Infinite Jest (178 page)

'I think I understand.’

'I'm working Nine, now.’

Pat said 'The Ninth Step.’

The A.D.A. reversed the hat's rotation by moving his fingers in the opposite direction along the brim.

'I'm trying to make direct amends to whosoever my Fourth- and Eighth-Step work's revealed I've harmed, except in cases where to do so would injure them or others.’

A tiny spiritual slip from Pat in the form of a patronizing smile. 'I have a nodding acquaintance with Nine myself.’

The A.D.A. was barely there, his eyes fixed and dilated. The remorselessly ingathered eyebrow-angle Pat had always seen in his photos was completely reversed. The brows now formed a little peaked roof of pathos.

'One of your residents,' he said. 'A Mr. Gately, Court-Remanded out of the 5th Circuit, Peabody I believe. Or Staff counselor, alumni, some status.’

Pat made a kind of exaggerated innocent trying-to-place-the-name-type face.

The A.D.A. said 'It doesn't matter. I'm aware of your constraints. I want nothing from you on him. It's him I've been up at Saint Elizabeth's to see.’

Pat allowed herself one slightly flared nostril at this news.

The A.D.A. leaned forward, hat rotating between his calves, elbows on knees in the odd defecatory posture men used to try to communicate earnestness in their sharing. 'I'm told — I owe the — Mr. Gately — an amend. I need to make an amend to Mr. Gately.' He looked up. 'You too — this remains within these walls, as if it were my anonymity. All right?’

'Yes.’

'It doesn't matter what for. I blamed the — I've harbored a resentment, against this Gately, concerning an incident I'd considered responsible for making Tooty's phobia reflare. It doesn't matter. The specifics, or his culpability or exposure to prosecution in the incident — I've come to believe these don't matter. I've harbored this resentment. The kid's picture's been up on my Priority-board with the pictures of far more objectively important threats to the public weal. I've been biding my time, waiting to get him. This latest incident — no, don't say it, you needn't say a thing — seemed like just the opening. My last chance went federal and then fizzled.’

Pat allowed herself a very slightly puzzled forehead.

The man waved the hat. 'It doesn't matter. I've hated, hated this man. You know that Enfield's Suffolk County. This incident with the Canadian assault, the alleged firearm, the witnesses who can't depose because of their own exposure. . . . My sponsor, my entire Group — they say if I act on the resentment I'm doomed. I'll get no relief. It won't help Tooty. Tooty's lips will still be white pulp from the peroxide, her enamel in tatters from the constant irrational brushing and brushing and brushing and —' he clamped his fine clean hand over his mouth and produced a high-pitched noise that frankly gave Pat the howlers, his right eyelid twitching.

He took several breaths. 'I need to let it go. I've come to believe that. Not just the prosecution — that's the easy part. I've already tossed the file, though whatever civil liability the — Mr. Gately might face is another matter, not my concern. It's so damnably ironic. The man's going to two-step out of at the very least a probation-violation and prosecution on all his old highly convictable charges because I have to pitch the case, for the sake of my own recovery, I, who wanted nothing so much as to see this man locked down in a cell with some psychopathic cellmate for the rest of his natural life, who shook my fist at the ceiling and vowed —' and again the noise, this time muffled by the fine hat and so less well-muffled, his shoes pounding a little on the carpet in rage so that Pat's dogs raised their heads and looked quizzically at him, and the epileptic one had a very small loud-noise seizure.

'I hear you saying this is very hard but you've decided what you need to do.’

'Worse,' the A.D.A. said, blotting his brow with an unfolded handkerchief. 'I have to make an amend, my sponsor's said. If I want the growth that promises real relief. I have to make direct amends, put out my hand and say that I'm sorry and ask the man's forgiveness for my own failure to forgive. This is the only way I'll be able to forgive him. And I can't detach with love from Tooty's phobic compulsion until I've forgiven the b— the man I've blamed in my heart.’

Pat looked him in the eye.

'Of course I can't say I've tossed the Canadian case's file, I needn't go that far they say. That would expose me to conflict of interest — the irony — and could hurt Tooty, if my position's threatened. I've been told I can simply let him simmer on that until time passes and nothing moves forward.' He raised his own eyes. 'Which means you cannot tell anyone either. Declining to prosecute for personal spiritual reasons — the office — it would be hard for others to understand. This is why I've come to you in explicit confidence.’

'I hear your request and I'll honor it.’

'But listen. I can't do it. Cannot. I've sat outside that hospital room saying the Serenity Prayer over and over and praying for willingness and thinking of my own spiritual interests and believing this amend is my Higher Power's will for my own growth and I haven't been able to go in. I go and sit paralyzed outside the room for several hours and drive home and pry Tooty away from the sink. It can't go on. I have to look that rotten — no, evil, I'm convinced in my heart, that son of a bitch is evil and deserves to be removed from the community. I have to walk in there and extend my hand and tell him I've wished him ill and blamed him and ask for forgiveness — him — if you knew what sick, twisted, sadistically evil and sick thing he did to us, to her — and ask him for forgiveness. Whether he forgives or not is not the issue. It's my own side of the street I need to clean.’

'It sounds very, very hard,' Pat said.

The fine hat was almost spinning between the man's calves, the pantcuffs of which had been pulled up in the defecatory forward lean to reveal socks that weren't, it seemed, both quite the same texture of wool. The mismatched socks spoke to Pat's heart more than anything else.

'I don't even know why I came here,' he said. 'I couldn't simply leave again and drive home. Yesterday she'd been at her tongue with one of those old NoCoat LinguaScraper appliances until it bled. I can't go home and look on that again without having cleaned house.’

'I hear you.’

'And you were just down the hill.’

'I understand.’

'I don't expect help or counsel. I already believe I have to do it. I've accepted the injunction to do it. I believe I have no choice. But I can't do it. I haven't been able to do it.’

'Willing, maybe.’

'Haven't yet been willing. Yet. I wish to emphasize yet.’

20 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT

IMMEDIATELY PRE-FUNDRAISER-EXHIBITION-FÊTE

GAUDEAMUS IGITUR

Usually, part of the experience of having the place you live in throw a gala is watching different people arrive for the festivities — the Warshavers, the Cartons and Peltasons and Prines, the Chins, the Middlebrooks and Gelbs, an incidental Lowell, the Buckmans in their claret-colored Volvo driven by their silent grown son who you never see except when he's driving Kirk and Binnie Buckman someplace. Dr. Hickle and his creepy niece. The Chawafs and Heavens. The Reehagens. The palsied and mega wealthy Mrs. Warshaver with her pair of designer canes. The Donagan brothers from Svelte Nail. But usually we never get to see them arriving, the friends and patrons of E.T.A., for the Fundraising exhibition and gala. Usually while they're arriving and getting greeted by Tavis we're all down in the lockers, dressing and stretching, getting ready to exhibit. Getting shaved and taped by Loach, etc.

It must usually be an unusual occasion for the guests, too, because for the first few hours they're there to watch us play — they're all audience — then at some point with the last couple matches winding down the guys in white jackets with trays start appearing in Comm.-Ad., and the gala starts, and then it's the guests who become the participants and performers.

Dressing and stretching, wrapping grips with Gauze-Tex or filling a pouch with fuller's earth (Coyle, Freer, Slice, Traub) or sawdust (Wagen-knecht, Chu), getting taped, those in puberty getting shaved and taped. A ritual. Even the conversation, usually, such as it is, has a timeless ceremonial aspect. John Wayne hunched as always on the bench before his locker with his towel like a hood over his head, running a coin back and forth over the backs of his fingers. Shaw pinching the flesh between his thumb and first finger, acupressure for a headache. Everyone had gone into their like autopilot ritual. Possalthwaite's sneakers were pigeon-toed under a stall door. Kahn was trying to spin a tennis ball on his finger like a basketball. At the sink, Eliot Kornspan was blowing out his sinuses with hot water; no one else was anywhere near the sink. A certain number of hysterical pre-competition rumors about the Quebec Jr. Team and the severity of the weather circulated and were refuted and shifted antigens and returned. You could hear the high-register end of the wind even down here. The Csikszentmihalyi kid was doing a kind of piaffer in place, his knees hitting his chest, stretching his hip-flexors out. Troeltsch sat up against his locker near Wayne, wearing a disconnected headset and broadcasting his own match in advance. There were fart-accusations and -denials. Rader snapped a towel at Wagenknecht, who liked to stand for long periods of time bent at the waist with his head against his knees. Arslanian sat very still in a corner, blindfolded in what was either an ascot or a very fey necktie, his head cocked in the attitude of the blind. It was unclear whether B squads would even get to play; no one was sure how many courts the M.I.T. Union had inside. Rumors flew this way and that. Michael Pemulis was nowhere to be seen since early this A.M., at which time Anton Doucette said he'd seen Pemulis quote 'lurking' out by the West House dumpsters looking quote 'anxiously depressed.’

Then a small but univocal cheer went up from some of the players when Otis P. Lord appeared at the door, his cadaverous dad escorting him, O.P.L. out of post-op and pale but looking his old self, with just a thin little choker-width bandage of gauze around his neck from the monitor's removal and an odd ellipse of dry red skin around his mouth and nostrils. He came in and shook a few hands and used the stall next to Postal Weight and left; he wasn't playing today.

J. L. Struck was applying an astringent to areas of his jaw.

An hysterical rumor that the Quebec players had been spotted coming down a ramp out of a charter-bus in the main lot and were by all appearances not the Quebec J.D.C. and -W.C. squads but some sort of Special-Olympicish Quebec adult wheelchair-tennis contingent — this rumor flew wildly around the locker room and then died out when a couple of the sub-14's who burned nervous energy by scampering around checking rumors scampered out and up the stairs to check the rumor and failed to return.

Across the wall on the Female side we could easily hear Thode and Donni Stott invoking Camilla, goddess of speed and light step. Thode had had an hysterical tantrum after breakfast because Poutrincourt hadn't showed for the Females' pre-match Staff thing and looked to be AWOL. Loach et al. had outfitted Ted Schacht with a complex knee-brace with jointed aluminum struts down both sides and a coin-sized hole in the elastic over the kneecap for dermal ventilation, and Schacht was lumbering around between the stalls and the locker with his arms straight out and his weight on his heels pretending to walk like Frankenstein. Several people talked to themselves at their lockers. Barry Loach was down on one knee shaving Hal's left ankle for tape. A couple of us remarked how Hal wasn't eating the usual customary Snickers bar or AminoPal. Hal had his hands on Loach's shoulders as the tape went on. A match-wrap is two horizontal layers just above the malleolus knob-thing, then straight down and four times around the tarsus just in front of the joint, so there's a big gap for flexion of the joint, but a compacting and supportive wrap. Then Loach puts a liner-sock and a wick-sock over the tape, then slides on the little inflatable AirCast deal and pumps it to the right pressure, checking with a little gauge, and Velcros it just tight enough for support plus max-flexion. Hal was on the bench with his hands on Loach's shoulders through the whole little routine. Everybody's had his hands on Loach's shoulders at one time or another. Hal's shave and wrap take four minutes. Schacht's knee and Fran Unwin's hamstring thing each take over ten. Wayne's quarter looked like it was dancing on his knuckles. Because of the towel over his head all you could see was a very thin oval section of his face, like an almond on its end. Wayne got to have a small disk-player in his locker, and Joni Mitchell was playing, which nobody ever minded because he kept it very low. Stice was blowing a purple bubble. Freer was trying to touch his toes. Traub and Whale, also on the wrap-bench, later said Hal was being weird. Like they said asking Loach if the pre-match locker room ever gave him a weird feeling, occluded, electric, as if all this had been done and said so many times before it made you feel it was recorded, they all in here existed basically as Fourier Transforms of postures and little routines, locked down and stored and call-uppable for rebroadcast at specified times. What Traub heard as Fourier Transforms Whale heard as Furrier Transforms. But also, as a consequence, erasable, Hal had said. By whom? Hal before a match usually had a wide-eyed ingen-uish anxiety of someone who'd never been in a situation even remotely like this before. His face today had assumed various expressions ranging from distended hilarity to scrunched grimace, expressions that seemed unconnected to anything that was going on. The word was that Tavis and Schtitt had chartered three buses to take the squads to an indoor venue Mrs. Inc had had alumnus Corbett Th-Thorp call in mammoth favors to arrange — several mostly unused courts somewhere in the deep-brain tissue of the M.I.T. Student Union — and that the whole gala would be moved over to the Student Union, and that the Quebec team and most of the guests were being contacted by cellular about the cancellation of the previous cancellation and the change in venue, and that those guests who didn't hear about the change would ride in the buses with the players and staff, some of them in formal- and evening-wear, probably, the guests. Traub also says he also heard Hal use the word moribund, but Whale couldn't confirm. Schacht entered a stall and drove the latch home with a certain purposeful sound that produced that momentary gunslinger-enters-saloon-type hush throughout the locker room. Nobody in the vicinity could say they heard Barry Loach respond one way or another to any of the strange moody things Hal was saying as Loach locked down the ankle for high-level play. Wa-genknecht apparently really did fart.