"Not even cravings so much. Emptier than that. As if he were stuck wondering. As if there was something he"d forgotten."
"Misplaced. Lost."
"Misplaced."
"Lost."
"Misplaced."
"As you wish."
13 NOVEMBER.
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.
0245h., Ennet House, the hours that are truly wee. Eugenio M., voluntarily filling in for Johnette Foltz on Dream Duty, is out in the office playing some sort of hand-held sports game that blips and tweets. Kate Gompert and Geoffrey Day and Ken Erdedy and Bruce Green are in the living room with the lights mostly out and the old jumpy-picture D.E.C. viewer on. Cartridges not allowed after 0000h., to encourage sleep. Sober cocaine-and stimulant-addicts sleep pretty well by the second month, straight alcoholics by the fourth. Abstinent pot- and tranq-addicts can pretty much forget about sleep for the first year. Though Bruce Green is asleep and would be in violation of the no-lying-on-the-couch rule if his legs weren"t twisted over and his feet on the floor. All the Ennet House viewer gets on Spontaneous Dissemination is basic InterLace, and from 0200 to 0400 InterLace NNE downloads for the next dissemination-day and cuts all transmissions except one line"s four straight redissemms of "The Mr. Bouncety-Bounce Daily Program," and when Mr. Bouncety-Bounce appears in his old cloth-and-safety-pin diaper and paunch and rubber infant-head mask he is not a soothing or pleasant figure at all, for the sleepless adult. Ken Erdedy has started to smoke cigarettes and sits smoking, joggling one leather slipper. Kate Gompert and Geoffrey Day are on the nonleather couch. Kate Gompert sits cross-legged on the couch with her head all the way forward so her forehead touches her foot. It looks like some kind of spiritually advanced yoga position or stretching exercise, but it"s really just the way Kate Gompert has been sitting on the sofa all night every night since Wednesday"s free-for-all unpleasantness with Lenz and Gately in the streetlet, from which the whole House is still reeling and spiritually palsied. Day"s bare calves are completely hairless and look sort of absurd with dress shoes and black socks and a velour bathrobe, but Day"s proven kind of admirably resistant to caring what other people think, in a way.
"Like you really care." Kate Gompert"s voice is toneless and hard to hear because it issues from out of the circle formed by her crossed legs.
"It isn"t a question of caring or not caring," Day says quietly. "I meant only that I identify to an extent."
Gompert"s sarcastic chuff of air raises a section of her unwashed bangs.
Bruce Green doesn"t snore, even with his nose broken and cross-hatched in white tape. Neither he nor Erdedy is listening to them.
Day speaks softly and doesn"t cross his legs to incline over to the side toward her. "When I was a little boy -"
Gompert chuffs air again.
"- just a boy with a violin and a dream and special roundabout routes to school to avoid the boys who took my violin case and played keep-away over my head with it, one summer afternoon I was upstairs in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother, alone, practicing my violin. It was very hot, and there was an electric fan in the window, blowing out, acting as an exhaust fan."
"I know from exhaust fans, believe you me."
"The direction of flow is beside the point. It was on, and its position in the window made the gla.s.s of the upraised pane vibrate somehow. It produced an odd high-pitched vibration, invariant and constant. By itself it was strange but benign. But on this one afternoon, the fan"s vibration combined with some certain set of notes I was practicing on the violin, and the two vibrations set up a resonance that made something happen in my head. It is impossible really to explain it, but it was a certain quality of this resonance that produced it."
"A thing."
"As the two vibrations combined, it was as if a large dark billowing shape came billowing out of some corner in my mind. I can be no more precise than to say large, dark, shape, large, dark, shape, and and billowing, billowing, what came flapping out of some backwater of my psyche I had not had the slightest inkling was there." what came flapping out of some backwater of my psyche I had not had the slightest inkling was there."
"But it was inside you, though."
"Katherine, Kate, it was total horror. It was all horror everywhere, distilled and given form. It rose in me, out of me, summoned somehow by the odd confluence of the fan and those notes. It rose and grew larger and became engulfing and more horrible than I shall ever have the power to convey. I dropped my violin and ran from the room."
"Was it triangular? The shape? When you say billowing, billowing, do you mean like a triangle?" do you mean like a triangle?"
"Shapeless. Shapelessness was one of the horrible things about it. I can say and mean only shape, dark, shape, dark, and either and either billowing billowing or or flapping. flapping. But because the horror receded the moment I left the room, within minutes it had become unreal. The shape and horror. It seemed to have been my imagination, some random bit of psychic flatulence, an anomaly." But because the horror receded the moment I left the room, within minutes it had become unreal. The shape and horror. It seemed to have been my imagination, some random bit of psychic flatulence, an anomaly."
A mirthless laugh into the ankle. "Alcoholics Anomalous."
Day hasn"t switched legs or moved, and he isn"t looking at her ear or her scalp, which are in view. "In just the way any child will probe a wound or pick at a scab I returned shortly to the room and the fan and picked up the violin again. And produced the resonance again immediately. And immediately again the black flapping shape rose in my mind again. It was a bit like a sail, or a small part of the wing of something far too large to be seen in totality. It was total psychic horror: death, decay, dissolution, cold empty black malevolent lonely voided s.p.a.ce. It was the worst thing I have ever confronted."
"But you still forgot and went back up there and brought it back. And it was inside you."
Completely incongruously, Ken Erdedy says "His head"s shaped like a mushroom." Day has no idea what he was referring to or talking about.
"Set free somehow by that one-day-only resonance of violin and fan, the dark shape began rising out of my mind"s corner on its own. I dropped the violin again and ran from the room once again, clutching my head at the front and back, but this time it did not recede."
"The triangular horror."
"It was as if I"d awakened it and now it was active. It came and went for a year. I lived in horror of it for a year, as a child, never knowing when it would rise up billowing and blot out all light. After a year it receded. I think I was ten. But not all the way. I"d awakened it somehow. Every so often. Every few months it would rise inside me."
It isn"t like a real interface or conversation. Day doesn"t seem to be addressing anybody in particular. "The last time it ever rose up billowing was my second year of college. I attended Brown University in Providence RI, graduating magna c.u.m laude. magna c.u.m laude. One soph.o.m.ore night it came up out of nowhere, the black shape, for the first time in years." One soph.o.m.ore night it came up out of nowhere, the black shape, for the first time in years."
"But there was an inevitability-feeling about it, too, when it came."
"It is the most horrible feeling I have ever imagined, much less felt. There is no possible way death can feel as bad. It rose up. It was worse now that I was older."
"Tell me all about it."
"I thought I"d have to hurl myself out of my dormitory"s window. I simply could not live with how it felt."
Gompert"s head isn"t all the way up, but now it"s about halfway up; her forehead has a major red impression-spot from her ankle-bone. She"s looking roughly halfway between straight ahead and Day beside her. "And there was this idea underneath that you"d brought it on, that you"d wakened it up. You went back up to the fan that second time. You like despised yourself for waking it up."
Day is looking straight ahead. Mr. Bouncety-Bounce"s head is in no way mushroom-shaped, though it is large and - in the rubber infant-mask - apt to appear to the adult viewer kind of grotesque. "Some boy I hardly knew in the room below mine heard me staggering around whimpering at the top of my lungs. He came up and sat up with me until it went away. It took most of the night. We didn"t converse; he didn"t try to comfort me. He spoke very little, just sat up with me. We didn"t become friends. By graduation I"d forgotten his name and major. But on that night he seemed to be the piece of string by which I hung suspended over h.e.l.l itself."
Green in his sleep cries out something that sounds like "For G.o.d"s sake no Mr. Ho don"t light it!" His swollen black eyes and R.E.M."s non sequiturs, plus the capering 130-kilo infant on the viewer, plus Day and Gompert conversing while both staring into s.p.a.ce, all backed by the blurps and wonks of Gene M."s hand-held game in the office, give the dark living room a dreamy and almost surreal atmosphere.
Day finally uncrosses his legs and switches them. "It"s never come back. Over twenty years. But I"ve not forgotten. And the worst times I have felt since then were like a day at the foot-ma.s.seur"s compared to the feeling of that black sail or wing rising inside me."
"Billowing."
"Not the nuts Jesus G.o.d not the nutsss." nutsss."
" I understood the term I understood the term h.e.l.l h.e.l.l as of that summer day and that night in the soph.o.m.ore dormitory. I understood what people meant by as of that summer day and that night in the soph.o.m.ore dormitory. I understood what people meant by h.e.l.l h.e.l.l. They did not mean the black sail. They meant the a.s.sociated feelings."
"Or the corner it came up out of, inside, if they mean a place." Kate Gompert is now looking at him. Her face doesn"t look better but does look different. Her neck"s clearly stiff from having been contorted.
"From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not," Day says, holding the knee of the leg just crossed, "I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I"d surely kill myself."
"Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising."
"Oh G.o.d please," Green says very distinctly.
Day says: "There is no way it could feel worse."
11 NOVEMBER.
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.
Apparently some higher-up had sent Mary Esther Thode out on her little yellow Vespa with the order for their match; she"d pulled up alongside Stice and Wayne just as they cleared the Hammond golf course, Hal a good half km. behind them with galumphers Kornspan and Kahn. Scht.i.tt was inscrutable about the whole thing. The match wasn"t like a ladder-challenge; Stice and Hal were in different age-divisions this year. The match was more like maybe an exhibition, and by the second set, as people got done with the weight room and showers, it was attended like one. The match. Helen Steeply of Moment, Moment, possessed of a certain thuggish allure but hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like, to Hal, sat through the whole thing, accompanied for the first set by Aubrey deLint before Thierry Poutrincourt stole his spot on the bleacher. It was the first high-caliber junior tennis she"d ever seen, she said, the ma.s.sive journalist. They played on #6, the best of the east Show Courts. Also the scene of some of the recent Eschaton"s worst carnage. It was a conditioning-heavy day, a very light schedule of matches. Bags of smoke burped steadily up from Scht.i.tt"s crow"s nest high overhead, and sometimes you could hear the weatherman"s pointer tapping absently on the transom"s iron. The only other thing nearby was down on #10, a challenge in Girls" 14"s, two baseliners sending parabolas back and forth: ponytails, an air of baseline attrition, the ball"s high heavy arc that of a loogy spat for distance. Shaw and Axford were also way out on #23, warming up. No one paid them or the 14"s much mind. The bleachers behind the Show Court filled steadily up. Scht.i.tt had Mario film the whole first set from above, leaning way out over the transom"s railing with Watson braced and gripping his vest from behind, Mario"s police lock protruding and casting a weird needly shadow slanted northeast of Court 9"s net. possessed of a certain thuggish allure but hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like, to Hal, sat through the whole thing, accompanied for the first set by Aubrey deLint before Thierry Poutrincourt stole his spot on the bleacher. It was the first high-caliber junior tennis she"d ever seen, she said, the ma.s.sive journalist. They played on #6, the best of the east Show Courts. Also the scene of some of the recent Eschaton"s worst carnage. It was a conditioning-heavy day, a very light schedule of matches. Bags of smoke burped steadily up from Scht.i.tt"s crow"s nest high overhead, and sometimes you could hear the weatherman"s pointer tapping absently on the transom"s iron. The only other thing nearby was down on #10, a challenge in Girls" 14"s, two baseliners sending parabolas back and forth: ponytails, an air of baseline attrition, the ball"s high heavy arc that of a loogy spat for distance. Shaw and Axford were also way out on #23, warming up. No one paid them or the 14"s much mind. The bleachers behind the Show Court filled steadily up. Scht.i.tt had Mario film the whole first set from above, leaning way out over the transom"s railing with Watson braced and gripping his vest from behind, Mario"s police lock protruding and casting a weird needly shadow slanted northeast of Court 9"s net.
"This is the first real match I"ve seen, after hearing so much about the junior tour," Helen Steeply told deLint, trying to cross her legs on a cramped bleacher a few tiers from the top. Aubrey deLint"s smile was notoriously bad, his face seeming to break into crescents and shards, wholly without cheer. It was almost more like a grimace. Orders that deLint keep the mammoth soft-profiler in direct sight at all times were explicit and emphatic. Helen Steeply had a notebook, and deLint was filling in both players" names on performance charts Scht.i.tt won"t ever let anyone look at.
The P.M. was moving fast from a chilly noon cloud-cover into blue autumn glory, but in the first set it was still very cold, the sun still pale and seeming to flutter as if poorly wired. Hal and Stice didn"t have to stretch and barely warmed up at all, after the run. They"d changed clothes and were both expressionless. Stice was in all-black, Hal in E.T.A. sweats with his left shoe"s upper bulging distended around his AirStirrup brace.
A born net-man, Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace. He was shorter than Hal but better-built and with quicker feet. A southpaw with factory-painted W"s on his Wilson Pro Staff 5.8 si"s.
Hal was left-handed too, which complicated strategy and percentages hideously, deLint told the journalist beside him.
The Darkness"s service motion was in the McEnroe-Esconja tradition, legs splayed, feet parallel, a figure off an Egyptian frieze, side so severely to the net he"s almost facing away. Both arms out straight and stiff on the serve"s downswing. Hal bobbed on his feet"s b.a.l.l.s a little in the ad court, waiting. Stice started his service-motion motion in little segments - it looks a little like bad animation - then grimaced, tossed, pivoted netward and served it with a hard flat spang spang way out to Hal"s forehand, pulling Hal wide. The finish of Stice"s pivot lets his momentum carry him naturally up to net, following the serve. Hal lunged for the serve and chipped a little forehand return down the line and scrambled right to get back into court. The return was lucky, a feeble chip that just cleared the net"s tape, so shallow that Stice had to half-volley it at the service line, still moving in, his backhand two-handed and clumsy for half-volleys; he had to sort of scoop it and hit up soft so it wouldn"t float out deep. Axiom: the man who has to hit up from the net is going to get pa.s.sed. And Stice"s half-volley landed in the ad court squishy and slow and sat up for Hal, who was waiting for it. Hal"s stick was back for the forehand, waiting, and there was a moment of total mentation as the ball hung there. Statistically, Hal was book to pa.s.s a left-handed volleyer cross-court off a ball this ripe, though he also always loved a good humiliating topspin lob, and Stice"s fractional chance at saving the point was to guess what Hal would do - Stice couldn"t crowd the net because Hal would put it up over him; he stayed a couple stick-lengths off the net, leaning for a cross. Everything seemed to hang distended in air now so clear it seemed washed, after the clouds. The bleachers" people could feel Hal feel Stice letting the point go, inside, figuring it lost, knowing he could only guess and stab, hoping. Little hope of Hal f.u.c.king up: Hal Incandenza does not f.u.c.k up pa.s.ses off floater half-volleys. Hal"s forehand"s wind-up was nicely disguised, prepped for either lob or pa.s.s. When he hit it so hard his forearm"s musculature stood starkly out it was a pa.s.s but not cross-court; he went inside-out on it, a flat forehand as hard as he could from the baseline"s center back toward Stice"s deuce-sideline. Stice had finally guessed lob at the start of the stroke and had half-turned to sprint back for where it would land, and the inside-out pa.s.s wrong-footed him; he could do no more than stand there flat-footed and watching as the fresh ball landed a meter fair to get Hal back to deuce in the fifth game. There was applause off thirty hands for the point as a whole, which was faultless and on Hal"s part imaginative, anti-book. One of very few total inspired points from Incandenza, deLint"s chart would show. Neither player"s face moved as a couple people shouted for Hal. The basic ten-level R.A.S.U. way out to Hal"s forehand, pulling Hal wide. The finish of Stice"s pivot lets his momentum carry him naturally up to net, following the serve. Hal lunged for the serve and chipped a little forehand return down the line and scrambled right to get back into court. The return was lucky, a feeble chip that just cleared the net"s tape, so shallow that Stice had to half-volley it at the service line, still moving in, his backhand two-handed and clumsy for half-volleys; he had to sort of scoop it and hit up soft so it wouldn"t float out deep. Axiom: the man who has to hit up from the net is going to get pa.s.sed. And Stice"s half-volley landed in the ad court squishy and slow and sat up for Hal, who was waiting for it. Hal"s stick was back for the forehand, waiting, and there was a moment of total mentation as the ball hung there. Statistically, Hal was book to pa.s.s a left-handed volleyer cross-court off a ball this ripe, though he also always loved a good humiliating topspin lob, and Stice"s fractional chance at saving the point was to guess what Hal would do - Stice couldn"t crowd the net because Hal would put it up over him; he stayed a couple stick-lengths off the net, leaning for a cross. Everything seemed to hang distended in air now so clear it seemed washed, after the clouds. The bleachers" people could feel Hal feel Stice letting the point go, inside, figuring it lost, knowing he could only guess and stab, hoping. Little hope of Hal f.u.c.king up: Hal Incandenza does not f.u.c.k up pa.s.ses off floater half-volleys. Hal"s forehand"s wind-up was nicely disguised, prepped for either lob or pa.s.s. When he hit it so hard his forearm"s musculature stood starkly out it was a pa.s.s but not cross-court; he went inside-out on it, a flat forehand as hard as he could from the baseline"s center back toward Stice"s deuce-sideline. Stice had finally guessed lob at the start of the stroke and had half-turned to sprint back for where it would land, and the inside-out pa.s.s wrong-footed him; he could do no more than stand there flat-footed and watching as the fresh ball landed a meter fair to get Hal back to deuce in the fifth game. There was applause off thirty hands for the point as a whole, which was faultless and on Hal"s part imaginative, anti-book. One of very few total inspired points from Incandenza, deLint"s chart would show. Neither player"s face moved as a couple people shouted for Hal. The basic ten-level R.A.S.U. 265 265 from the Universal Bleacher Co. sat right behind the court. At the start it was mostly staff and the A"s who were running alongside when Thode brought Stice and Hal the directive to play. But the stands gradually filled as word got down to the locker rooms that The Darkness was playing 18"s A-2 dead-even in the first set of something Scht.i.tt had actually dispatched a scooter to order. The bleachers" E.T.A.s hunched forward with hands warmed in the crease between hamstrings and calves, or else gloved and layered and stretched out with their heads and bottoms and heels on three different levels, watching both sky and play. The lozenges of shadow from the court"s mesh fences elongated as the sun wheeled southwest to west. Several sets of legs and sneakers hung swinging from the transom above. Mario allowed himself several reaction-shots from staff and partisans in the bleachers. Aubrey deLint spent the set with the punter"s cathected profiler, who allegedly came to see Hal only about Orin but whom Charles Tavis won"t let see Hal yet, even chaperoned, Tavis"s reasons for the reticence too detailed for Helen Steeply to understand, probably, but she was watching from the Show-bleachers" top row, poised over a notebook, wearing a fuchsia ski cap with a rooster-comb top instead of a pompom top, blowing into her fist, her weight making the bleacher below her bow and inclining deLint oddly toward her. For the spectators not perched on the transom overhead, the players looked waffle-cut by the chain-link fencing. The green windscreens that wrecked spectation were used only in the spring in the weeks right after the Lung"s disa.s.sembly. DeLint hadn"t stopped talking into the big lady"s ear. from the Universal Bleacher Co. sat right behind the court. At the start it was mostly staff and the A"s who were running alongside when Thode brought Stice and Hal the directive to play. But the stands gradually filled as word got down to the locker rooms that The Darkness was playing 18"s A-2 dead-even in the first set of something Scht.i.tt had actually dispatched a scooter to order. The bleachers" E.T.A.s hunched forward with hands warmed in the crease between hamstrings and calves, or else gloved and layered and stretched out with their heads and bottoms and heels on three different levels, watching both sky and play. The lozenges of shadow from the court"s mesh fences elongated as the sun wheeled southwest to west. Several sets of legs and sneakers hung swinging from the transom above. Mario allowed himself several reaction-shots from staff and partisans in the bleachers. Aubrey deLint spent the set with the punter"s cathected profiler, who allegedly came to see Hal only about Orin but whom Charles Tavis won"t let see Hal yet, even chaperoned, Tavis"s reasons for the reticence too detailed for Helen Steeply to understand, probably, but she was watching from the Show-bleachers" top row, poised over a notebook, wearing a fuchsia ski cap with a rooster-comb top instead of a pompom top, blowing into her fist, her weight making the bleacher below her bow and inclining deLint oddly toward her. For the spectators not perched on the transom overhead, the players looked waffle-cut by the chain-link fencing. The green windscreens that wrecked spectation were used only in the spring in the weeks right after the Lung"s disa.s.sembly. DeLint hadn"t stopped talking into the big lady"s ear.
All the E.T.A. players loved the Show Courts 69 because they loved to be watched, and also hated the Show Courts because the transom"s crow"s-nested shadow covered the north halves of the courts around noon and all through the P.M. wheeled around gradually east like some giant hooded shadowed moving presence, brooding. Sometimes just the sight of Scht.i.tt"s little head"s shadow could make a younger kid on the Show Courts clutch and freeze. By Hal and Stice"s seventh game, the sky was cloudless, and the transom"s monolithic shadow, black as ink, gave everyone watching the fantods as it elongated along the nets, completely obscuring Stice when he followed a serve in. Another advantage of the Lung was that it afforded no overhead view, which was one more reason why staff waited as long as possible before its erection. There was no indication Hal even saw it, the shadow, hunched and waiting for Stice.
The Darkness splayed out stiff on the deuce side of the center line, ratcheting slowly into his service motion. He overhit the first serve long and Hal angled it softly off-court, moving two steps in for the second ball. Stice hit his second serve as hard as he could again and netted it, and pursed his thick lips a little as he walked into the net"s shadow to retrieve the ball, and Hal jogged over to the fence behind the next court to get the ball he"d angled over. DeLint was putting a pejorative hieroglyphic in a box on his chart marked STICE STICE.
At just this moment, @1200 meters east and downhill and one level below ground, Ennet House live-in Staff Don Gately lay deeply asleep in his Lone-Rangerish sleeping mask, his snores rattling the deinsulated pipes along his little room"s ceiling.
Four-odd clicks to the northwest in the men"s room of the Armenian Foundation Library, right near the onion-domed Watertown a.r.s.enal, Poor Tony Krause hunched forward in a stall in his ghastly suspenders and purloined cap, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, getting a whole new perspective on time and the various pa.s.sages and personae of time.
M. M. Pemulis and J. G. Struck, wet-haired after their P.M. runs, had blarneyed their way past the library-attendant at the B.U. School of Pharmacy 2.8 clicks down Commonwealth on Comm. and Cook St. and were seated at a table in Reference, Pemulis"s yachting cap pushed way back to accommodate his rising eyebrows, licking his finger to turn pages.
H. Steeply"s green sedan with its neuralgiac full-front Nunhagen ad on the side sat in an Authorized Guest parking spot in the E.T.A. lot.
Between appointments, 266 266 in an office whose west windows yielded no view of the match, Charles Tavis had his head mashed up against the upholstered seat-rail of his sofa, his arm under the gray-and-red ruffle and sweeping back and forth for the bathroom scale he keeps under there. in an office whose west windows yielded no view of the match, Charles Tavis had his head mashed up against the upholstered seat-rail of his sofa, his arm under the gray-and-red ruffle and sweeping back and forth for the bathroom scale he keeps under there.
Avril Incandenza"s whereabouts on the grounds were throughout this interval unknown.
At just this moment M.S.T., Orin Incandenza was once again embracing a certain "Swiss" hand-model before a wall-width window in a rented suite halfway up a different tall hotel (from before) in Phoenix AZ. The windowlight was fiery with heat. Way below, tiny cars" roofs glared so bright with reflected light their colors were obscured. Pedestrians hunched and sprinted between different areas of shade and refrigeration. The cityscape"s gla.s.s and metal twinkled but seemed to sag - the whole vista looked somehow stunned. The cool air through the room"s vent whispered. They"d put down their gla.s.ses of ice and come together upright and embraced. The embrace was not like a hug. There was no talking - the only sound was the vent and their breath. Orin"s linen knee probed the deltoid fork of the hand-model"s parted legs. He let the "Swiss" woman grind against the muscular knee of his good leg. They got so close no light shone between them, and ground together. Her lids fluttered; his closed; their breath became somehow coded. Again the concentrated tactile languor of the s.e.xual mode. Again they stripped each other to the waist and she, in that same kind of jitterbug j.a.pe they didn"t have the breath to laugh at, she hopped up at him and forked her legs the same way over his shoulders and arched back until his arm stopped her fall and he supported her like that, the left hand horned with old callus at the small of her satiny back, and bore her.
Sometimes it"s hard to believe the sun"s the same sun over all different parts of the planet. The NNE sun was at this same moment the color of hollandaise and gave off no heat. Between points, both Hal and Stice switched their sticks to their right hands and clamped their left hands tight under their arms to keep from losing sensation in the chill. Stice was double-faulting more than his average because he was trying to get enough on his second serve to follow it credibly to net. DeLint estimated he was charting Stice at one double-fault per 1.3 games, and his a./d.f. ratio 267 267 was an undistinguished .6, but he, deLint, told Helen Steeply of was an undistinguished .6, but he, deLint, told Helen Steeply of Moment, Moment, spread way out next to him on the third row from the top and using Gregg shorthand, deLint told this Ms. Steeply that Stice was nevertheless wise to crank the second serve and eat the occasional double-fault. Stice wound up to serve so stiff, his motion so sprocketed and serial, that the journalist told deLint Stice looked to her as if he"d learned to serve by studying still photos of the motion"s different stages, no offense intended. There was none of real high-speed motion"s liquid flow until the very end, when Stice pivoted toward the net and seemed to sort of fall out into the court, his tennis racquet whirling behind his back and snapping upward to impact the yellow ball hanging at just the height of his maximum reach, and there was a solid spread way out next to him on the third row from the top and using Gregg shorthand, deLint told this Ms. Steeply that Stice was nevertheless wise to crank the second serve and eat the occasional double-fault. Stice wound up to serve so stiff, his motion so sprocketed and serial, that the journalist told deLint Stice looked to her as if he"d learned to serve by studying still photos of the motion"s different stages, no offense intended. There was none of real high-speed motion"s liquid flow until the very end, when Stice pivoted toward the net and seemed to sort of fall out into the court, his tennis racquet whirling behind his back and snapping upward to impact the yellow ball hanging at just the height of his maximum reach, and there was a solid pock pock as this Stice cracked it flat into Orin"s brother"s body, handcuffing Hal at such speeds the ball"s movement presented only as afterimage, the creamy retinal trail of something too fast to track. Hal"s awkward return had too much slice, and floated, and Stice hurtled forward to volley it chest-high, blocking it acute into open court for a clean winner. There was mild applause. DeLint invited Helen Steeply to note that The Darkness really won that point on the serve itself. Hal Incandenza walked to the fence to retrieve the ball, impa.s.sive, wiping his nose against his sweatshirt"s sleeve; ad-in. Hal was up 54 in the first and had saved three ads off Stice"s fifth service game, two off double-faults; but deLint still maintained Stice was wise. as this Stice cracked it flat into Orin"s brother"s body, handcuffing Hal at such speeds the ball"s movement presented only as afterimage, the creamy retinal trail of something too fast to track. Hal"s awkward return had too much slice, and floated, and Stice hurtled forward to volley it chest-high, blocking it acute into open court for a clean winner. There was mild applause. DeLint invited Helen Steeply to note that The Darkness really won that point on the serve itself. Hal Incandenza walked to the fence to retrieve the ball, impa.s.sive, wiping his nose against his sweatshirt"s sleeve; ad-in. Hal was up 54 in the first and had saved three ads off Stice"s fifth service game, two off double-faults; but deLint still maintained Stice was wise.
"Hal"s got to the point in the last year here where a kid"s only real chance is to totally press, attack at all times, whale the serve, haul a.s.s to the net, a.s.sume the aggressor role."
"Does Herr Scht.i.tt wear eye makeup?" Helen Steeply asked him. "I was noticing."
"You stay back against this Hal kid, you try to out-think him and move him around, he"ll yank you back and forth and chew you up and spit you out and step on the remains. We"ve spent years getting him to this point. n.o.body stays back and out-controls Incandenza anymore."
Pretending to flip to a fresh page, Helen Steeply dropped her pen, which fell into the bleachers" struts and supports and clattered as only something dropped into a system of metal bleachers can clatter. The prolonged noise made Stice take some extra bounces before he served. He bounced the ball several times, leaning forward, lined up splayed and violently sideways. He went into his odd segmented windup; Helen Steeply produced another pen from the pocket of her fiberfill parka; Stice cracked it flat down the center, aiming for an ace on the service lines" T. It went by Hal unplayable and literally too close to call. There are no linesmen for internal E.T.A. matches. Hal looked down the line at where the thing hit and skidded, pausing before indicating his call, the hand to his cheek indicating deliberation. He shrugged and shook his head and laid a hand out flat in the air before him to signify to Stice he was calling the serve good. This meant game Stice. The Darkness was walking toward the net, kneading his neck, looking at where Hal was still standing.
"We can go on and play two," Stice said. "Didn"t see it neither."
Hal was coming in closer to Stice because he was going to the net-post for his towel. "Not your job to see it." He looked unhappy and tried to smile. "You hit it too hard to see, you deserve the point."
Stice shrugged and nodded, chewing. "You take the next gimme then." He sliced two b.a.l.l.s soft so they ended their roll down near the opposite baseline, where Hal could use them to serve. The Darkness still made huge mandibular chewing faces on-court even though he hadn"t been allowed to chew gum in play since he accidentally inhaled gum and had to be Heimliched by his opponent in the semis of last spring"s Easter Bowl.
"Ortho"s saying how the next debatable call goes immediately to Hal; they don"t take two," deLint said, darkening in half-squares on the two charts.
"Take two?"
"Play a let, babe. Do it over. Two serves: one point." Aubrey deLint was a lightly pockmarked man with thick yellow hair in an anchorman"s helmety style and a hypertensive flush, and eyes, oval and close-set and lightless, that seemed like a second set of nostrils in his face. "Do a whole lot of sports at Moment Moment do you?" do you?"
"So they"re being sporting," Steeply said. "Generous, fair."
"We inculcate that as a priority here," deLint said, gesturing vaguely at the s.p.a.ce around them, head bent to his charts.
"They seem like friends."
"The angle here for Moment Moment might be the good-friends-off-the-court-andremorseless-pitiless-foes-on-court angle." might be the good-friends-off-the-court-andremorseless-pitiless-foes-on-court angle."
"I mean they seem like friends even playing," Helen Steeply said, watching Hal dry off his leather grip with a white towel as Stice jumped up and down in place back at his deuce corner, one hand in his armpit.
DeLint"s laugh sounded to Steeply"s keen ear like the laugh of a much older and less fit man, the mucoidal fist-at-chest laugh of a lap-blanketed old man in a lawn chair on his gravel backyard in Scottsdale AZ, hearing his son say his wife claimed no longer to know who he was. "Don"t kid yourself, babe," de Lint got out. The Vaught twins on the bleacher below looked up and around and pretended to shush him, the left mouth grinning, deLint with that bad cold-eyed shard of a smile back at them as Hal Incandenza bounced the ball three times and went into his own service motion.
Several little boys were strung busily out along the sides of a small utility tunnel twenty-six meters below the Show Courts.
Steeply"s face looked as if the journalist were trying to think of pithy images for a motion as unexceptional and fluid as Hal Incandenza"s serve. At the start a violinist maybe, standing alert with his sleek head c.o.c.ked and racket up in front and the hand with the ball at the racket"s throat like a bow. The down-together-up-together of the downswing and toss could be a child making angels in the snow, cheeks rosy and eyes at the sky. But Hal"s face was pale and thoroughly unchildlike, his gaze somehow extending only half a meter in front of him. He looked nothing like the punter. The service motion"s middle might be a man at a precipice, falling forward, giving in sweetly to his own weight, and the serve"s terminus and impact a hammering man, the driven nail just within range at the top of his tiptoed reach. But all these were only parts, and made the motion seem segmented, when the smaller crew-cutted jowly boy was the one with the stuttered motion, the man of parts. Steeply had played tennis only a couple times, with his wife, and had felt ungainly and simian out there. The punter"s discourses on the game had been lengthy but not much use. It was unlikely that any one game figured much in the Entertainment.
Hal Incandenza"s first serve was a tactically aggressive shot but not immediately identifiable as such. Stice wanted to serve so hard he could set himself up to put the ball away on the next shot, up at net. Hal"s serve seemed to set in motion a much more involved mechanism, one that took several exchanges to reveal itself as aggressive. His first serve hadn"t Stice"s pace, but it had depth, plus a topspin Hal achieved with an arched back and faint brushing action over the back of the ball that made the serve curve visibly in the air, egg-shaped with spin, to land deep in the box and hop up high, so that Stice couldn"t do more than send back a deep backhand chip from shoulder-height, and then couldn"t come in behind a return that"d been robbed of all pace. Stice moved to the baseline"s center as the chip floated back to Hal. Hal"s pivot moved him right so he could take it on the forehand 268 268 another looper dripping with top, right back in the same corner he"d served to, so that Stice had to stop and sprint back the same way he"d come. Stice drove this backhand hard down the line to Hal"s forehand, a blazing thing that made the audience inhale, but as the another looper dripping with top, right back in the same corner he"d served to, so that Stice had to stop and sprint back the same way he"d come. Stice drove this backhand hard down the line to Hal"s forehand, a blazing thing that made the audience inhale, but as the samizdat samizdat"s director"s other son glided a few strides left Steeply could see that he now had a whole open court to hit cross-court into, Stice having hit so hard he"d backpedalled a bit off the shot and was now scrambling to get back out of the deuce corner, and Hal hit the flat textbook drive cross-court into green lined s.p.a.ce, hard but not flamboyantly so, and the diagonal of the ball kept it travelling out wide after it hit Stice"s ad sideline, carrying it away from the boy in black"s outstretched racquet, and for a second it looked as if Stice at a dead run might get his strings on the ball, but the ball stayed tantalizingly just out of reach, still travelling at a severe cross-court diagonal, and it pa.s.sed Stice"s racquet half a meter past its rim, and Stice"s momentum carried him almost halfway into the next court. Stice slowed to a jog to go retrieve the ball. Hal stood slightly hipshot on the ad side, waiting for Stice to get back and let him serve again. DeLint, whose peripheral vision"s acuity and disguise was an E.T.A. legend, observed the big journalist chew her nib for a second and then put down nothing more than the Gregg ideogram for pretty, pretty, shaking her fuchsia cap. shaking her fuchsia cap.
"Wasn"t that pretty," he said blandly.
Steeply rooted for a hankie. "Not exactly."
"Hal"s in essence a torturer, if you want his essence as a player, instead of a straight-out killer like Stice or the Canadian Wayne," deLint said. "This is why you don"t stay back or play safe against Hal. This way of the ball seeming just in reach, to keep you trying, running. He yanks you around. Always two or three shots ahead. He won that point on the deep forehand after the serve - the second he had Stice wrong-footed you could see the angle open up. Though the serve set the whole thing up in advance, and without the risk of much pace on it. The kid doesn"t need pace, we"ve helped him find."
"When might I get a chance to talk to him?"
"Incandenza took a lot of bringing along. He didn"t used to quite have the complete game to be able to do this. Slice the court up into sections and c.h.i.n.ks, then all of a sudden you see light through one of the c.h.i.n.ks and you see he"s been setting up the angle since the start of the point. It makes you think of chess."
The journalist blew her red nose. " "Chess on the run." "
"Nice term."
Hal went into his service motion to the ad court.
"Do the students play chess here?"
A mirthless chuckle. "No time."
"Do you play chess?"
Stice hit a backhand winner off Hal"s second serve; mild applause.