there was anything he could do.

'Nothing's true,' Postal Weight sobbed, his voice palm-m.u.f.fled, rocking slightly on the bench. His locker was open and little-boy cluttered. He was wearing only an an unb.u.t.toned little flannel shirt and a Johnson & Johnson jr. jock strap, and had tiny white feet c c and delicate little sh.e.l.l-like toes. He was supposed to be in Donni Stott's Valley-Map laugher right now, Pemulis knew. and delicate little sh.e.l.l-like toes. He was supposed to be in Donni Stott's Valley-Map laugher right now, Pemulis knew.

'What, metaphysical angst at thirteen?' Pemulis directs the question to the quote-Viking's reflection's eye in the mirror. Freer's back is tapered and uncolloped and for a tennis player's back has superb latissimal definition but is mottled slightly from repeated applications and defoliations of Pledge, Freer being a profligate Pledge-user because he is complexion-obsessed and has the sort of Nordicular skin that peels instead of tanning. He still has his jeans and loafers on, Pemulis sees. Pemulis keeps waiting for the distinctive att.i.tudinal upswing of two pre-match Tenuate spansules. d d Pemulis's locker is both full and very precisely ordered, practically alphabetized, like the trunk of an experienced seaman. Disa.s.semblable scale and armamentarium and mood-altering substances used to be concealed in several factory-concealed niches in the special system of niche-riddled portable shelving Pemulis had installed at age 15. Plus small cloth packets of ground cayenne pepper, to foil the always-remotely-possible sniffer-dog, when he was a callow youth. This was before the discovery of the ultimate entrepot above the false ceiling in Subdorm B's male hallway. Pemulis's locker is both full and very precisely ordered, practically alphabetized, like the trunk of an experienced seaman. Disa.s.semblable scale and armamentarium and mood-altering substances used to be concealed in several factory-concealed niches in the special system of niche-riddled portable shelving Pemulis had installed at age 15. Plus small cloth packets of ground cayenne pepper, to foil the always-remotely-possible sniffer-dog, when he was a callow youth. This was before the discovery of the ultimate entrepot above the false ceiling in Subdorm B's male hallway.

'Just a disappointed d.i.n.kle.' Freer's chuckle tends to be mirthless. 'What I could get out of him before the waterworks, Postal Weight's old man promised him so-and-so if the kid accomplishes thus-and-such.' His speech was distorted because he was ballooning his cheek with his tongue and applying flesh-tinted cream to a possible pimple there. 'And the Postmaster here feels like he's held up his side of the accomplishment, and now I get the drift Daddy's backing out.'

Possalthwaite's shoulders continued to tremble as he cried into his hands.

'In other words welching you're saying the Dad is,' Pemulis said to Freer.

'I gather now the Dad's trying to restructure the original deal all of a sudden.'

Pemulis undid his belt. 'The dangled carrot's s.n.a.t.c.hed away, the bra.s.s ring plays hard to get, to coin a maxim.'

'Something about Disney World, before the wa-wa started.'

Pemulis removed his nonplay sneakers by sc.r.a.ping downward at one heel with the other sneaker's toe, looking down into the tender little whorl in the center of Possalth-waite's hair. He'd never be so ephebic as to verbally ask Freer if he had plans to suit up so they could get out there; he'd never let Freer think he was renting Freer s.p.a.ce in his head before the match started. 'Postman, is this because of the Eschaton incident? Is it because of the nose? Because I can get on the horn and tell old Postal Weight Sr. they're blaming n.o.body under 17, it turns out, you should tell him, Todder. There's whole land-barges of s.h.i.t, but none of it's spraying in you guys's direction, you should take comfort.'

'Nothing's true,' Possalthwaite keened, not looking up, m.u.f.fled, flat-nippled, fatless in the young gut, feet spectral below his legs' brown, rocking, shaking his head, looking terribly young and innocently vulnerable, sort of pre-moral. Little white strips of bandage protuded from his palms' outer edges, from I.-Day's apocalypse.

'Well, not much is fair, fair, anyway,' Pemulis conceded. The Viking made a noise at himself. anyway,' Pemulis conceded. The Viking made a noise at himself.

Pemulis calls Postal Weight's father up on-screen. Minneapolis-area developer. Malls, corporate parks, bustling places at the edges of roaring beltways. Late forties, slim, an overmanaged tan, a little oversharp in the dress dept., with a motivational-seminar-type hard-sell charm. A dagger of a Dad, with a pencil mustache and blinding shoe-leather. He tried to conjure an image of this paternal figure hitting Keith Freer on the noggin with a rolling pin and a bald cartoon lump rising from Freer's skull. (Pemulis calculates a win or even three-setter w/ Freer would mean a place on the WhataBurger plane, is why he's willing to violate a kind of personal honor-code and take pre-match Tenuate, which even with the 36-hour-elimination curve is kind of cavalier, given that he and Inc'd escaped on-spot urinalysis only because Pemulis implied to Mrs. Incandenza that he'd tell the Incster about Avril having some sort of major-sport interlude with John Wayne, and Avril is kind of a coldly-biding-her-time-not-to-be-f.u.c.ked-with administrative figure, and along with C. ['Gretel the Cross-Sectioned Cow'] Tavis isn't exactly a fan of Pemulis anyway, certainly since the electrified-Rusk-doork.n.o.b-and-litigation incident. The 'drines didn't seem to be kicking in. Instead of the surge of stomachless compet.i.tive verve, all Pemulis felt was a slight unpleasant s.p.a.ciness and a kind of enforced-feeling dryness in his eyes and mouth, like he's facing into a warm wind.) Pemulis had never once seen his own Da in anything other than a white Hanes T-shirt gone permanent yellow under the arms.

'Nothing's fair because nothing's true, true,' Possalthwaite wept into his palms. His little flannel shoulders shook.

Something old in one of the shower drains sighed and gurgled, a nauseous sound.

'Buck up.' Pemulis was removing all necessary match-articles and refolding them and placing them in his noncomplimentary Dunlop gear-bag with military precision. He put a foot on the bench and looked briefly to either side. 'Because if that's your burr then rest in my a.s.surance, Postalcode: certain things are rock-solid, high-grade true.'

Freer had made a pincer of his fingers and was at the other cheek. 'Let him cry. Let baby have his d.i.n.kle. p.i.s.s and moan. Thirteen for Christ's sake. A kid thirteen hasn't even been in the same room with real disappointment yet. Hasn't even locked eyes across a room with real disillusion and and frustration and pain. Thirteen: pain's a rumor. What's the word. Angst. Baby wouldn't know genuine-article angst if it walked up and got him in a headlock.'

'Not like real true real possible-little-cheek-pimple angst, Vike, hey?'

'Flip it over and squat, Pemulis,' without bothering to look. Both Pemulis and Freer had p.r.o.nounced a hard g g in in angst, angst, Hal would have observed. The Viking contorted his mouth and raised his big chin to check the flesh of his jaw, turning slightly to use the side-mirrors as well. Hal would have observed. The Viking contorted his mouth and raised his big chin to check the flesh of his jaw, turning slightly to use the side-mirrors as well.

Pemulis smiled broadly, trying to envision Keith Freer sitting in a canvas restraint-wrap in full lotus, staring blankly, hitting all the high notes in 'No Business Like Show Business' as orderlies in boiled whites and prim nurses in bent hats stand around snapping their fingers, clean white cheap inst.i.tutional-care sneakers tapping noiselessly through all eternity. He was down to chinos and bare light-brown feet. He considered a blue T-shirt with a black wolf-spider on it v. a coincidentally red-on-gray T-shirt that had 'Vodka is the Enemy of Production' in presumably Russian. His good four Dunlop sticks were stacked on the bench to Possalthwaite's left. He picked up two and tested the strings' tension by hitting the side of one stick's head against the the strung face of the other and listening to the strings and then switching sticks and repeating the process. The exact right tension has a certain pitch. Midsized Dunlop Enqvist TL Composites. $304.95 U.S. retail. Real catgut strings have a kind of a dentalish sweet stink. The dot-and-circ.u.mflex logo. He didn't much look at Possalthwaite. He chose the Cyrillic shirt with the bottle-glyph. He rolled it up and put his head through the head-hole first, his late great Da's old-fashioned way. The upscaler kids here all did the arm-holes first. Then they did the head. You can also tell the scholarship kids because for some reason they put on a sock and a shoe and then a sock and a shoe. See for instance Wayne, who'd been in their room right after lunch when Pemulis had made the decision to come up for some pre-match Tenuate. Wayne's room was right nearby and he was standing there over Troeltsch's pharmacopic bedside table with no shirt and wet hair, rheumy-eyed and shiny-nostriled from moisturizer on his Kleenex-chafed nostrils. The Viking was squeezing a damp tennis ball with his left hand while he scanned his forehead by mostly feel. Pemulis's psychic counter-strategy was not to appear in any hurry to dress and stretch and get out there either. Pemulis - who feared and hated unauthorized people being in his room, and who was constantly on Schacht's back about forgetting to lock up when he left, and who wasn't intimidated by Wayne's talent and success and affectless reserve, but was cautious around him, John Wayne, sort of the way a formidable predator will be unintimidated but cautious around another formidable predator, particularly since the virtuosic but tense performance in a certain administrative office a week ago, which had been mentioned by neither man - had coolly asked Wayne if he could help him, and Wayne had just as coolly not looked up from rattling through sickly Jim Troeltsch's bedside table's stuff and said he'd come in for some of Troeltsch's Seldane e e , which Pemulis had indeed heard Troeltsch at breakfast describing to a nose-blowing Wayne as the battlefield-nuke of anti-histamines that didn't make you too drowsy to function at an incredibly high level of function. Pemulis adjusted his jock's rear straps, trying to remember this Wayne-memory's point. Wayne had wanted a clear head and high pulmonary function because he was down to play the Syrian Satelliter in an informal exhibition at 1515h. Wayne hadn't offered this explanation; Pemulis got it off the e-board. One reason Pemulis was cautiously una.s.sertive about Wayne's unauthorized presence in the room was the leaflet, which given a certain office-incident it wasn't impossible Wayne might choose to suspect seeing Pemulis's hand in the Olde-English-fonted leaflet up at various boards and inserted on the E.T.A. TPs' communal e-board for 11/14 announcing a joint John Wayne/Dr. Avril Incandenza arithmetic presentation to the pre-quadrivial 14-and-Unders on how 17 can actually go into 56 way more than 3.294 times. The point was that the half-dressed Wayne had been standing there with one foot bare and one in a sock and shoe. Pemulis shook his head slightly and looked down at Possalthwaite and tried to gather spit. , which Pemulis had indeed heard Troeltsch at breakfast describing to a nose-blowing Wayne as the battlefield-nuke of anti-histamines that didn't make you too drowsy to function at an incredibly high level of function. Pemulis adjusted his jock's rear straps, trying to remember this Wayne-memory's point. Wayne had wanted a clear head and high pulmonary function because he was down to play the Syrian Satelliter in an informal exhibition at 1515h. Wayne hadn't offered this explanation; Pemulis got it off the e-board. One reason Pemulis was cautiously una.s.sertive about Wayne's unauthorized presence in the room was the leaflet, which given a certain office-incident it wasn't impossible Wayne might choose to suspect seeing Pemulis's hand in the Olde-English-fonted leaflet up at various boards and inserted on the E.T.A. TPs' communal e-board for 11/14 announcing a joint John Wayne/Dr. Avril Incandenza arithmetic presentation to the pre-quadrivial 14-and-Unders on how 17 can actually go into 56 way more than 3.294 times. The point was that the half-dressed Wayne had been standing there with one foot bare and one in a sock and shoe. Pemulis shook his head slightly and looked down at Possalthwaite and tried to gather spit.

The speaker out up by the clock in the cement hall by the sauna crackled to life for the start of weekly WETA, with its gla.s.s-shattering Joan Sutherland theme. Pemulis put his street-sneakers on his street-shoe shelf. 'Buck up, T.P. It's just an angst-spasm. You're just reeling from a temporary paternal kertw.a.n.g. Philosophical truth's jutting out all over the place. Disney World or no. Nose or no. Eschaton lives on, believe me. Underground or no. You have a calling, a talent. A missileman of your caliber. Reach down and rally, me little b.u.t.ton.'

Possalthwaite had taken his face from his hands and was staring stonily up somewhere past Pemulis, lips moving in the habitual sucking reflex for which he took so much guff. His face had the pink scrubbed look of a crying child all right. His hands had left brown spiders of tincture of benzoin on his cheeks. He had two little smudges of bruise under the eyes. He sniffed meatily through a nose still covered in horizontal strips of surgical tape. 'I ab dot a little b.u.t.ton.'

'That's what all the little b.u.t.tons say, kid,' the Viking said levelly, removing something from a nostril with tweezers. Pemulis's sinuses felt like four-laners and his sense of smell was a lot keener than a man in a locker room might wish. Freer's locker next to Gloeckner's next to good old Inc's was agape, the bolted colposcope gleaming in the overhead lights and his Fox large-head sticks a nauseous West-Coast fluorescent orange with the trademark fox-glyph painted on the strings.

Possalthwaite scratched at one foot with the nails of the other foot. 'If you can't trust your folks...'

'Let me both validate and remind you that the kertw.a.n.g you're reeling under is emotion-based and not fact-based.'

Possalthwaite opened his mouth.

'You're getting ready to say if you can't trust the ostensively loving patriarchal bosom you can't trust anyone at all, and if you can't trust people what can you trust, in terms of unvarying dependability, Postal Weight, am I right?'

'Oh Jesus H. Christmastree here it comes,' the Viking said to his forehead's reflection.

Pemulis was putting on a sock and a shoe, his mouth right down by Postal Weight's ear. 'This is not a bulls.h.i.t problem. This is a like serious emotiono-philosophical deal you're confronting. I think it's a good sign you're coming to me instead of holding it all impactedly inside.'

'Who's coming to you?' Freer turned the big face this way and that. 'He was already in here having his little wa-wa-d.i.n.kle.'

Pemulis tried envisioning Keith Freer being bent over the net by Bedouins in purple turbans and roundly b.u.g.g.e.red, making the sort of sounds Leith's historical b/w J. Gleason made when in pain. To Possalthwaite he was saying 'Cause I can remember staring down the exact same-type thing, though from a more like philosophicalized kertw.a.n.g than emotions.'

Freer said 'Do not ask him what he means, kid.'

Then a couple of 16s came in, G. ('Yardguard') Rader and a marginal Slavic kid whose first name was Zoltan and whose last name n.o.body could p.r.o.nounce, and ignored Freer's advice to run for their lives because the good Dr. Pemulis had been prescribing for himself again and was going to begin to rant, and threw down their gear and proceeded immediately to get fresh towels from the dispenser over by the showers and to snap them at each other.

'What do you mean?' said Possalthwaite.

'The snare closes, the trap closes, here it comes.'

Rader rolled his wrists and spiraled the towel for what he called maximum painage. The Viking turned and said if he felt so much as a terrycloth breeze on this personal a.s.s right here they were toast, the two. Pemulis was taking racquets out. E.T.A.'s male 16s were as a group inbent, conspiratorial, glandular, cliqueish. They excluded anyone not in their set. They had techniques and strategems of exclusion way more advanced than the 18s or 14s. (They tended to exclude Stice, mostly because he roomed with Coyle and drilled a lot of the time up with the 18s, and mixed with them, and more recently Kornspan, excluded, basically because he was cretinous and cruel and now consensually suspected of having tortured and killed the two collarless cats whose burnt corpses had been found on the hillside during pre-drill sprints a couple weeks back.) They had their own dialect and codes, in-jokes inside in-jokes. f f And at E.T.A. only 16s snapped towels, and only for a year or two, but they went at it with a vengeance, towel-snapping, a brief flared genuflection to jock-stereotype, a stage where there's this primate-like pa.s.sion for reda.s.sed bonding in steamy rooms. They were the age staring down the barrel not of Is anything true but of Am I true, of What am I, of What is this thing, and it made them strange. And at E.T.A. only 16s snapped towels, and only for a year or two, but they went at it with a vengeance, towel-snapping, a brief flared genuflection to jock-stereotype, a stage where there's this primate-like pa.s.sion for reda.s.sed bonding in steamy rooms. They were the age staring down the barrel not of Is anything true but of Am I true, of What am I, of What is this thing, and it made them strange.

Then 18's-B/C fence-sitter Duncan van Slack, the kid who carried a guitar around with himself everyplace but never played it, and refused all late-night-sitting-around-someone's-room requests to play, and who was suspected of not being able to play the thing at all, and whose own Da was supposedly a redoubted gene-sequencer in Savannah, poked his head and guitar's neck in the door and said to come quick come quick and then withdrew his head before anybody could ask what was up. and then withdrew his head before anybody could ask what was up.

'If you didn't have such a way with a launch-vector I wouldn't be sure you're ready to hear this, Postalscale.'

'It occurs to me this is your boring man's true talent: the talent for ensnaring,' says the Viking. 'Flee while you can, kid.'

Possalthwaite blew his nose in the crook of his elbow and left it there.

Pemulis, who still used genuine catgut strings, zipped the two sticks he'd chosen into their Dunlop covers. He put an arch-support shoe up on the bench by Postalweight's bottom, looking quickly right and left: 'Todder, you can trust math.'

Freer said 'You heard it here first.'

Pemulis compulsively zipped and unzipped one of the covers. 'Take a breather, Keith. Todd, trust math. As in Matics, Math E. First-order predicate logic. Never fail you. Quant.i.ties and their relation. Rates of change. The vital statistics of G.o.d or equivalent. When all else fails. When the boulder's slid all the way back to the bottom. When the headless are blaming. When you do not know your way about. You can fall back and regroup around math. Whose truth is deductive truth. Independent of sense or emotionality. The syllogism. The ident.i.ty. Modus Tollens. Transitivity. Heaven's theme song. The nightlight on life's dark wall, late at night. Heaven's recipe book. The hydrogen spiral. The methane, ammonia, H2O. Nucleic acids. A and G, T and C. The creeping inevibatility. Caius is mortal. Math is not mortal. What it is is: listen: it's true.'

'This from a man on academic probation for who knows the length.'

Something involving Freer and a saline-moistened cattle-prod refused to quite mentally gel. There was still none of Tenuate's stomachless verve or well-being, just a glittered hum in his head and sinuses that felt like wind-tunnels. Pemulis tended to be a mouth-breather. The Viking raised one leg to fart toward Pemulis in a vaudevillian way, getting a laugh from Csikszentmihalyi and Rader, who'd mostly undressed and taken seats on the bench opposite Pemulis and Postal Weight, towels hung unwinding in their hands, watching, and were only every once in a while and in a halfhearted way pretending to look like they were getting ready to snap each other.

'I'm not a math person, Dad says,' said Postal Weight. Again the nose made the words come out dot dot and and bath bath and and persod persod. Csikszentmihalyi feinted a lunge and then really lunged and there was brief flurry of terrycloth.

Pemulis unzipped the cover. 'The axiom. The lemma. Listen: "If two different sets of parametric equations represent the same curve J, but the curve is traced in opposite directions in the two cases, then the two sets of equations produce values for a line integral over J that are negatives of each other." Not "If thus-and-such." Not " thus-and-such." Not "unless a gladhanding commercial realtor from Boardman MN in $400 Banfi loafers changes his mind." Always and ever. As in puts the a gladhanding commercial realtor from Boardman MN in $400 Banfi loafers changes his mind." Always and ever. As in puts the a a in in a priori a priori. An honest lamp in the inkiest black, Toddleposter.'

There were voices and running feet like some sort of ruckus. McKenna stuck his head in and looked wildly around and withdrew without saying anything. Csikszentmihalyi went out after him. Freer and Rader both said What the f.u.c.k. Pemulis had only one b.u.t.ton of his fly b.u.t.toned and was pointing at the ceiling with a finger: '... Only that at times like this, when you're directionless in a dark wood, trust to the abstract deductive. When driven to your knees, kneel and revere the double S. Leap like a knight of faith into the arms of Peano, Leibniz, Hilbert, L'Hopital. You will be lifted up. Fourier, Gauss, LaPlace, Rickey. Borne up. Never let fall. Wiener, Reimann, Frege, Green.'

Csikszentmihalyi came back in with Ortho Stice, their color high.

Pemulis compulsively zips and unzips zippers, is the reason why he wears only b.u.t.ton-fly pants and tennis shorts.

Cs/yi said 'There is expression. You must immediately come.'

Freer turned from the mirror, both hands on a comb. 'What the f.u.c.k's going on?'

'John Wayne is insanely holding forth innermost thoughts for public ears.'

'Never trust the father you can see,' Pemulis told Possalthwaite.

Stice was already on his way back out and said over his shoulder, 'Troeltsch's got Wayne on the air and Wayne's lost his mind.' (back to text) (back to text) 325. (whose theories of detection and interview are strongly informed by the b/w noir films Tine so enjoyed as a boy late at night on local broadcast television, and misses) (back to text) (back to text) 326. (and then some) (back to text) (back to text) 327. Bolex H64, -32 and -16 models come with a turret that accepts three C-mount lenses, which gives the models a kind of multi-eyed, alien-facial look. (back to text) (back to text) 328. (though never unveiled) (back to text) (back to text) 329. (which is actually complete horses.h.i.t, but goes unchallenged by the O.U.S. operatives, who are pretty savvy at choosing their heuristic battles) (back to text) (back to text) 330. (given the guy's track record with ingestion) (back to text) (back to text) 331. Picaresque Picaresque pretty obviously referring to the comic-Surrealist tradition of Bay Area avant-gardeists like Peterson & Broughton, since Peterson's pretty obviously referring to the comic-Surrealist tradition of Bay Area avant-gardeists like Peterson & Broughton, since Peterson's Potted Psalm Potted Psalm's mother-and-Death stuff and The Cage The Cage's cranial-imprisonment and disconnected-eyeball stuff are pretty obvious touchstones in a lot of Himself's more parodic-slapstick productions. (back to text) (back to text) 332.

17 NOV. Y.D.A.U.

'Gracious me and mine,' Pemulis said, clutching the ankle of the leg he'd crossed to keep the foot from joggling.