"Just one more confirmation. The trailer"s interior. There was some object or contiguous trio of objects with the following color scheme: brown, lavender, and either mint-green or jonquil-yellow."
"I can call back when you"re more yourself. The leg"s starting to prune a bit from the whirlpool anyway."
"I"ll be right here. I"ve got a whole foot to yield to the magic with. I"m not going to alter the smallest particular. I"m just about ready to bear down on the clippers. It"s going to feel right, I know."
"A throw. Like an afghan throw, on the chintz sofa. The yellow was more fluorescent than jonquil."
"And the word is asphyxiated asphyxiated. Kick some egg-shaped b.a.l.l.s for all of us, O. The next sound you hear will be unpleasant," Hal said, holding the phone down right next to the foot, his expression terrifically intense.
6 NOVEMBER.
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.
White halogen off the green of the composite surface, the light out on the indoor courts at the Port Washington Tennis Academy is the color of sour apples. To the spectators at the gallery"s gla.s.s, the duos of players arrayed and moving down below have a reptilian tinge to their skin, a kind of seasick-type pallor. This annual meet is mammoth: both academies" A and B teams for both Boys and Girls, both singles and doubles, in 14 and Unders, 16 and Unders, 18 and Unders. Thirty-six courts stretch out down away from one end"s gallery under a fancy tri-domed system of permanent all-weather Lung.
A jr. tennis team has six people on it, with the highest-ranked playing #1 singles against the other team"s best guy, the next-highest-ranked playing #2, and on down the line to #6. After the six singles matches there are three doubles, with a team"s best two singles players usually turning around and also playing #1 doubles - with occasional exceptions, e.g. the Vaught twins, or the fact that Schacht and Troeltsch, way down on the B squad in 18"s singles, play #2 doubles on E.T.A."s 18"s A team, because they"ve been a doubles team since they were incontinent toddlers back in Philly, and they"re so experienced and smooth together they can wipe surfaces with the 18"s A team"s #3 and #4 singles guys, Coyle and Axford, who prefer to skip doubles altogether. It all tends to get complicated, and probably not all that interesting - unless you play.
But so a normal meet between two junior teams is the best out of nine matches, whereas this mammoth annual early-November thing between E.T.A. and P.W.T.A. will try to be the best out of 108. A 54-match-all conclusion is extremely unlikely - odds being 1 in 227 - and has never happened in nine years. The meet"s always down on Long Island because P.W.T.A. has indoor courts out the bazoo. Each year the academy that loses the meet has to get up on tables at the buffet supper afterward and sing a really silly song. An even more embarra.s.sing transaction is supposed to take place in private between the two schools" Headmasters, but n.o.body knows quite what. Last year Enfield lost 5751 and Charles Tavis didn"t say one word on the bus-ride home and used the lavatory several times. - and has never happened in nine years. The meet"s always down on Long Island because P.W.T.A. has indoor courts out the bazoo. Each year the academy that loses the meet has to get up on tables at the buffet supper afterward and sing a really silly song. An even more embarra.s.sing transaction is supposed to take place in private between the two schools" Headmasters, but n.o.body knows quite what. Last year Enfield lost 5751 and Charles Tavis didn"t say one word on the bus-ride home and used the lavatory several times.
But last year E.T.A. didn"t have John Wayne, and last year H. J. Incandenza hadn"t yet exploded, compet.i.tively. John Wayne, formerly of Mont-cerf, Quebec - an asbestos-mining town ten clicks or so from the infamously rupture-p.r.o.ne Mercier Dam - formerly the top-ranked junior male in Canada at sixteen as well as #5 overall in the Organization of North American Nations Tennis a.s.sociation computerized rankings, was finally successfully recruited by Gerhardt Scht.i.tt and Aubrey deLint last spring via the argument that two gratis years at an American academy would maybe let Wayne bypa.s.s the usual couple seasons of top college tennis and go pro immediately at nineteen with more than enough compet.i.tive tempering. This reasoning was not unsound, since the top four U.S. tennis academies" tournament schedules closely resemble the A.T.P. tour in terms of numbing travel and continual stress. John Wayne is currently ranked #3 in the O.N.A.N.T.A."s Boys" 18"s and #2 in the U.S.T.A. (Canada, under Provincial pressure, has disowned him as an emigrant) and has in this Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment reached the semis of both the Junior French and Junior U.S. Opens, and has lost to exactly n.o.body American in seven meets and a dozen major tournaments. He trails the #1 American kid, an Independent 85 85 down in Florida, Veach, by only a couple U.S.T.A. computer points, and they haven"t yet met in sanctioned play this year, and the kid is well known to be hiding out from Wayne, avoiding him, staying down in Pompano Beach, allegedly nursing a like four-month groin-pull, sitting on his ranking. He"s supposed to show at the WhataBurger Invitational in AZ in a couple weeks, this Veach, having won the 18"s at age seventeen there last year, but he"s got to know Wayne"s coming down, and speculation is rife and complex. O.N.A.N.T.A.-wise, there"s an Argentine kid that Mexico"s Academia de Vera Cruz has got rat-holed away who"s #1 and not about to lose to anybody, having this year taken three out of four legs of the Junior Grand Slam, the first time anybody"s done that since a sepulchral Czech kid named Lendl, who retired from the Show and suicided well before the advent of Subsidized Time. But so there"s Wayne at #1. down in Florida, Veach, by only a couple U.S.T.A. computer points, and they haven"t yet met in sanctioned play this year, and the kid is well known to be hiding out from Wayne, avoiding him, staying down in Pompano Beach, allegedly nursing a like four-month groin-pull, sitting on his ranking. He"s supposed to show at the WhataBurger Invitational in AZ in a couple weeks, this Veach, having won the 18"s at age seventeen there last year, but he"s got to know Wayne"s coming down, and speculation is rife and complex. O.N.A.N.T.A.-wise, there"s an Argentine kid that Mexico"s Academia de Vera Cruz has got rat-holed away who"s #1 and not about to lose to anybody, having this year taken three out of four legs of the Junior Grand Slam, the first time anybody"s done that since a sepulchral Czech kid named Lendl, who retired from the Show and suicided well before the advent of Subsidized Time. But so there"s Wayne at #1.
And it"s been established that Hal Incandenza, last year a respectable but by no means to-write-home-about 43rd nationally and bouncing between #4 and #5 on the Academy"s A team in Boys" 16"s singles, has made a kind of quantumish compet.i.tive plateaux-hop such that this year - the one nearly done, Kimberly-Clark Corp."s Depend Absorbent Products Division soon to give way to the highest corporate bidder for rights to the New Year - Incandenza, mind you this year just seventeen, is 4th in the nation and #6 on the O.N.A.N.T.A. computer and playing A-#2 for E.T.A. in Boys" 18"s. These compet.i.tive explosions happen sometimes. n.o.body at the Academy talks to Hal much about the explosion, sort of the way you avoid a pitcher who"s got a no-hitter going. Hal"s delicate and spinny, rather cerebral game hasn"t altered, but this year it seems to have grown a beak. No longer fragile or abstracted-looking on court, he seems now almost to hit the corners without thinking about it. His Unforced-Error stats look like a decimal-error.
Hal"s game involves attrition. He"ll probe, pecking, until some angle opens up. Until then he"ll probe. He"d rather run his man ragged, wear him down. Three different opponents this past summer had to go to oxygen during breaks. 86 86 His serve yanks across at people as if on a hidden diagonal string. His serve, now, suddenly, after four summers of thousand-a-day serves to no one at dawn, is suddenly supposed to be one of the best left-handed kick serves the junior circuit has ever seen. Scht.i.tt calls Hal Incandenza his "revenant," now, and sometimes points his pointer at him in an affectionate way from his observation crow"s nest in the transom, during drills. His serve yanks across at people as if on a hidden diagonal string. His serve, now, suddenly, after four summers of thousand-a-day serves to no one at dawn, is suddenly supposed to be one of the best left-handed kick serves the junior circuit has ever seen. Scht.i.tt calls Hal Incandenza his "revenant," now, and sometimes points his pointer at him in an affectionate way from his observation crow"s nest in the transom, during drills.
Most of the singles" A matches are under way. Coyle and his man on 3 are in an endless b.u.t.terfly-shaped rally. Hal"s muscular but unquick opponent is bent over trying to get his breath while Hal stands there and futzes with his strings. Tall Paul Shaw on 6 bounces the ball eight times before he serves. Never seven or nine.
And John Wayne"s without question the best male player to appear at Enfield Academy in several years. He"d been spotted first by the late Dr. James Incandenza at age six, eleven summers back, when Incandenza was doing an early and coldly conceptual Super-8 on people named John Wayne who were not the real thespio-historical John Wayne, a film Wayne"s not-tobe-f.u.c.ked-with papa eventually litigated the kid"s segment out of because the film had the word h.o.m.o h.o.m.o in the t.i.tle. in the t.i.tle. 87 87 On 1, with John Wayne up at net, Port Washington"s best boy throws up a lob. It"s a beauty: the ball soars slowly up, just skirts the indoor courts" system of beams and lamps, and floats back down gentle as lint: a lovely quad-function of fluorescent green, seams whirling. John Wayne backpedals and flies back after it. You can tell - if you play seriously - you can tell just by the way the ball comes off a guy"s strings whether the lob is going to land fair. There"s surprisingly little thought. Coaches tell serious players what to do so often it gets automatic. John Wayne"s game could be described as having a kind of automatic beauty. When the lob first went up he"d back-pedaled from the net, keeping the ball in sight until it reached the top of its flight and its curve broke, casting many shadows in the tray of lights hung from the ceiling"s insulation; then Wayne turned his back to the ball and sprinted flat-out for the spot where it will land fair. Would land. He doesn"t have to locate the ball again until it"s. .h.i.t the green court just inside the baseline. By now he"s come around the side of the bounced ball"s flight, still sprinting. He looks mean in a kind of distant way. He comes around the side of the bounced ball"s second ascent the way you come up around the side of somebody you"re going to hurt, and he has to leave his feet and half-pirouette to get his side to the ball and whip his big right arm through it, catching it on the rise and slapping it down the line past the Port Washington boy, who"s played the percentages and followed a beauty of a lob up to net. The Port Washington kid applauds with the heel of his hand against his strings in acknowledgment of a really nice get, even as he looks up at Port Washington"s coaching staff in the gallery. The spectators" gla.s.s panel is at ground level, and the players play below it on courts that have been carved out of a kind of pit, dug long ago: some northeast clubs favor courts below ground, because earth insulates and keeps utility bills daunting instead of prohibitive, once the Lungs go up. The gallery panel stretches overhead behind Courts 1 through 6, but there"s a decided spectatorial clumping at the part of the gallery that looks out over the Show Courts, Boys" 18"s #1 and #2, Wayne and Hal and P.W.T.A."s two best. Now after Wayne"s balletic winner there"s the sad sound of a small crowd behind gla.s.s"s applause; on the courts the applause is m.u.f.fled and compromised by on-court sounds, and sounds like the trapped survivors of something tapping for help at a great depth. The panel is like an aquarium"s gla.s.s, thick and clean, and traps noise behind it, and to the gallery it seems that 72 well-muscled children are arrayed and competing in total silence in the pit. Almost everyone in the gallery is wearing tennis clothes and bright nylon warm-ups; some even wear wristbands, the tennis equivalent of a football fan"s pennant and racc.o.o.n coat.
John Wayne"s post-pirouette backward inertia has carried him into the heavy black tarpaulin that hangs several meters behind both sides of the 36 courts on a system of rods and rings not unlike a very ambitious shower-curtain, the tarps hiding from view the waterstained walls of puffy white-wrapped insulation and creating a narrow pa.s.sage for players to get to their courts without crossing open court and interrupting play. Wayne hits the heavy tarp and kind of bounces off, producing a boom that resounds. The sounds on court in an indoor venue are huge and complex; everything echoes and the echoes then meld. In the gallery, Tavis and Nw.a.n.gi bite their knuckles and deLint squashes his nose flat against the gla.s.s in anxiety as everyone else politely applauds. Scht.i.tt calmly taps his pointer against the top of his boot at times of high stress. Wayne isn"t hurt, though. Everybody goes into the tarp sometimes. That"s what it"s there for. It always sounds worse than it is.
The boom of the tarp sounds bad down below, though. The boom rattles Teddy Schacht, who"s kneeling in the little pa.s.sage right behind Court 1, holding M. Pemulis"s head as Pemulis down on one knee is sick into a tall white plastic spare-ball bucket. Schacht has to haul Pemulis slightly back as Wayne"s outline bulges for a moment into the billowing tarp and threatens to knock Pemulis over, plus maybe the bucket, which would be a bad scene. Pemulis, deep into the little h.e.l.l of his own nauseous pre-match nerves, is too busy trying to vomit w/o sound to hear the mean sound of Wayne"s winner or the boom of him against the heavy curtain. It"s freezing back here in the little pa.s.sage, up next to insulation and I-beams and away from the infrared heaters that hang over the courts. The plastic bucket is full of old bald Wilson tennis b.a.l.l.s and Pemulis"s breakfast. There is of course an odor. Schacht doesn"t mind. He lightly strokes the sides of Pemulis"s head as his mother had stroked his own big sick head, back in Philly.
Placed at eye-level intervals in the tarp are little plastic windows, archer-slit views of each court from the cold backstage pa.s.sage. Schacht sees John Wayne walk to the net-post and flip his card as he and his opponent change sides. Even indoors, you change ends of the court after every odd-numbered game. No one knows why odd rather than even. Each P.W.T.A. court has, welded to its west net-post, another smaller post with a double set of like flippable cards with big red numerals from 1 to 7; in umpless compet.i.tion you"re supposed to flip your card appropriately at every change of sides, to help the gallery follow the score in the set. A lot of junior players neglect to flip their cards. Wayne is always automatic and scrupulous in his accounts. Wayne"s father is an asbestos miner who at forty-three is far and away the seniorest guy on his shift; he now wears triple-thick masks and is trying to hold on until John Wayne can start making serious $ and take him away from all this. He has not seen his eldest son play since John Wayne"s Quebecois and Canadian citizenships were revoked last year. Wayne"s card is on (5); his opponent has yet to flip a card. Wayne never even sits down to take the 60 seconds he"s allowed on each change of sides. His opponent, in his light-blue flare-collared shirt with WILSON and P.W.T.A. on the sleeves, says something not unfriendly as Wayne brushes past him by the post. Wayne doesn"t respond one way or the other. He just goes back to the baseline farthest from Schacht"s little tarp-window and bounces a ball up and down in the air with the reticulate face of his stick as the Port Washington boy sits in his little canvas director"s chair and towels the sweat off his arms (neither of which is large) and looks briefly up at the gallery behind the panel. The thing about Wayne is he"s all business. His face on court is blankly rigid, with the hypertonic masking of schizophrenics and Zen adepts. He tends to look straight ahead at all times. He is about as reserved as they come. His emotions emerge in terms of velocity. Intelligence as strategic focus. His play, like his manner in general, seems to Schacht less alive than undead. Wayne tends to eat and study alone. He"s sometimes seen with two or three expatriate E.T.A. Nucks, but when they"re together they all seem morose. It"s wholly unclear to Schacht how Wayne feels about the U.S. or his citizenship-status. He figures Wayne figures it doesn"t much matter: he is destined for the Show; he will be an all-business entertainer, citizen of the world, everywhere undead, endorsing juice drinks and liniment ointment.
Pemulis has nothing left and is spasming dryly over the bucket, his covered Dunlop gut-strung sticks and gear tumbled just past Schacht"s in the pa.s.sage. They are the last guys to get out on court. Schacht is to play #3 singles on the 18"s B team, Pemulis #6-B. They are undeniably tardy getting out there. Their opponents stand out on the baselines of Courts 9 and 12 waiting for them to come out and warm up, jittery, stretching out the way you do when you"ve already stretched out, dribbling fresh bright b.a.l.l.s with their black Wilson widebody sticks. The whole Port Washington Tennis Academy student body gets free and mandatory Wilson sticks under an administrative contract. Nothing personal, but no way would Schacht let an academy tell him what brand of stick to swing. He himself favors Head Masters, which is regarded as bizarre and eccentric. The AMF-Head rep brings them out to him out of some cobwebby warehouse where they"re kept since the line was discontinued during the large-head revolution many years back. Aluminum Head Masters have small, perfectly round heads and a dull blue plastic brace in the V of the throat and look less like weapons than toys. Coyle and Axford are always kibitzing that they"ve seen a Head Master for sale at like a flea market or garage sale someplace and Schacht better get down there quick. Schacht, who"s historically tight with Mario and with Lyle down in the weight room (where Schacht, since the knee and the Crohn"s Disease, likes to go even on off-days, to work off discomfort, and deLint and Loach are always on him about not getting musclebound), has a way of just smiling and holding his tongue when he"s kibitzed.
"Are you okay?"
Pemulis says "Blarg." He wipes at his forehead in a gesture of completion and submits to being hauled to his feet and stands there on his own with his hands on his hips, slightly bent.
Schacht straightens and pulls some wrinkles out of the bandage around the brace on his knee. "Take maybe another second. Wayne"s already way up."
Pemulis sniffs unpleasantly. "How come this happens to me every time? This is not like me."
"Happens to some people is all."
"This hunched spurting pale guy is not any me I ever recognize."
Schacht gathers gear. "Some people their nerves are in their stomachs. Cisne, Yard-Guard, Lord, you: stomach men."
"Teddy brother man I"m never once once hungover for a compet.i.tive thing. I take elaborate precautions. Not so much as a whippet. I"m always in bed the night before by 2300 all pink-cheeked and clean." hungover for a compet.i.tive thing. I take elaborate precautions. Not so much as a whippet. I"m always in bed the night before by 2300 all pink-cheeked and clean."
As they pa.s.s the plastic window behind Court 2 Schacht sees Hal Incandenza try to pa.s.s his serve-and-volley guy with a baroque sideways slice down the backhand side and miss just wide. Hal"s card"s already flipped to (4). Schacht gives a little toodleoo-wave that Hal can"t see to acknowledge. Pemulis is in front of him as they go down the cold pa.s.sage.
"Hal"s way up too. Another victory for the forces of peace."
"Jesus I feel awful," Pemulis says.
"Things could be worse."
"Expand on that, will you?"
"This wasn"t like that Atlanta stomach-incident. We were enclosed here. No one saw. You saw that gla.s.s; to Scht.i.tt and deLint it"s all a silent movie down here. n.o.body heard thing one. Our guys"ll think we were back here b.u.t.ting heads to get enraged or something. Or we can tell them I got a cramp. That was a freebie, in terms of stomach-incidents."
Pemulis is a whole different person before compet.i.tive play.
"I"m f.u.c.king inept."
Schacht laughs. "You"re one of the eptest people I know. Get off your own back."
"Never remember getting sick as a kid. Now it"s like I make myself sick just from worrying about getting sick."
"Well then there you go. Just don"t think anything thoracic. Pretend you don"t have a stomach."
"I have no stomach," Pemulis says. His head stays still when he talks, at least, negotiating the pa.s.sage. He carries four sticks, a rough white P.W.T.A. locker-room towel, an empty ball-can full of high-chlorine Long Island water, nervously zipping and unzipping the top stick"s cover. Schacht only ever carries three sticks. His don"t have covers on them. Except for Pemulis and Rader and Unwin and a couple others who favor gut strings and really need protection, n.o.body at Enfield uses racquet-covers; it"s like an antifashion statement. People with covers make a point of telling you they"re valid and for gut. A similar point of careful nonpride is never having their shirts tucked in. Ortho Stice used to drill in cut-off black jeans until Scht.i.tt had Tony Nw.a.n.gi go over and scream at him about it. Each academy has its own style or antistyle. The P.W.T.A. people, more or less a de facto subsidiary of Wilson, have unnecessary light-blue Wilson covers on all their courtside synthetic-strung sticks and big red W"s stencilled onto their Wilson synth-gut strings. You have to let your company of choice spraypaint their logo on your strings if you want to be on their Free List for sticks, is the universal junior deal. Schacht"s orange Gamma-9 synthetic strings have AMF-Head Inc."s weird Taoist paraboloid logo sprayed on. Pemulis isn"t on Dunlop"s Free List 88 88 but gets the E.T.A. stringer to put Dunlop"s dot-andcirc.u.mflex trademark on all his stick"s strings, as a kind of touchingly insecure gesture, in Schacht"s opinion. but gets the E.T.A. stringer to put Dunlop"s dot-andcirc.u.mflex trademark on all his stick"s strings, as a kind of touchingly insecure gesture, in Schacht"s opinion.
"I played your guy in Tampa two years ago," Pemulis says, sidestepping one of the old discolored drill-b.a.l.l.s that always litter pa.s.sages behind indoor tarps. "Name escapes."
"Le-something," says Schacht. "Yet another Nuck. One of those names that start with Le." Mario Incandenza, in a pair of little Audern Tallat-Kelpsa"s E.T.A. drill-sweats, is lurching noiselessly some ten m. behind them in the pa.s.sage, his police-lock up and head uncamera"d; he"s framing Schacht"s back in a three-cornered box with his thumbs and long fingers, simulating the view through a lens. Mario"s been authorized to travel with the squads to the WhataBurger Invitational for final footage for his short and upbeat annual doc.u.mentary - brief testimonials and lighthearted moments and behind-the-scenes shots and emotional moments on court, etc. - that every year gets distributed to E.T.A. alumni and patrons and guests at the pre-Thanksgiving fundraising exhibition and formal fete. Mario is wondering how you could get enough light back here in a tarp-tunnel to film a tense cold pre-match gladiatorial march behind an indoor tarp, carrying tennis racquets in your arms like an obscene bouquet, without sacrificing the dim and diffuse and kind of gladiatorially doomed quality figures in the dim pa.s.sage have. After Pemulis has mysteriously won, he"ll tell Mario maybe a Marino 350 with a diffusion-filter on some kind of overhead cable you could winch along behind the figures at about twice the focal length, or else use fast film and station the Marino at the tunnel"s very start and let the figures" backs gradually recede into a kind of doomed mist of low exposure.
"I remember your guy as one big forehand. Nothing but slice off the back. His VAPS never varies. If you kick the serve over to the backhand he"ll slice it short. You can come in behind it at like will."
"Worry about your own guy," Schacht says.
"Your guy"s got zero imagination."
"And you"ve got an empty expanse where your stomach ought to be, remember."
"I am a man with no stomach."
They emerge through flaps in the tarp with hands upraised in slight apology to their opponents, walk out onto the warmer courts, the slow green eraserish footing of indoor composite. Their ears dilate into all the sounds in the larger s.p.a.ce. Gasps and thwaps thwaps and and pocks pocks and sneakers" squeaks. Pemulis"s court is almost down in female territory. Courts 13 to 24 are Girls" 18"s A and B, all bobbing ponytails and two-handed backhands and high-pitched grunts that if girls could only hear what their own grunts sounded like they"d cut it out. Pemulis can"t tell whether the very m.u.f.fled applause way down up behind the gallery-panel is sardonic applause at his finally appearing after several minutes of vomiting or is sincerely for K. D. Coyle on Court 3, who"s just smashed a sucker-lob so hard it"s bounced up and racked 3"s tray of hanging lights. Except for some rubber in his legs Pemulis feels stomachless and tentatively OK. This match is an all-out must-win for him in terms of the WhataBurger. and sneakers" squeaks. Pemulis"s court is almost down in female territory. Courts 13 to 24 are Girls" 18"s A and B, all bobbing ponytails and two-handed backhands and high-pitched grunts that if girls could only hear what their own grunts sounded like they"d cut it out. Pemulis can"t tell whether the very m.u.f.fled applause way down up behind the gallery-panel is sardonic applause at his finally appearing after several minutes of vomiting or is sincerely for K. D. Coyle on Court 3, who"s just smashed a sucker-lob so hard it"s bounced up and racked 3"s tray of hanging lights. Except for some rubber in his legs Pemulis feels stomachless and tentatively OK. This match is an all-out must-win for him in terms of the WhataBurger.
The infra-lit courts are warm and soft; the heaters bolted into both walls above the tarp"s upper hem are the deep warm red of little square suns.
The Port Washington players all wear matching socks and shorts and tucked-in shirts. They look sharp but effete, a mannequinish aspect to them. Most of the higher-ranked E.T.A. students are free to sign on with different companies for no fees but free gear. Coyle is Prince and Reebok, as is Trevor Axford. John Wayne is Dunlop and Adidas. Schacht is Head Master sticks but his own clothes and knee-supports. Ortho Stice is Wilson and all-black Fila. Keith Freer is Fox sticks and both Adidas and Reebok until one of the two companies" NNE reps catches on. Troeltsch is Spalding and d.a.m.n lucky to get that. Hal Incandenza is Dunlop and lightweight Nike hightops and an Air Stirrup brace for the d.i.c.ky ankle. Shaw is Kennex sticks and clothes from Tachani"s Big & Tall line. Pemulis"s entrepreneurial vim has earned him complete freedom of choice and expense, though he"s barred by deLint and Nw.a.n.gi from shirts that mention the Sinn Fein or that extol Allston MA in any way, in compet.i.tion.
Before going back to the baseline and warming up groundstrokes Schacht likes to take a little time courtside futzing around, hitting his heads" frames against strings and listening for the pitch of best tension, arranging his towel on the back of his chair, making sure his cards aren"t still flipped from some previous match, etc., and then he prefers to sort of snuffle around his baseline for a bit, checking for dustbunnies of ball-fuzz and little divots or ridges from cold-weather heave, adjusting the brace on his ruined knee, putting his thick arms out cruciform and pulling them way back to stretch out the old pecs and cuffs. His opponent waits patiently, twirling his polybutylene stick; and when they finally start to hit around, the guy"s expression is pleasant. Schacht always prefers a pleasant match, one way or the other. He really doesn"t care all that much whether he wins anymore, since first the Crohn"s and then the knee at sixteen. He"d probably now describe his desire to win as a preference, nothing more. What"s singular is that his tennis seems to have improved slightly in the two years since he stopped really caring. It"s like his hard flat game stopped having any purpose beyond itself and started feeding on itself and got fuller, looser, its edges less jagged, though everybody else has been improving too, even faster, and Schacht"s rank has been steadily declining since sixteen, and the staff has stopped talking even about a top-college ride. Scht.i.tt"s warmed to him, though, since the knee and the loss of any urge beyond the play itself, and treats Schacht now almost more like a peer than an experimental subject with something at stake. Schacht is already in his heart committed to a dental career, and he even interns twice a week for a root-specialist over at the National Cranio-Facial Pain Foundation, in east Enfield, when not touring.
It strikes Schacht as odd that Pemulis makes such a big deal of stopping all substances the day before compet.i.tive play but never connects the neurasthenic stomach to any kind of withdrawal or dependence. He"d never say this to Pemulis unless Pemulis asked him directly, but Schacht suspects Pemulis is physically "drine-dependent, Preludin or Tenuate or something. It"s not his business.
Schacht"s supposedly French-Canadian guy is as broad as Schacht but shorter, his face dark and with a kind of Eskimoid structure to it, at eighteen his hairline recessed in the sort of way where you just know the kid"s already got hair on his back, and he warms up with crazy spins, moony top off a western forehand and weird inside-out s.h.i.t off a one-hand back, his knees dipping oddly whenever he makes contact and his follow-through full of the dancerly flourishes that characterize a case of nerves. A nervous spin-artist can be eaten more or less for lunch, if you hit as hard as Schacht does, and what Pemulis said is true: the guy"s backhand is always sliced and lands shallow. Schacht looks over at Pemulis"s guy, a grunter with a moody profile and the storky look of recent p.u.b.erty. Pemulis is looking oddly sanguine and confident after a couple minutes futzing with the cans of water, rinsing out the oral cavity and so on. Pemulis is maybe going to win, too, despite himself. Schacht figures he can run in and get one of the twelve-year-olds he Big Buddies to go back into the pa.s.sage and empty Pemulis"s bucket on the sly before anybody coming off court sees it. Evidence of nervous incapacity of any kind gets noted and logged, at E.T.A., and Schacht"s observed Pemulis having some kind of vested emotional interest in attending the WhataBurger Inv. over Thanksgiving. He thought Mario"s lurking around in the cold pa.s.sage scratching his poor big head over technical lighting problems was kind of funny. There will be no Lungs or tarps or dim pa.s.sages at the WhataBurger: the Tucson tournament is outside, and Tucson cruised around 40 C even in November, and the sun there was a retinal horror-show on overheads and serves.
Though Schacht buys quarterly urine like the rest of them, it seems to Pemulis that Schacht ingests the occasional chemical that way grownups who sometimes forget to finish their c.o.c.ktails drink liquor: to make a tense but fundamentally OK interior life interestingly different but no more, no element of relief; a kind of tourism; and Schacht doesn"t even have to worry about obsessive training like Inc or Stice or get sick so often from the physical stress of constant "drines like Troeltsch or suffer from thinly disguised psychological fallout like Inc or Struck or Pemulis himself. The way Pemulis and Troeltsch and Struck and Axford ingest substances and recover from substances and have a whole jargony argot based around various substances gives Schacht the creeps, a bit, but since the knee injury broke and remade him at sixteen he"s learned to go his own interior way and let others go theirs. Like most very large men, he"s getting comfortable early with the fact that his place in the world is very small and his real impact on other persons even smaller - which is a big reason he can sometimes forget to finish his portion of a given substance, so interested does he become in the way he"s already started to feel. He"s one of these people who don"t need much, much less much more.
Schacht and his opponent warm up their groundstrokes with the fluid economy of years of warming up groundstrokes. They take turns feeding each other some volleys at net and then each take a "couple up," lobs, hitting loose easy overheads, slowly adjusting the idle from half-speed to three-quarter-speed. The knee feels fundamentally all right, springy. Slow indoor composite surfaces do not like Schacht"s hard flat game, but they are kind to the knee, which after some days outside on hard cement swells to about the size of a volleyball. Schacht feels blandly happy down here on 9, playing in private, way down past the gallery"s panel. There is a nourishing sense of pregnable s.p.a.ce in a big indoor club that you never get playing outside, especially playing outside in the cold, when the b.a.l.l.s feel hard and sullen and come off the stick"s strung face with an echoless ping ping. Here everything cracks and booms, the grunts and shoe-squeaks and booming pocks pocks of impact and curses unfolding across the white-on-green plane and echoing off each tarp. Soon they"ll all go inside for the winter. Scht.i.tt will yield and let them inflate the E.T.A. Lung over the sixteen Center Courts; it"s like a barn-raising, inflation-day; it"s communal and fun, and they"ll take down the central fences and outdoor night-lamps and unbolt all the posts into sections and stack them and store them, and the TesTar and ATHSCME guys will come up in vans smoking cigarettes and squinting with weary expertise at tubes of plans in draftsman-blue, and there"ll be one and sometimes two ATHSCME helicopters w/ slings and grappling hooks for the Lung"s dome and nacelle; and Scht.i.tt and deLint will let the younger E.T.A.s get the infrared indoor heaters out of the same corrugated shed the disa.s.sembled fences and lamps will go in, leaf-cutter-ant- or Korean-like armies of 14- and 16-year-olds carrying sections and heaters and Gore-Tex swatches and long halo-lithiated bulbs while the 18s get to sit on canvas chairs and kibitz because they did their leaf-cutter Lung-raising bits at 13-16 already. Two TesTar guys"ll supervise Otis P. Lord and all this year"s conspicuous techwonks in mounting the heaters and stringing the lights and running coaxial shunts with ceramic jacks between the Pump Room"s main breaker and the Sunstrand grid and booting up the circulation-fans and pneumatic hoists that"ll raise the Lung to the inflated shape of a distended igloo, sixteen courts in four rows of four, enclosed and warmed by nothing but fibrous Gore-Tex and AC current and an enormous ATHSCME Exhaust-Flow Effectuator that an ATHSCME crew in one of the ATHSCME helicopters will bring in in a sling and cable and mount and secure on the Lung"s nipply nacelle at the top of the inflating dome. And that first night after Inflation, traditionally the fourth Monday of November, all the uppercla.s.s 18s so inclined will crank up the infrareds and get high and eat low-lipid microwave pizza and play all night, sweating magnificently, sheltered for the winter atop Enfield"s level-headed hill. of impact and curses unfolding across the white-on-green plane and echoing off each tarp. Soon they"ll all go inside for the winter. Scht.i.tt will yield and let them inflate the E.T.A. Lung over the sixteen Center Courts; it"s like a barn-raising, inflation-day; it"s communal and fun, and they"ll take down the central fences and outdoor night-lamps and unbolt all the posts into sections and stack them and store them, and the TesTar and ATHSCME guys will come up in vans smoking cigarettes and squinting with weary expertise at tubes of plans in draftsman-blue, and there"ll be one and sometimes two ATHSCME helicopters w/ slings and grappling hooks for the Lung"s dome and nacelle; and Scht.i.tt and deLint will let the younger E.T.A.s get the infrared indoor heaters out of the same corrugated shed the disa.s.sembled fences and lamps will go in, leaf-cutter-ant- or Korean-like armies of 14- and 16-year-olds carrying sections and heaters and Gore-Tex swatches and long halo-lithiated bulbs while the 18s get to sit on canvas chairs and kibitz because they did their leaf-cutter Lung-raising bits at 13-16 already. Two TesTar guys"ll supervise Otis P. Lord and all this year"s conspicuous techwonks in mounting the heaters and stringing the lights and running coaxial shunts with ceramic jacks between the Pump Room"s main breaker and the Sunstrand grid and booting up the circulation-fans and pneumatic hoists that"ll raise the Lung to the inflated shape of a distended igloo, sixteen courts in four rows of four, enclosed and warmed by nothing but fibrous Gore-Tex and AC current and an enormous ATHSCME Exhaust-Flow Effectuator that an ATHSCME crew in one of the ATHSCME helicopters will bring in in a sling and cable and mount and secure on the Lung"s nipply nacelle at the top of the inflating dome. And that first night after Inflation, traditionally the fourth Monday of November, all the uppercla.s.s 18s so inclined will crank up the infrareds and get high and eat low-lipid microwave pizza and play all night, sweating magnificently, sheltered for the winter atop Enfield"s level-headed hill.
Schacht stands back in the deuce court and lets his guy warm up his serves, oddly flat and low-margin for a nervous touch-artist. Schacht bloops each return up with severe backspin so the b.a.l.l.s"ll roll back to him and he can serve them back to his guy, also warming up. The warm-up routine has become automatic and requires no attention. Way up on #1, Schacht sees John Wayne just plaster a backhand cross-court. Wayne hits it so hard a little mushroom cloud of green fuzz hangs in the air where ball had met strings. Their cards were too far to read in the sour-apple light, but you could tell by the way Port Washington"s best boy walked back to the baseline to take the next serve that his a.s.s had already been presented to him. In a lot of junior matches everything past the fourth game or so is kind of a formality. Both players tend to know the overall score by then. The big picture. They"ll have decided who"s going to lose. Compet.i.tive tennis is largely mental, once you"re at a certain plateau of skill and conditioning. Scht.i.tt"d say spiritual spiritual instead of instead of mental, mental, but as far as Schacht can see it"s the same thing. As Schacht sees it, Scht.i.tt"s philosophical stance is that to win enough of the time to be considered successful you have to both care a great deal about it and also not care about it at all. but as far as Schacht can see it"s the same thing. As Schacht sees it, Scht.i.tt"s philosophical stance is that to win enough of the time to be considered successful you have to both care a great deal about it and also not care about it at all. 89 89 Schacht does not care enough, probably, anymore, and has met his gradual displacement from E.T.A."s A singles squad with an equanimity some E.T.A."s thought was spiritual and others regarded as the surest sign of d.i.c.klessness and burnout. Only one or two people have ever used the word Schacht does not care enough, probably, anymore, and has met his gradual displacement from E.T.A."s A singles squad with an equanimity some E.T.A."s thought was spiritual and others regarded as the surest sign of d.i.c.klessness and burnout. Only one or two people have ever used the word brave brave in connection with Schacht"s radical reconfiguration after the things with the Crohn"s Disease and knee. Hal Incandenza, who"s probably as asymetrically hobbled on the care-too-much side as Schacht is on the not-enough, privately puts Schacht"s laissez-faire down to some interior decline, some doom-gray surrender of his childhood"s promise to adult gray mediocrity, and fears it; but since Schacht is an old friend and a dependable designated driver and has actually gotten pleasanter to be around since the knee - which Hal prays fervently that the ankle won"t start being the size of a volleyball itself at the end of each outdoor day - Hal in a weird and deeper internal way almost somehow admires and envies the fact that Schacht"s stoically committed himself to the oral professions and stopped dreaming of getting to the Show after graduation - an air of something other than failure about Schacht"s not caring enough, something you can"t quite define, the way you can"t quite remember a word that you know you know, inside - Hal can"t quite feel the contempt for Teddy Schacht"s compet.i.tive slide that would be a pretty much natural contempt in one who cared so dreadfully secretly much, and so the two of them tend to settle for not talking about it, just as Schacht cheerfully wordlessly drives the tow truck on occasions when the rest of the crew are so incapacitated they"d have to hold one eye closed even to see an undoubled road, and consents w/o protest to pay retail for clean quarterly urine, and doesn"t say a word about Hal"s devolution from occasional tourist to subterranean compulsive, substance-wise, with his Pump Room visits and Visine, even though Schacht deep down believes that the substance-compulsion"s strange apparent contribution to Hal"s erumpent explosion up the rankings has got to be a temporary thing, that there"s like a psychic credit-card bill for Hal in the mail, somewhere, coming, and is sad for him in advance about whatever"s surely got to give, eventually. Though it won"t be the Boards. Hal"ll murder his Boards, and Schacht may well be among those jockeying to sit near him, he"d be the first to admit. On 2 Hal now kicks a second serve to the ad court with so much left-handed top on it that it almost kicks up over Port Washington"s #2 guy"s head. It"s clearly carnage up there on Show Courts 1 and 2. Dr. Tavis will be irrepressible. The gallery is barely even applauding Wayne and Incandenza anymore; at a certain point it becomes like Romans applauding lions. All the coaches and staff and P.W.T.A. parents and civilians in the overhead gallery wear tennis outfits, the high white socks and tucked-in shirts of people who do not really play. in connection with Schacht"s radical reconfiguration after the things with the Crohn"s Disease and knee. Hal Incandenza, who"s probably as asymetrically hobbled on the care-too-much side as Schacht is on the not-enough, privately puts Schacht"s laissez-faire down to some interior decline, some doom-gray surrender of his childhood"s promise to adult gray mediocrity, and fears it; but since Schacht is an old friend and a dependable designated driver and has actually gotten pleasanter to be around since the knee - which Hal prays fervently that the ankle won"t start being the size of a volleyball itself at the end of each outdoor day - Hal in a weird and deeper internal way almost somehow admires and envies the fact that Schacht"s stoically committed himself to the oral professions and stopped dreaming of getting to the Show after graduation - an air of something other than failure about Schacht"s not caring enough, something you can"t quite define, the way you can"t quite remember a word that you know you know, inside - Hal can"t quite feel the contempt for Teddy Schacht"s compet.i.tive slide that would be a pretty much natural contempt in one who cared so dreadfully secretly much, and so the two of them tend to settle for not talking about it, just as Schacht cheerfully wordlessly drives the tow truck on occasions when the rest of the crew are so incapacitated they"d have to hold one eye closed even to see an undoubled road, and consents w/o protest to pay retail for clean quarterly urine, and doesn"t say a word about Hal"s devolution from occasional tourist to subterranean compulsive, substance-wise, with his Pump Room visits and Visine, even though Schacht deep down believes that the substance-compulsion"s strange apparent contribution to Hal"s erumpent explosion up the rankings has got to be a temporary thing, that there"s like a psychic credit-card bill for Hal in the mail, somewhere, coming, and is sad for him in advance about whatever"s surely got to give, eventually. Though it won"t be the Boards. Hal"ll murder his Boards, and Schacht may well be among those jockeying to sit near him, he"d be the first to admit. On 2 Hal now kicks a second serve to the ad court with so much left-handed top on it that it almost kicks up over Port Washington"s #2 guy"s head. It"s clearly carnage up there on Show Courts 1 and 2. Dr. Tavis will be irrepressible. The gallery is barely even applauding Wayne and Incandenza anymore; at a certain point it becomes like Romans applauding lions. All the coaches and staff and P.W.T.A. parents and civilians in the overhead gallery wear tennis outfits, the high white socks and tucked-in shirts of people who do not really play.
Schacht and his man play.
Both Pat Montesian and Gately"s AA sponsor like to remind Gately how this new resident Geoffrey Day could end up being an invaluable teacher of patience and tolerance for him, Gately, as Ennet House Staff.
"So then at forty-six years of age I came here to learn to live by cliches," is what Day says to Charlotte Treat right after Randy Lenz asked what time it was, again, at 0825. "To turn my will and life over to the care of cliches. One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back."
Poor old Charlotte Treat, needlepointing primly beside him on the old vinyl couch that just came from Goodwill, purses her lips. "You need to ask for some grat.i.tude."
"Oh no but the point is I"ve already been fortunate enough to receive receive grat.i.tude." Day crosses one leg over the other in a way that inclines his whole little soft body toward her. "For which, believe you me, I"m grateful. I cultivate grat.i.tude. That"s part of the system of cliches I"m here to live by. An att.i.tude of grat.i.tude. A grateful drunk will never drink. I know the actual cliche is "A grateful grat.i.tude." Day crosses one leg over the other in a way that inclines his whole little soft body toward her. "For which, believe you me, I"m grateful. I cultivate grat.i.tude. That"s part of the system of cliches I"m here to live by. An att.i.tude of grat.i.tude. A grateful drunk will never drink. I know the actual cliche is "A grateful heart heart will never drink," but since organs can"t properly be said to imbibe and I"m still afflicted with just enough self-will to decline to live by utter non sequiturs, as opposed to just good old cliches, I"m taking the liberty of light amendment." He gives with this a look like b.u.t.ter wouldn"t melt. "Albeit grateful amendment, of course." will never drink," but since organs can"t properly be said to imbibe and I"m still afflicted with just enough self-will to decline to live by utter non sequiturs, as opposed to just good old cliches, I"m taking the liberty of light amendment." He gives with this a look like b.u.t.ter wouldn"t melt. "Albeit grateful amendment, of course."
Charlotte Treat looks over to Gately for some sort of help or Staff enforcement of dogma. The poor b.i.t.c.h is clueless. All of them are clueless, still. Gately reminds himself that he too is probably mostly still clueless, still, even after all these hundreds of days. "I Didn"t Know That I Didn"t Know" is another of the slogans that looks so shallow for a while and then all of a sudden drops off and deepens like the lobster-waters off the North Sh.o.r.e. As Gately fidgets his way through daily A.M. meditation he always tries to remind himself daily that this is all an Ennet House residency is supposed to do: buy these poor yutzes some time, some thin pie-slice of abstinent time, till they can start to get a whiff of what"s true and deep, almost magic, under the shallow surface of what they"re trying to do.
"I cultivate it a.s.siduously. I do special grat.i.tude exercises at night up there in the room. Grat.i.tude-Ups, you could call them. Ask Randy over there if I don"t do them like clockwork. Diligently. Sedulously."
"Well it"s true is all," Treat sniffs. "About grat.i.tude."
Everybody else except Gately, lying on the old other couch opposite them, is ignoring this exchange, watching an old InterLace cartridge whose tracking is a little messed up so that staticky stripes eat at the screen"s picture"s bottom and top. Day is not done talking. Pat M. encourages newer Staff to think of residents they"d like to bludgeon to death as valuable teachers of patience, tolerance, self-discipline, restraint.
Day is not done talking. "One of the exercises is being grateful that life is so much easier easier now. I used sometimes to think. I used to think in long compound sentences with subordinate clauses and even the odd polysyllable. Now I find I needn"t. Now I live by the dictates of macrame samplers ordered from the back-page ad of an old now. I used sometimes to think. I used to think in long compound sentences with subordinate clauses and even the odd polysyllable. Now I find I needn"t. Now I live by the dictates of macrame samplers ordered from the back-page ad of an old Reader"s Digestor Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Reader"s Digestor Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Easy does it. Remember to remember. But for the grace of capital-g G.o.d. Turn it over. Terse, hard-boiled. Monosyllabic. Good old Norman RockwellPaul Harvey wisdom. I walk around with my arms out straight in front of me and recite these cliches. In a monotone. No inflection necessary. Could that be one? Could that be added to the cliche-pool? "No inflection necessary inflection necessary"? Too many syllables, probably."
Randy Lenz says "I ain"t got time for this s.h.i.t."
Poor old Charlotte Treat, all of nine weeks clean, is trying to look primmer and primmer. She looks again over to Gately, lying on his back, taking up the living room"s whole other sofa, one sneaker up on the sofa"s square frayed fabric arm-thing, his eyes almost closed. Only Staff get to lie on the couches.
"Denial," Charlotte finally says, "is not a river in Egypt."
"Hows about the both of you shut the f.u.c.k up," says Emil Minty.
Geoffrey (not Geoff, Geoffrey) Day has been at Ennet House six days. He came from Roxbury"s infamous Dimock Detox, where he was the only white person, which Gately bets must have been broadening for him. Day has a squished blank smeared flat face, one requiring like great self-effort to like, and eyes that are just starting to lose the nict.i.tated glaze of early sobriety. Day is a newcomer and a wreck. A red-wine-and-Quaalude man who finally nodded out in late October and put his Saab through the window of a Malden sporting goods store and then got out and proceeded to browse until the Finest came and got him. Who taught something horses.h.i.t-sounding like social historicity or historical sociality at some jr. college up the Expressway in Medford and came in saying on his Intake he also manned the helm of a Scholarly Quarterly. Word for word, the House Manager had said: "manned the helm" and "Scholarly." His Intake estimated that Day"s been in and out of a blackout for most of the last several years, and his wiring is still as they say a bit frayed. His detox at Dimock, where they barely have the resources to give you a Librium if you start to D.T., must have been just real grim, because Geoffrey D. alleges it never happened: now his story is he just strolled into Ennet House on a lark one day from his home 10r clicks away in Malden and found the place too hilariously egregulous to want to ever leave. It"s the newcomers with some education that are the worst, according to Gene M. They identify their whole selves with their head, and the Disease makes its command headquarters in the head. 90 90 Day wears chinos of indeterminate hue, brown socks with black shoes, and shirts that Pat Montesian had described in the Intake as "Eastern-European-type Hawaiian shirts." Day"s now on the vinyl couch with Charlotte Treat after breakfast in the Ennet House living room with a few of the other residents that either aren"t working or don"t have to be at work early, and with Gately, who"d pulled an all-night Dream Duty shift out in the front office till 0400, then got temp-relieved by Johnette Foltz so he could go to work janitoring down at the Shattuck Shelter till 0700, then came and hauled a.s.s back up here and took back over so"s that Johnette could go off to her NA thing with a bunch of NA people in what looked like a dune buggy if the dunes in question were in h.e.l.l, and is now, Gately, trying to unclench and center himself inside by tracing the cracks in the paint of the living room ceiling with his eyes. Gately often feels a terrible sense of loss, narcotics-wise, in the A.M., still, even after this long clean. His sponsor over at the White Flag Group says some people never get over the loss of what they"d thought was their one true best friend and lover; they just have to pray daily for acceptance and the bra.s.s danglers to move forward through the grief and loss, to wait for time to harden the scab. The sponsor, Ferocious Francis G., doesn"t give Gately one iona of s.h.i.t for feeling some negative feelings about it: on the contrary, he commends Gately for his candor in breaking down and crying like a baby and telling him about it early one A.M. over the pay phone, the sense of loss. It"s a myth no one misses it. Their particular Substance. s.h.i.t, you wouldn"t need help if you didn"t miss it. You just have to Ask For Help and like Turn It Over, the loss and pain, to Keep Coming, show up, pray, Ask For Help. Gately rubs his eye. Simple advice like this does seem like a lot of cliches - Day"s right about how it seems. Yes, and if Geoffrey Day keeps on steering by the way things seem to him then he"s a dead man for sure. Gately"s already watched dozens come through here and leave early and go back Out There and then go to jail or die. If Day ever gets lucky and breaks down, finally, and comes to the front office at night to scream that he can"t take it anymore and clutch at Gately"s pantcuff and blubber and beg for help at any cost, Gately"ll get to tell Day the thing is that the cliched directives are a lot more deep and hard to actually Day wears chinos of indeterminate hue, brown socks with black shoes, and shirts that Pat Montesian had described in the Intake as "Eastern-European-type Hawaiian shirts." Day"s now on the vinyl couch with Charlotte Treat after breakfast in the Ennet House living room with a few of the other residents that either aren"t working or don"t have to be at work early, and with Gately, who"d pulled an all-night Dream Duty shift out in the front office till 0400, then got temp-relieved by Johnette Foltz so he could go to work janitoring down at the Shattuck Shelter till 0700, then came and hauled a.s.s back up here and took back over so"s that Johnette could go off to her NA thing with a bunch of NA people in what looked like a dune buggy if the dunes in question were in h.e.l.l, and is now, Gately, trying to unclench and center himself inside by tracing the cracks in the paint of the living room ceiling with his eyes. Gately often feels a terrible sense of loss, narcotics-wise, in the A.M., still, even after this long clean. His sponsor over at the White Flag Group says some people never get over the loss of what they"d thought was their one true best friend and lover; they just have to pray daily for acceptance and the bra.s.s danglers to move forward through the grief and loss, to wait for time to harden the scab. The sponsor, Ferocious Francis G., doesn"t give Gately one iona of s.h.i.t for feeling some negative feelings about it: on the contrary, he commends Gately for his candor in breaking down and crying like a baby and telling him about it early one A.M. over the pay phone, the sense of loss. It"s a myth no one misses it. Their particular Substance. s.h.i.t, you wouldn"t need help if you didn"t miss it. You just have to Ask For Help and like Turn It Over, the loss and pain, to Keep Coming, show up, pray, Ask For Help. Gately rubs his eye. Simple advice like this does seem like a lot of cliches - Day"s right about how it seems. Yes, and if Geoffrey Day keeps on steering by the way things seem to him then he"s a dead man for sure. Gately"s already watched dozens come through here and leave early and go back Out There and then go to jail or die. If Day ever gets lucky and breaks down, finally, and comes to the front office at night to scream that he can"t take it anymore and clutch at Gately"s pantcuff and blubber and beg for help at any cost, Gately"ll get to tell Day the thing is that the cliched directives are a lot more deep and hard to actually do do. To try and live by instead of just say. But he"ll only get to say it if Day comes and asks. Personally, Gately gives Geoffrey D. like a month at the outside before he"s back tipping his hat to parking meters. Except who is Gately to judge who"ll end up getting the Gift of the program v. who won"t, he needs to remember. He tries to feel like Day is teaching him patience and tolerance. It takes great patience and tolerance not to want to punt the soft little guy out into the Comm. Ave. ravine and open up his bunk to somebody that really desperately wants it, the Gift. Except who is Gately to think he can know who wants it and who doesn"t, deep down. Gately"s arm is behind his head, up against the sofa"s other arm. The old D.E.C. viewer is on to something violent and color-enhanced Gately neither sees nor hears. It was part of his gifts as a burglar: he can sort of turn his attention on and off like a light. Even when he was a resident here he"d had this prescient housebreaker"s ability to screen input, to do sensory triage. It was one reason he"d even been able to stick out his nine residential months here with twenty-one other newly detoxed housebreakers, hoods, wh.o.r.es, fired execs, Avon ladies, subway musicians, beer-bloated construction workers, vagrants, indignant car salesmen, bulimic trauma-mamas, bunko artists, mincing pillow-biters, North End hard guys, pimply kids with electric nose-rings, denial-ridden housewives and etc., all jonesing and head-gaming and mokus and grieving and basically whacked out and producing nonstopping output 24-7-365.
At some point in here Day"s saying "So bring on the lobotomist, bring him on I say!"
Except Gately"s own counselor when he was a resident here, Eugenio Martinez, one of the volunteer alumni counselors, a one-eared former boiler-room bunko man and now a cellular-phone retailer who"d hooked up with the House under the original founder Guy That Didn"t Even Use His First Name, and had about ten years clean, Gene M. did - Eugenio"d lovingly confronted Gately early on about his special burglar"s selective attention and about how it could be dangerous because how can you be sure it"s you doing the screening and not The Spider. Gene called the Disease The Spider and talked about Feeding The Spider versus Starving The Spider and so on and so forth. Eugenio M. had called Gately into the House Manager"s back office and said what if Don"s screening input turned out to be Feeding The Old Spider and what about an experimental unscreening of input for a while. Gately had said he"d do his best to try and"d come back out and tried to watch a Spont-Dissem of the Celtics while two resident pillow-biters from the Fenway were having this involved conversation about some third f.a.g having to go in and get the skeleton of some kind of f.u.c.king rodent removed from inside their b.u.t.thole. 91 91 The unscreening experiment had lasted half an hour. This was right before Gately got his 90-day chip and wasn"t exactly wrapped real tight or real tolerant, still. Ennet House this year is nothing like the freakshow it was when Gately went through. The unscreening experiment had lasted half an hour. This was right before Gately got his 90-day chip and wasn"t exactly wrapped real tight or real tolerant, still. Ennet House this year is nothing like the freakshow it was when Gately went through.
Gately has been completely Substance-free for 421 days today.
Ms. Charlotte Treat, with a carefully made-up, ruined face, is watching the viewer"s stripe-shot cartridge while she needlepoints something. Conversation between her and Geoffrey D. has mercifully petered out. Day is scanning the room for somebody else to engage and p.i.s.s off so he can prove to himself he doesn"t fit in here and stay separated off isolated inside himself and maybe get them so p.i.s.sed off there"s a beef and he gets bounced out, Day, and it won"t be his fault. You can almost hear his Disease chewing away inside his head, feeding. Emil Minty, Randy Lenz, and Bruce Green are also in the room, sprawled in spring-shot chairs, lighting one gasper off the end of the last, their postures the don"t-f.u.c.k-with-me slouch of the streets that here makes their bodies" texture somehow hard to distinguish from that of the chairs. Nell Gunther is sitting at the long table in the doorless dining room that opens out right off the old D.E.C. fold-out TP"s pine stand, whitening under her nails with a manicure pencil amid the remains of something she"s eaten that involved serious syrup. Burt F. Smith is also in there, way down by himself at the table"s far end, trying to saw at a waffle with a knife and fork attached to the stumps of his wrists with Velcro bands. A long-time-ago former DMV Driver"s License Examiner, Burt F. Smith is forty-five and looks seventy, has almost all-white hair that"s waxy and yellow from close-order smoke, and finally got into Ennet House last month after nine months stuck in the Cambridge City Shelter. Burt F. Smith"s story is he"s making his like fiftieth-odd stab at sobriety in AA. Once devoutly R.C., Burt F.S. has potentially lethal trouble with Faith In A Loving G.o.d ever since the R.C. Church apparently granted his wife an annulment in like B.S. "99 after fifteen years of marriage. Then for several years a rooming-house drunk, which on Gately"s view is about like one step up from a homeless-person-type drunk. Burt F.S. got mugged and beaten half to death in Cambridge on Xmas Eve of last year, and left there to like freeze there, in an alley, in a storm, and ended up losing his hands and feet. Doony Glynn"s been observed telling Burt F.S. things like that there"s some new guy coming into the Disabled Room off Pat"s office with Burt F.S. who"s without not only hands and feet but arms and legs and even a head and who communicates by farting in Morris Code. This sally earned Glynn three days Full-House Restriction and a week"s extra Ch.o.r.e for what Johnette Foltz described in the Log as "XSive Cruetly." There is a vague intestinal moaning in Gately"s right side. Watching Burt F. Smith smoke a Benson & Hedges by holding it between his stumps with his elbows out like a guy with pruning shears is an adventure in f.u.c.king pathos as far as Gately"s concerned. And Geoffrey Day cracks wise about There But for Grace. And forget about what it"s like trying to watch Burt F. Smith try and light a match.
Gately, who"s been on live-in Staff here four months now, believes Charlotte Treat"s devotion to needlepoint is suspect. All those needles. In and out of all that thin sterile-white cotton stretched drum-tight in its round frame. The needle makes a kind of thud and squeak when it goes in the cloth. It"s not much like the soundless pop and slide of a real cook-and-shoot. But still. She takes such great care.
Gately wonders what color he"d call the ceiling if forced to call it a color. It"s not white and it"s not gray. The brown-yellow tones are from high-tar gaspers; a pall hangs up near the ceiling even this early in the new sober day. Some of the drunks and tranq-jockeys stay up most of the night, joggling their feet and chain-smoking, even though there"s no cartridges or music allowed after 0000h. He has t