Gately"s forehead was wrinkled in emotional pain all the way up Rte. 3 home. They were in the back of Ferocious Francis"s old car. Glenn K. was trying to ask what was the difference between a bottle of 15-year-old Hennessey and a human female v.a.g.i.n.a. Crocodile d.i.c.ky N. up riding shotgun told Glenn to try to f.u.c.king remember there was ladies present. Ferocious Francis kept moving the toothpick around in his mouth and looking at Gately in the rearview. Gately wanted to both cry and hit somebody. Glenn"s cheap pseudo-demonic robes had the faint rank oily smell of a dish towel. There was no smoking in the car: Ferocious Francis had a little oxygen tank he had to carry around and a little thin pale-blue plastic-like tube thing that lay under his nose and was taped there and sent oxygen up his nose. All he"d ever say about the tank and the tube is that they were not his personal will but that he"d submitted to advice and now here he was, still sucking air and staying rabidly Active.
Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you"re new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it"ll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. They leave this out, talking instead about Grat.i.tude and Release from Compulsion. There"s serious pain in being sober, though, you find out, after time. Then now that you"re clean and don"t even much want Substances and feeling like you want to both cry and stomp somebody into goo with pain, these Boston AAs start in on telling you you"re right where you"re supposed to be and telling you to remember the pointless pain of active addiction and telling you that at least this sober pain now has a purpose. At least this pain means you"re going somewhere, they say, instead of the repet.i.tive gerbil-wheel of addictive pain.
They neglect to tell you that after the urge to get high magically vanishes and you"ve been Substanceless for maybe six or eight months, you"ll begin to start to "Get In Touch" with why it was that you used Substances in the first place. You"ll start to feel why it was you got dependent on what was, when you get right down to it, an anesthetic. "Getting In Touch With Your Feelings" is another quilted-sampler-type cliche that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real, it turns out. 178 178 It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers. It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.
Near the end of his Ennet residency, at like eight months clean and more or less free of any chemical compulsion, going to the Shattuck every A.M. and working the Steps and getting Active and pounding out meetings like a madman, Don Gately suddenly started to remember things he would just as soon not have. Remembered. Actually remembered remembered"s probably not the best word. It was more like he started to almost reexperience things that he"d barely even been there to experience, in terms of emotionally, in the first place. A lot of it was undramatic little s.h.i.t, but still somehow painful. E.g. like when he was maybe eleven, pretending to watch TV with his mother and pretending to listen to her P.M. nightly monologue, a litany of complaint and regret whose consonants got mushier and mushier. To the extent it"s Gately"s place to diagnose anybody else as an alcoholic, his mom was pretty definitely an alcoholic. She drank Stolichnaya vodka in front of the TV. They weren"t cable-ready, for reasons of $. She drank little thin gla.s.ses with cut-up bits of carrot and pepper that she"d drop into the vodka. Her maiden name was Gately. Don"s like organic father had been an Estonian immigrant, a wrought-iron worker, which is like sort of a welder with ambition. He"d broken Gately"s mother"s jaw and left Boston when Gately was in his mother"s stomach. Gately had no brothers or sisters. His mother was subsequently involved with a live-in lover, a former Navy M.P. who used to beat her up on a regular schedule, hitting her in the vicinities between groin and breast so that nothing showed. A skill he"d picked up as a brig guard and Sh.o.r.e Patrol. At about 810 Heinekens he used to all of a sudden throw his Readers" Digest Readers" Digest against the wall and get her down and beat her with measured blows, she"d go down on the floor of the apartment and he"d hit her in the hidden vicinity, timing the blows between her arms" little waves - Gately remembered she tried to ward off the blows with a fluttered downward motion of her arms and hands, as if she were beating out flames. Gately still hasn"t ever quite gotten over to look at her in State Care in the Long-Term-Care Medicaid place. The M.P."s tongue was in the corner of his mouth and his little-eyed face wore a look of great concentration, as if he were taking something delicate apart or putting it together. He"d be on one knee knelt over her with his look of sober problem-solving, timing his shots, the blows abrupt and darting, her writhing and trying to kind of shoo them away. The darting blows. Out of the psychic blue, very detailed memories of these fights surfaced one afternoon as he was getting ready to mow the Ennet House lawn for Pat in May Y.D.A.U., when Enfield Marine P.H.H. withheld maintenance services in reprisal for late utilities. After the little Salem decayed beach-cottage with Herman the Ceiling That Breathed, the little like tract house by Mrs. Waite"s tract house in Beverly"s good dining room chairs had fluted legs and Gately had scratched against the wall and get her down and beat her with measured blows, she"d go down on the floor of the apartment and he"d hit her in the hidden vicinity, timing the blows between her arms" little waves - Gately remembered she tried to ward off the blows with a fluttered downward motion of her arms and hands, as if she were beating out flames. Gately still hasn"t ever quite gotten over to look at her in State Care in the Long-Term-Care Medicaid place. The M.P."s tongue was in the corner of his mouth and his little-eyed face wore a look of great concentration, as if he were taking something delicate apart or putting it together. He"d be on one knee knelt over her with his look of sober problem-solving, timing his shots, the blows abrupt and darting, her writhing and trying to kind of shoo them away. The darting blows. Out of the psychic blue, very detailed memories of these fights surfaced one afternoon as he was getting ready to mow the Ennet House lawn for Pat in May Y.D.A.U., when Enfield Marine P.H.H. withheld maintenance services in reprisal for late utilities. After the little Salem decayed beach-cottage with Herman the Ceiling That Breathed, the little like tract house by Mrs. Waite"s tract house in Beverly"s good dining room chairs had fluted legs and Gately had scratched Donad Donad and and Donold Donold in each leg with a pin, low down. Higher up on the legs, the scratches became correctly spelled. It"s like a lot of memories of his youth sank without bubbles when he quit school and then later only in sobriety bubbled back up to where he could Get In Touch with them. His mother used to call the M.P. a in each leg with a pin, low down. Higher up on the legs, the scratches became correctly spelled. It"s like a lot of memories of his youth sank without bubbles when he quit school and then later only in sobriety bubbled back up to where he could Get In Touch with them. His mother used to call the M.P. a bastuhd bastuhd and sometimes go and sometimes go oof oof when he landed one in the vicinity. She drank vodka with vegetables suspended in it, a habit she"d picked up from the missing Estonian, whose first name, Gately read on a torn and then f.u.c.keduppedly Scotch-taped paper out of her jewelry box after his mother"s cirrhotic hemorrhage, was Bulat. The Medicaid Long-Term place was way the f.u.c.k out the Yirrell Beach bridge in Point Shirley across the water from the Airport. The former M.P. delivered cheese and then later worked in a chowder factory and kept weights in the Beverly house"s garage and drank Heineken beer, and logged each beer he drank carefully in a little spiral notebook he used to monitor his intake of alcohol. when he landed one in the vicinity. She drank vodka with vegetables suspended in it, a habit she"d picked up from the missing Estonian, whose first name, Gately read on a torn and then f.u.c.keduppedly Scotch-taped paper out of her jewelry box after his mother"s cirrhotic hemorrhage, was Bulat. The Medicaid Long-Term place was way the f.u.c.k out the Yirrell Beach bridge in Point Shirley across the water from the Airport. The former M.P. delivered cheese and then later worked in a chowder factory and kept weights in the Beverly house"s garage and drank Heineken beer, and logged each beer he drank carefully in a little spiral notebook he used to monitor his intake of alcohol.
His mom"s special couch for TV was nubbly red chintz, and when she shifted from seated upright to lying on her side with her arm between her head and the little protective doily on the couch"s armrest and the gla.s.s held tilting on the little s.p.a.ce her b.r.e.a.s.t.s left at the cushion"s edge, it was a sign she was going under. Gately at like ten or eleven used to pretend to listen and watch TV on the floor but really be dividing his attention between how close his Mom was to unconsciousness and how much Stolichnaya was left in the bottle. She would only drink Stolichnaya, which she called her Comrade in Arms and said Nothing but the Comrade would do. After she went under for the evening and he"d carefully taken the tilted gla.s.s out of her hand, Don"d take the bottle and mix the first couple vodkas with Diet c.o.ke and drink a couple of those until it lost its fire, then drink it straight. This was like a routine. Then he"d put the near-empty bottle back next to her gla.s.s with its vegetables darkening in the undrunk vodka, and she"d wake up on the couch in the morning with no idea she hadn"t drank the whole thing. Gately was careful to always leave her enough for a wake-up swallow. But this gesture of leaving some, Gately"s now realized, wasn"t just filial kindness on his part: if she didn"t have the wake-up swallow she wouldn"t get off the red couch all day, and then there would be no new bottle that night.
This was at age ten or eleven, as he now recalls. Most of the furniture was wrapped in plastic. The carpet was burnt-orange s.h.a.g that the landlord kept saying he was going to take up and go to wood floors. The M.P. worked nights or else most nights went out, and then she"d take the plastic off the couch.
Why the couch had little protective doilies on the arms when it usually had a plastic cover on it Gately cannot recall or explain.
For a while in Beverly they had Nimitz the kitty.
This all came burpling greasily up into memory in the s.p.a.ce of two or three weeks in May, and now more stuff steadily like dribbles up, for Gately to Touch.
Sober, she"d called him Bimmy or Bim because that"s what she heard his little friends call him. She didn"t know the neighborhood cognomen came from an acronym for "Big Indestructible Moron." His head had been huge, as a child. Out of all proportion, though with nothing especially Estonian about it, that he could see. He"d been very sensitive about it, the head, but never told her not to call him Bim. When she was drunk and conscious she called him her Doshka or Dochka or like that. Sometimes, well in the bag himself, when he turned off the uncabled set and covered her with the afghan, easing the mostly empty Stoly bottle back onto the little TV Guide TV Guide table by the bowl of darkening chopped peppers, his unconscious Mom would groan and t.i.tter and call him her Doshka and good sir knight and last and only love, and ask him not to hit her anymore. table by the bowl of darkening chopped peppers, his unconscious Mom would groan and t.i.tter and call him her Doshka and good sir knight and last and only love, and ask him not to hit her anymore.
In June he Got In Touch with memories that their front steps in Beverly were a pocked cement painted red even in the pocks. Their mailbox was part of a whole tract-housing complex"s honeycomb of mailboxes on a like small pole, brushed-steel and gray with a postal eagle on it. You needed a little key to get your mail out, and for a long time he thought the sign on it said "US MAIL," as in MAIL," as in us us instead of instead of U.S. U.S. His mom"s hair had been dry blond-white with dark roots that never lengthened or went away. No one tells you when they tell you you have cirrhosis that eventually you"ll all of a sudden start choking on your own blood. This is called a His mom"s hair had been dry blond-white with dark roots that never lengthened or went away. No one tells you when they tell you you have cirrhosis that eventually you"ll all of a sudden start choking on your own blood. This is called a cirrhotic hemorrhage cirrhotic hemorrhage. Your liver won"t process any more of your blood and it quote shunts shunts the blood and it goes up your throat in a high-pressure jet, is what they told him, is why he"d first thought the M.P."d come back and cut his Mom or stabbed her, when he first came in, after football, his last season, at age seventeen. She"d been Diagnosed for years. She"d go to Meetings the blood and it goes up your throat in a high-pressure jet, is what they told him, is why he"d first thought the M.P."d come back and cut his Mom or stabbed her, when he first came in, after football, his last season, at age seventeen. She"d been Diagnosed for years. She"d go to Meetings 179 179 for a few weeks, then drink on the couch, silent, telling him if the phone rang she wasn"t home. After a few weeks of this she"d spend a whole day weeping, beating at herself as if on fire. Then she"d go back to Meetings for a while. Eventually her face began to swell and make her eyes piggy and her big b.r.e.a.s.t.s pointed at the floor and she turned the deep yellow of quality squash. This was all part of the Diagnosis. At first Gately just couldn"t go out to the Long-Term place, couldn"t see her out there. Couldn"t deal. Then after some time pa.s.sed he couldn"t go because he couldn"t face her and try and explain why he hadn"t come before now. Ten-plus years have gone like that. Gately hadn"t probably consciously thought of her once for three years, before getting straight. for a few weeks, then drink on the couch, silent, telling him if the phone rang she wasn"t home. After a few weeks of this she"d spend a whole day weeping, beating at herself as if on fire. Then she"d go back to Meetings for a while. Eventually her face began to swell and make her eyes piggy and her big b.r.e.a.s.t.s pointed at the floor and she turned the deep yellow of quality squash. This was all part of the Diagnosis. At first Gately just couldn"t go out to the Long-Term place, couldn"t see her out there. Couldn"t deal. Then after some time pa.s.sed he couldn"t go because he couldn"t face her and try and explain why he hadn"t come before now. Ten-plus years have gone like that. Gately hadn"t probably consciously thought of her once for three years, before getting straight.
Right after their neighbor Mrs. Waite got found by the meter-guy dead, so he must have been nine, when his Mom was first Diagnosed, Gately had gotten the Diagnosis mixed up in his head with King Arthur. He"d ride a mop-handle horse and brandish a trashcan-lid and a batteryless plastic Light-Saber and tell the neighborhood kids he was Sir Osis of Thuliver, most fearsomely loyal and fierce of Arthur"s vessels. Since the summer now, when he mops Shattuck Shelter floors, he hears the Clopaclopaclop he used to make with his big square tongue as Sir Osis, then, riding.
And his dreams late that night, after the Braintree/Bob Death Commitment, seem to set him under a sort of sea, at terrific depths, the water all around him silent and dim and the same temperature he is.
VERY LATE OCTOBER Y.D.A.U.
Hal Incandenza had this horrible new recurring dream where he was losing his teeth, where his teeth had become like shale and splintered when he tried to chew, and fragmented and melted into grit in his mouth; in the dream he was going around squeezing a ball and spitting fragments and grit, getting more and more hungry and scared. Everything in there loosened by a great oral rot that the nightmare"s Teddy Schacht wouldn"t even look at, saying he was late for his next appointment, everyone Hal saw seeing Hal"s crumbling teeth and looking at their watch and making vague excuses, a general atmosphere of the splintering teeth being a symptom of something way more dire and distasteful that no one wanted to confront him about. He was pricing dentures when he woke. It was about an hour before dawn drills. His keys were on the floor by the bed with his College Board prep books. Mario"s great iron bed was empty and made up tight, all five pillows neatly stacked. Mario"d been spending the last few nights over at HmH, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room in front of Tavis"s Tatsuoka receiver, listening to WYYY109 into the wee hours, weirdly agitated about Madame Psychosis"s unannounced sabbatical from the "60 Minutes +/" midnight thing where she"d been an unvarying M-F presence for several years, it seemed like. WYYY had been evasive and unforthcoming about the whole thing. For two days some alto grad student had tried to fill in, billing herself as Miss Diagnosis, reading Horkheimer and Adorno against a background of Partridge Family slowed down to a narcotized slur. At no time had anyone of managerial pitch or timbre mentioned Madame Psychosis or what her story was or her date of expected return. Hal"d told Mario that the silence was a positive sign, that if she"d left the air for good the station would have had to say something. Hal, Coach Scht.i.tt, and the Moms had all remarked Mario"s odd mood. Mario was usually next to impossible to agitate. 180 180 Now WYYY was back to running "Sixty Minutes More or Less" without anybody at all at the helm. For the past several nights Mario has lain there in a sarcophagally tapered sleeping bag of GoreTex and fiberfill and listened to them run the weird static ambient musics Madame Psychosis uses for background, but now without any spoken voice as foreground; and the static, momentumless music as subject instead of environment is somehow terribly disturbing: Hal listened to a few minutes of the stuff and told his brother it sounded like somebody"s mind coming apart right before your ears.
9 NOVEMBER.
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT.
The Enfield Tennis Academy has an accredited capacity of 148 junior players - of whom 80 are to be male - but an actual Fall Y.D.A.U. population of 95 paying and 41 scholarship students, so 136, of which 72 are female, right now, for some reason, meaning that while there"s room for twelve more (preferably full-tuition) junior players, there ought ideally to be fully sixteen more males than there are, meaning Charles Tavis and Co. are wanting to fill all twelve available spots with males - plus they wouldn"t exactly mind, is the general scuttleb.u.t.t, if a half dozen or so of the better girls left before graduation and tried for the Show, simply because housing more than 68 girls means putting some in the male dorms, which creates tensions and licensing- and conservative-parent-problems, given that coed hall bathrooms are not a good idea what with all the adolescent glands firing all over the place.
It also means that, since there are twice as many male prorectors as female, A.M. drills have to be complexly staggered, the boys in two sets of 32, the girls in three of 24, which creates problems in terms of early-P.M. cla.s.ses for the lowest-ranked C-squad girls, who drill last.
Matriculations, gender quotas, recruiting, financial aid, room-a.s.signments, mealtimes, rankings, cla.s.s v. drill schedules, prorector-hiring, accommodating changes in drill schedule consequent to a player"s movement up or down a squad. It"s all the sort of thing that"s uninteresting unless you"re the one responsible, in which case it"s cholesterol-raisingly stressful and complex. The stress of all the complexities and priorities to be triaged and then weighted against one another gets Charles Tavis out of bed in the Headmaster"s House at an unG.o.dly hour most mornings, his sleep-swollen face twitching with permutations. He stands in leather slippers at the living-room window, looking southeast past West and Center Courts at the array of A-team players a.s.sembling stiffly in the gray glow, carrying gear with their heads down and some still asleep on their feet, the first bit of snout of the sun protruding through the city"s little skyline far beyond them, the aluminum glints of river and sea, east, Tavis"s hands working nervously around the cup of hazlenut decaf that steams upward into his face as he holds it, hair unarranged and one side hanging, high forehead up against the window"s gla.s.s so he can feel the mean chill of the dawn just outside, his lips moving slightly and without sound, the thing it"s not entirely impossible he may have fathered asleep up next to the sound system with its claws on its chest and four pillows for bradypnea-afflicted breathing that sounds like soft repet.i.tions of the words sky sky or or ski, ski, making no unnecessary sound, not eager to wake it and have to interface with it and have it look up at him with a terrible calm and accepting knowledge it"s quite possible is nothing but Tavis"s imagination, so lips moving w/o sound but breath and cup"s steam spreading on the gla.s.s, and little icicles from the rainy melt of yesterday"s snow hanging from the anodized gutters just above the window and seen by Tavis as a distant skyline upside-down. In the lightening sky the same two or three clouds seem to move back and forth like sentries. The heat comes on with a distant whoom and the gla.s.s against his forehead trembles slightly. A hiss of low static from the speaker it had fallen into sleep without turning off. The A-team"s array keeps shifting and melding as they await Scht.i.tt. Permutations of complications. making no unnecessary sound, not eager to wake it and have to interface with it and have it look up at him with a terrible calm and accepting knowledge it"s quite possible is nothing but Tavis"s imagination, so lips moving w/o sound but breath and cup"s steam spreading on the gla.s.s, and little icicles from the rainy melt of yesterday"s snow hanging from the anodized gutters just above the window and seen by Tavis as a distant skyline upside-down. In the lightening sky the same two or three clouds seem to move back and forth like sentries. The heat comes on with a distant whoom and the gla.s.s against his forehead trembles slightly. A hiss of low static from the speaker it had fallen into sleep without turning off. The A-team"s array keeps shifting and melding as they await Scht.i.tt. Permutations of complications.
Tavis watches the boys stretch and confer and sips from the cup with both hands, the concerns of the day a.s.sembling themselves in a sort of tree-diagram of worry. Charles Tavis knows what James Incandenza could not have cared about less: the key to the successful administration of a top-level junior tennis academy lies in cultivating a kind of reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry.
So the best E.T.A. players" special perk is they get hauled out of bed at dawn, still crusty-eyed and pale with sleep, to drill in the first shift.
Dawn drills are of course alfresco until they erect and inflate the Lung, which Hal Incandenza hopes is soon. His circulation is poor because of tobacco and/or marijuana, and even with his DUNLOP-down-both-legs sweatpants and a turtleneck and thick old white alpaca tennis jacket that had been his father"s and has to be rolled up at the sleeves, he"s sullen and chilled, Hal is, and by the time they"ve run the pre-stretch sprints up and down the E.T.A. hill four times, swinging their sticks madly in all directions and (at A. deLint"s dictate) making various half-hearted warrior-noises, Hal is both chilled and wet, and his sneakers squelch from dew as he hops in place and looks at his breath, wincing as the cold air hits the one bad tooth.
By the time they"re all stretching out, lined up in rows along the service-and baselines, flexing and bowing, genuflecting to nothing, changing postures at the sound of a whistle, by this time the sky has lightened to the color of Kaopectate. The ATHSCME fans are idle and the E.T.A.s can hear birds. Smoke from the stacks of the Sunstrand complex is weakly sunlit as it hangs in plumes, completely still, as if painted on the air. Tiny cries and a repet.i.tive scream for help come up from someplace downhill to the east, presumably Enfield Marine. This is the one time of day the Charles doesn"t look bright blue. The pines" birds don"t sound any happier than the players. The grounds" non-pines are bare and canted at circuitous hillside angles all up and down the hill when they sprint again, four more times, then on bad days another four, maybe the most hated part of the day"s conditioning. Somebody always throws up a little; it"s like the drills" reveille. The river at dawn is a strip of foil"s dull side. Kyle Coyle keeps saying it"s co-wo-wold. All the lesser players are still abed. Today there"s multiple retching, from last night"s sweets. Hal"s breath hangs before his face until he moves through it. Sprints produce the sick sound of much squelching; everyone wishes the hill"s gra.s.s would die.
Twenty-four girls are drilled in groups of six on four of the Center Courts. The 32 boys (minus, rather ominously, J. J. Penn) are split by rough age into fours and take a semi-staggered eight of the East Courts. Scht.i.tt is up in his little observational crow"s nest, a sort of apse at the end of the iron transom players call the Tower that extends west to east over the centers of all three sets of courts and terminates w/ the nest high above the Show Courts. He has a chair and an ashtray up there. Sometimes from the courts you can see him leaning over the railing, tapping the edge of the bullhorn with his weatherman"s pointer; from the West and Center Courts the rising sun behind him gives his white head a pinkish corona. When he"s seated you just see misshapen smoke-rings coming up out of the nest and moving off with the wind. The sound of the bullhorn is scarier when you can"t see him. The waffled iron stairs leading up to the transom are west of the West Courts, all the way across from the nest, so sometimes Scht.i.tt paces back and forth along the transom with his pointer behind his back, his boots ringing out on the iron. Scht.i.tt seems immune to all weather and always dresses the same for drills: the warm-ups and boots. When the E.T.A.s" strokes or play"s being filmed for study, Mario Incandenza is positioned on the railing of Scht.i.tt"s nest, leaning way out and filming down, his police lock protruding into empty air, with somebody beefy a.s.signed to stand behind him and grip the back of the Velcro vest: it always scares h.e.l.l out of Hal because you can never see Dunkel or Nw.a.n.gi behind Mario and it always looks like he"s leaning way out to dive Bolex-first down onto Court 7"s net.
Except during periods of disciplinary conditioning, alfresco A.M. drills work like this. A prorector is at each relevant court with two yellow Ball-Hopper-brand baskets of used b.a.l.l.s, plus a ball machine, which machine looks like an open footlocker with a blunt muzzle at one end pointed across the net at a quartet of boys and connected by long orange industrial cords to a three-p.r.o.ng outdoor outlet at the base of each light-pole. Some of the light-poles cast long thin shadows across the courts as soon as the sun is strong enough for there to be shadows; in summertime players try to sort of huddle in the thin lines of shade. Ortho Stice keeps yawning and shivering; John Wayne wears a small cold smile. Hal hops up and down in his capacious jacket and plum turtleneck and looks at his breath and tries a la Lyle to focus very intently on the pain of his tooth without judging it as bad or good. K. D. Coyle, out of the infirmary after the weekend, opines that he doesn"t see why the better players" reward for hard slogging to the upper rungs is dawn drills while for instance Pemulis and the Vikemeister et al. are still horizontal and sawing logs. Coyle says this every morning. Stice tells him he"s surprised at how little they"ve missed him. Coyle is from the small Tucson AZ suburb of Erythema and claims to have thin desert blood and special sensitivity to the wet chill of Boston"s dawn. The WhataBurger Jr. Invitational is a sort of double-edged Thanksgiving homecoming for Coyle, who at thirteen was lured from Tucson"s own Rancho Vista Golf and Tennis Academy by promises of self-transcendence from Scht.i.tt.
Drills work like this. Eight different emphases on eight different courts. Each quartet starts at a different court and rotates around. The top four traditionally start drills on the first court: backhands down the line, two boys to a side. Corbett Thorp lays down squares of electrician"s tape at the court"s corners and they are strongly encouraged to hit the b.a.l.l.s into the little squares. Hal hits with Stice, Coyle with Wayne; Axford"s been sent down with Shaw and Struck for some reason. Second court: forehands, same deal. Stice consistently misses the square and gets a low-pH rejoinder from Tex Watson, hatless and pattern-balding at twenty-seven. Hal"s tooth hurts and his ankle is stiff and the cold b.a.l.l.s come off his strings with a dead sound like chung chung. Tiny bratwursts of smoke ascend rhythmically from Scht.i.tt"s little nest. Third court is "b.u.t.terflies," a complex VAPS deal where Hal hits a backhand down the line to Stice while Coyle forehands it to Wayne and then Wayne and Stice cross-court the b.a.l.l.s back to Hal and Coyle, who have to switch sides without bashing into each other and hit back down the line now to Wayne and Stice, respectively. Wayne and Hal amuse themselves by making their cross-court b.a.l.l.s collide on every fifth exchange or so - this is known around E.T.A. as "atom-smashing" and is understandably hard to do - and the collided b.a.l.l.s sp.r.o.ng wildly out onto the other practice courts, and Rik Dunkel is less amused than Wayne and Hal are, so, nicely warm now and arms singing, they"re shunted quickly onto the fourth court: volleys for depth, then for angle, then lobs and overheads, which latter drill can be converted into a disciplinary Puker if a prorector"s feeding you the lobs: the overhead drill"s called "Tap & Whack": Hal pedals back, terribly ankle-conscious, jumps, kicks out, nails Stice"s lob, then has to sprint up and tap the net"s tape with his Dunlop"s head as Stice lobs deep again, and Hal has to backpedal again and jump and kick and hit it, and so on. Then Hal and Coyle, both sucking wind after twenty and trying to stand up straight, feed lobs to Wayne and Stice, neither of whom is fatiguable as far as anyone can tell. You have to kick out on overheads to keep your balance in the air. Overhead, Scht.i.tt uses an unamplified bullhorn and careful enunciation to call out for everyone to hear that Mr. revenant Hal Incandenza was letting the ball get the little much behind him on overheads, fears of the ankle maybe. Hal raises his stick in acknowledgment without looking up. To hang in past age fourteen here is to become immune to humiliation from staff. Coyle tells Hal between the lobs they send up he"d love to see Scht.i.tt have to do twenty Tap & Whacks in a row. They"re all flushed to a shine, all chill washed off, noses running freely and heads squeaking with blood, the sun well above the sea"s dull glint and starting to melt the frozen slush from I.-Day"s snow and rain that night-custodians had swept into little wedged lines up against the lengthwise fences, which grimy wedges are now starting to melt and run. There"s still no movement in the Sunstrand stacks" plumes. The watching prorectors stand easy with their legs apart and their arms crossed over their racquets" faces. The same three or four booger-shaped clouds seem to pa.s.s back and forth overhead, and when they cover the sun people"s breath reappears. Stice blows on his racquet-hand and cries out thinly for the inflation of the Lung. Mr. A. F. deLint ranges behind the fence with his clipboard and whistle, blowing his nose. The girls behind him are too bundled up to be worth watching, their hair rubber-banded into little bouncing tails. Fifth court: serves to both corners of both boxes, catching each others" serves and serving them back. First serves, second serves, slice serves, shank serves, and back-snapping American Twist serves that Stice begs off of, telling the prorector - Neil Hartigan, who"s 2 m. tall and of so few words everybody fears him by default - he"s having lower spasms from a mispositioned bed. Then Coyle - he of the weak bladder and suspicious discharge - gets excused to go back into the eastern tree-line out of sight of the distaffs and pee, so the other three get a minute to jog over to the pavilion and stand with their hands on their hips and breathe and drink Gatorade out of little conic paper cups you can"t put down til they"re empty. The way you flush out a cottony mouth between drills is you take a mouthful of Gatorade and puff out your cheeks to make a globe of liquid that you mangle with your teeth and tongue, then lean out and spit out into the gra.s.s and take another drink for real. The sixth court is returns of serve down the line, down the center, cross-court for depth, then for placement, then for deep placement, w/ more taped squares; then chipped center- and cross-returns against a server who follows his serve to the net. The server practices half-volleys off the chips, although Wayne and Stice are so fast that they"re on top of the net by the time the return gets to them and they can volley it away at chest-height. Wayne drills with the casual economy of somebody who"s in about second gear. The urns" dispensers" cups can"t stand up, their bottoms are pointy and they"ll spill any liquid still in them, is why you have to empty them. Between squads Harde"s guys will sweep the pavilion of dozens of cones.
Then, blessedly, on the seventh court, physically undemanding Finesse drills. Drops, drops for angles, topspin lobs, extreme angles, drops for extreme angles, then restful microtennis, tennis inside the service lines, very soft and precise, radical angles much encouraged. Touch- and artistry-wise n.o.body comes close to Hal in microtennis. By this time Hal"s turtleneck is soaked through under the alpaca jacket, and exchanging it for a sweatshirt out of the gear bag is a kind of renewal. What wind there is down here is out of the south. The temperature is now probably in the low 10"s C.; the sun"s been up an hour, and you can almost see the light-pole and transom shadows rotating slowly northwest. The Sunstrand stacks" plumes stand there cigarette-straight, not even seeming to spread at the top; the sky is going a gla.s.sy blue.
No (tennis) b.a.l.l.s required on the final court. Wind sprints. Probably the less said about wind sprints the better. Then more Gatorade, which Hal and Coyle are breathing too hard to enjoy, as Scht.i.tt comes slowly down from the transom. It takes a while. You can hear his steel-toed boots. .h.i.t each iron step. There is something creepy about a very fit older man, to say nothing of jackboots w/ Fila warm-ups of claret-colored silk. He"s coming this way, both hands behind his back and the pointer poking out to the side. Scht.i.tt"s crew cut and face are nacreous as he moves east in the yellowing A.M. light. This is sort of the signal for all the quartets to gather at the Show Courts. Behind them the girls are still hitting groundstrokes in baroque combinations, much high-pitched grunting and the lifeless chung chung of cold hit b.a.l.l.s. Three 14"s are made to squeegee the more extrusive melt back into the little banks of frozen leaves along the fence. At the horizon to the north a bulbous cone of picric clouds that gets taller by the hour as the MethuenAndover border"s mammoth effectuators force northern MA"s combined oxides north against some sort of upper-air resistance, it looks like. You can see little bits of glitter from broken monitor-gla.s.s in the frozen stuff up by the fences behind 69, and one or two curved shards of floppy disk, and they"re a troubling sight, Penn being absent amid troubling leg-rumors, Postal-Weight with two black eyes and his nose covered with horizontal bandages that are starting to loosen and curl at the edges from sweat, and Otis P. Lord alleged to have come back from the emergency room at St. Elizabeth"s last night with the Hitachi monitor over his head, still, its removal, with all the sharp teeth of the broken screen"s gla.s.s pointing at key parts of Lord"s throat, apparently calling for the sort of esoteric expertise you have to fly in by private medical jet, according to Axford. of cold hit b.a.l.l.s. Three 14"s are made to squeegee the more extrusive melt back into the little banks of frozen leaves along the fence. At the horizon to the north a bulbous cone of picric clouds that gets taller by the hour as the MethuenAndover border"s mammoth effectuators force northern MA"s combined oxides north against some sort of upper-air resistance, it looks like. You can see little bits of glitter from broken monitor-gla.s.s in the frozen stuff up by the fences behind 69, and one or two curved shards of floppy disk, and they"re a troubling sight, Penn being absent amid troubling leg-rumors, Postal-Weight with two black eyes and his nose covered with horizontal bandages that are starting to loosen and curl at the edges from sweat, and Otis P. Lord alleged to have come back from the emergency room at St. Elizabeth"s last night with the Hitachi monitor over his head, still, its removal, with all the sharp teeth of the broken screen"s gla.s.s pointing at key parts of Lord"s throat, apparently calling for the sort of esoteric expertise you have to fly in by private medical jet, according to Axford.
They all get on the outside of three cones of Gatorade, bent or squatting, sucking wind, while Scht.i.tt stands at a sort of Parade Rest with his weather-man"s pointer behind his back and shares overall impressions with the players on the morning"s work thus far. Certain players are singled out for special mention or humiliation. Then more wind sprints. Then a brief like strategy-clinic-thing from Corbett Thorp on how approach shots down the line aren"t always the very best tactic, and why. Thorp"s a first-rate tennis mind, but his terrible stutter makes the boys so uncomfortable they have a hard time listening. 181 181 The whole first shift"s on the eighth court for the final conditioning drills. 182 182 First are Star Drills. A dozen-plus boys on either side of the net, behind the baselines. Form a line. Go one at a time. Go: run up the side line, touch the net with your stick; then backwards to the outside corner of the service box and then forward to touch the net again; backward to the middle of the service box, forward to touch net; back to the baseline"s little jut of centerline, up to net; service box"s other outside corner, net, baseline"s corner, net, then turn and run like h.e.l.l for the corner you started from. Scht.i.tt has a stopwatch. There"s a janitorial bucket First are Star Drills. A dozen-plus boys on either side of the net, behind the baselines. Form a line. Go one at a time. Go: run up the side line, touch the net with your stick; then backwards to the outside corner of the service box and then forward to touch the net again; backward to the middle of the service box, forward to touch net; back to the baseline"s little jut of centerline, up to net; service box"s other outside corner, net, baseline"s corner, net, then turn and run like h.e.l.l for the corner you started from. Scht.i.tt has a stopwatch. There"s a janitorial bucket 183 183 placed in the doubles alley by the finish point, for potential distress. They each do the Star Drill three times. Hal has 41 seconds and 38 and 48, which is average both for him and for any seventeen-year-old with a resting pulse rate in the high 50s. John Wayne"s low of 33 occurs on his third Star, and he stops dead at the finish point and always just stands there, never bending or walking it off. Stice gets a 29 and everyone gets very excited until Scht.i.tt says he was slow starting the watch: the arthritis in a thumb. Everyone but Wayne and Stice uses the retch-bucket in a sort of pro forma way. Sixteen-year-old Petropolis Kahn, a.k.a. "W.M." for "Woolly Mammoth" because he"s so hairy, gets a 60 and then a 59 and then pitches forward onto the hard surface and lies very still. Tony Nw.a.n.gi tells people to walk around him. placed in the doubles alley by the finish point, for potential distress. They each do the Star Drill three times. Hal has 41 seconds and 38 and 48, which is average both for him and for any seventeen-year-old with a resting pulse rate in the high 50s. John Wayne"s low of 33 occurs on his third Star, and he stops dead at the finish point and always just stands there, never bending or walking it off. Stice gets a 29 and everyone gets very excited until Scht.i.tt says he was slow starting the watch: the arthritis in a thumb. Everyone but Wayne and Stice uses the retch-bucket in a sort of pro forma way. Sixteen-year-old Petropolis Kahn, a.k.a. "W.M." for "Woolly Mammoth" because he"s so hairy, gets a 60 and then a 59 and then pitches forward onto the hard surface and lies very still. Tony Nw.a.n.gi tells people to walk around him.
The cardiovascular finale is Side-to-Sides, conceived by van der Meer in the B.S. "60s and demonic in its simplicity. Again split into fours on eight courts. For the top 18"s, prorector R. Dunkel at net with an armful of b.a.l.l.s and more in a hopper beside him, hitting fungoes, one to the forehand corner and then one to the backhand corner and then farther out to the fore-hand corner and so on. And on. Hal Incandenza is expected at least to get a racquet on each ball; for Stice and Wayne the expectations are higher. A very unpleasant drill fatigue-wise, and for Hal also ankle-wise, what with all the stopping and reversing. Hal wears two bandages over a left ankle he shaves way more often than his upper lip. Over the bandages goes an Air-Stirrup inflatable ankle brace that"s very lightweight but looks a bit like a medieval torture-implement. It was in a stop-and-reverse move much like Side-to-Sides 184 184 that Hal tore all the soft left-ankle tissue he then owned, at fifteen, in his ankle, at Atlanta"s Easter Bowl, in the third round, which he was losing anyway. Dunkel goes fairly easy on Hal, at least on the first two go-arounds, because of the ankle. Hal"s going to be seeded in at least the top 4 at the WhataBurger Inv. in a couple weeks, and woe to the prorector who lets Hal get hurt the way Hal let some of his Little Buddies get hurt yesterday. that Hal tore all the soft left-ankle tissue he then owned, at fifteen, in his ankle, at Atlanta"s Easter Bowl, in the third round, which he was losing anyway. Dunkel goes fairly easy on Hal, at least on the first two go-arounds, because of the ankle. Hal"s going to be seeded in at least the top 4 at the WhataBurger Inv. in a couple weeks, and woe to the prorector who lets Hal get hurt the way Hal let some of his Little Buddies get hurt yesterday.
What"s potentially demonic about Side-to-Sides is that the duration of the drill and pace and angle of the fungoes to be chased down from side to side are entirely at the prorector"s discretion. Prorector Rik Dunkel, a former 16"s-doubles runner-up at Jr. Wimbledon and a decent enough guy, the son of some kind of plastic-packaging-systems tyc.o.o.n on the South Sh.o.r.e, tied with Thorp for brightest of the prorectors (more or less by default), regarded as kind of a mystic because he refers people sometimes to Lyle and has been observed sitting at community gatherings with his eyes closed but not sleeping... but the point is a decent enough guy but not much into any kind of exchange of quarter. He seems to have received instructions to put the particular hurt on Ortho Stice this time, and by his third go-around Stice is trying to weep without breath and mewing for his aunts. 185 185 But anyway everybody goes through Sides-to-Sides three times. Even Petropolis Kahn staggers through them, who after Stars had had to be sort of lugged over by Stephan Wagenknecht and Jeff Wax with his Nikes dragging behind him and his head swinging free on his neck and given kind of a swingset-shove to get started. Hal feels for Kahn, who"s not fat but is in the Schacht-type mold, very thick and solid, except also carrying extra weight in terms of leg-and-back-hair, and who always tires easily no matter how hard he conditions. Kahn makes it through but stays bent over the distress-bucket long after the third go-around, staring into it, and stays that way while everybody else removes more soaked bottom layers of clothing and accepts clean towels from a halfway-house part-time black girl with a towel cart, and picks up b.a.l.l.s. But anyway everybody goes through Sides-to-Sides three times. Even Petropolis Kahn staggers through them, who after Stars had had to be sort of lugged over by Stephan Wagenknecht and Jeff Wax with his Nikes dragging behind him and his head swinging free on his neck and given kind of a swingset-shove to get started. Hal feels for Kahn, who"s not fat but is in the Schacht-type mold, very thick and solid, except also carrying extra weight in terms of leg-and-back-hair, and who always tires easily no matter how hard he conditions. Kahn makes it through but stays bent over the distress-bucket long after the third go-around, staring into it, and stays that way while everybody else removes more soaked bottom layers of clothing and accepts clean towels from a halfway-house part-time black girl with a towel cart, and picks up b.a.l.l.s. 186 186 It is 0720h. and they are through with the active part of dawn drills. Nw.a.n.gi, at the edge of the hillside, is whistling the next shift over for opening sprints. Scht.i.tt shares more overall impressions as minimum-wage aides dispense Kleenex and paper cones. Nw.a.n.gi"s reedy voice carries; he"s telling the B"s he wishes to see nothing but a.s.sholes and elbows on these sprints. It"s unclear to Hal what this might connote. The A-players have formed those ragged rows behind the baseline again, and Scht.i.tt paces back and forth.
"Am seeing sluggish drilling, by sluggards. Not meaning insults. This is the fact. Motions are gone through. Barely minimal efforts. Cold, yes? The cold hands and nose with mucus? Thoughts on getting through, going in, hot showers, water very hot. A meal. The thoughts are drifting toward the comfort of ending. Too cold to demand the total, yes? Master Chu, too cold for tennis at the high level, yes?"
Chu: "It does seem pretty cold out, sir."
"Ah." Pacing back and forth with about-faces at every tenth step, stopwatch around his neck, pipe and pouch and pointer in his hands behind his back, nodding to himself, clearly wishing he had a third hand so he could stroke his white chin, pretending to ruminate. Every A.M. essentially the same, except when Scht.i.tt does the females and the males get dressed down by deLint. All the older boys" eyes are glazed with repet.i.tion. Hal"s tooth gives off little electric shivers with each inbreath, and he feels slightly unwell. When he moves his head slightly the monitor-gla.s.s bits" glitter shifts and dances along the opposite fence in a sort of sickening way.
"Ah." Turns crisply toward them, looking briefly skyward. "And when is hot? Too pretty hot for the total self on the court? The other hand of the spectrum? Ach. Is always something that is too too. Master Incandenza who cannot quickly get behind lob"s descent so weight can move forvart forvart into overhand, into overhand, 187 187 please tell your thinking: it is always hot or cold, yes?" please tell your thinking: it is always hot or cold, yes?"
A small smile. ""s been our general observation out there, sir."
"So then then so, Master Chu, from California"s temperance regions?" Chu brings down his hankie. "I guess we have to learn to adjust to conditions, sir, I believe is what you"re saying."
A full sharp half-turn to face the group. "Is what I am not not saying, young LaMont Chu, is why you cease to seem to give total effort of self since you begin with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive tape and walls. No? Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always something that is saying, young LaMont Chu, is why you cease to seem to give total effort of self since you begin with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive tape and walls. No? Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always something that is too too. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overclose to baseline, not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting, so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgra.s.s in cracks along baseline. Who could give the total, with crabgra.s.s. Look here is low net high net. Opponent"s relatives heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small to inspire. Always something."
His turns as he paces are crisp and used to punctuate. "Adjust. Adjust? Stay the same same. No? Is not stay the same? It is cold? It is wind? Cold and wind is the world. Outside, yes? On the tennis court the you the player: this is not where there is cold wind. I am saying. Different world in inside. World built inside cold outside world of wind breaks the wind, shelters the player, you, if you stay the same, stay inside." Pacing gradually faster, the turns becoming pirouettic. The older kids stare straight ahead; some of the younger follow every move of the pointer with wide eyes. Trevor Axford is bent at the waist and moving his head slightly, trying to get the sweat dripping off his face to spell something out on the surface. Scht.i.tt is silent for two fast about-faces, ranging before them, tapping his jaw with the pointer. "Not ever I think this adjusting. To what, this adjusting? This world inside is the same, always, if you stay there. This is what we are making, no? New type citizen. Not of cold and wind outside. Citizens of this sheltering second world we are working to show you every dawn, no? To make your introduction." The Big Buddies translate Scht.i.tt into accessible language for the littler kids, is a big part of their a.s.signment.
"Borders of court for singles Mr. Rader are what."
"Twenty-four by eight sir," sounding hoa.r.s.e and thin.
"So. Second world without cold or purple dots of bright for you is 23.8 meters, 8 I think .2 meters. Yes? In that world is joy because there is shelter of something else, something else, of purpose past sluggardly self and complaints about uncomfort. I am speaking to not just LaMont Chu of the temperance world. You have a chance to of purpose past sluggardly self and complaints about uncomfort. I am speaking to not just LaMont Chu of the temperance world. You have a chance to occur, occur, playing. No? To make for you this second world that is always the same: there is in this world you, and in the hand a tool, there is a ball, there is opponent with his tool, and always only two of you, you and this other, inside the lines, with always a purpose to keep this world alive, yes?" The pointer-motions through all this become too orchestral and intricate to describe. "This second world inside the lines. Yes? Is this playing. No? To make for you this second world that is always the same: there is in this world you, and in the hand a tool, there is a ball, there is opponent with his tool, and always only two of you, you and this other, inside the lines, with always a purpose to keep this world alive, yes?" The pointer-motions through all this become too orchestral and intricate to describe. "This second world inside the lines. Yes? Is this adjusting? adjusting? This is not adjusting. This is not adjusting to This is not adjusting. This is not adjusting to ignore ignore cold and wind and tired. Not ignoring "as if." cold and wind and tired. Not ignoring "as if." Is Is no cold. no cold. Is Is no wind. No cold wind where you no wind. No cold wind where you occur occur. No? Not "adjust to conditions." Make this second world inside the world: here there are are no conditions." no conditions."
Looks around.
"So put a lid on it about the f.u.c.king cold," says deLint, with his clipboard under his arm and his strangler-sized hands in his pockets, hopping a little in place.
Scht.i.tt is looking around. Like most Germans outside popular entertainment, he gets quieter when he wants to impress or menace. (There are very few shrill Germans, actually.) "If it is hard," he says softly, hard to hear because of the rising wind, "difficult, for you to move between the two worlds, from cold hot wind and sun to this inside place inside the lines where is always the same," he says, seeming now to study the weatherman"s pointer he holds down and out with both hands, "it can be arranged for you gentlemen not to leave, ever here, this world inside the lines of court. You know. Can stay here until there is citizenship. Right here." The pointer is pointed at the spots they"re standing at breathing and blotting their faces and blowing their noses. "Can today put up Testar Lung, for world"s shelter. Sleep bags. Meals brought to you. Never across the lines. Never leave the court. Study here. A bucket for hygienic needs. At Gymnasium Kaiserslautern where I am privileged boy who whining about cold wind, we live inside tennis court for months, to learn to live inside. Very lucky days when they bring us meals. Not possible to cross a line for months of living."
Left-hander Brian van Vleck picks a bad moment to break wind.
Scht.i.tt shrugs, half-turning away from them to look off somewhere. "Or else leave here into large external world where is cold and pain without purpose or tool, eyelash in eye and pretty girl - not worry anymore about how to occur occur." Looks around. "No one is a prisoner here. Who would like to escape into large world? Master Sweeny?"
Little eyes down.
"Mr. Coyle, with always too co-wold to give total?"
Coyle studies the vasculature on the inside of his elbow with deep interest as he shakes his head. John Wayne is joggling his head around like a Raggedy-Andy-head, stretching out the neck hardware. John Wayne is notoriously tight and can"t touch anything below the knee with straight legs during stretches.
"Mr. Peter Beak with always the weeping to home on the telephone?"
The twelve-year-old says Not Me Sir several times.
Hal very subtly shoots in a small plug of Kodiak. Aubrey deLint has his arms crossed over the clipboard and is looking around beadily like a crow. Hal Incandenza has an almost obsessive dislike for deLint, whom he tells Mario he sometimes cannot quite believe is even real, and tries to get to the side of, to see whether deLint has a true z coordinate or is just a cutout or projection. The kids of the next shift are walking downhill and sprinting back up and walking down, warrior-whooping without conviction. The other male prorectors are drinking cones of Gatorade, cl.u.s.tered in the little pavilion, feet up on patio-chairs, Dunkel"s and Watson"s eyes closed. Neil Hartigan, in his traditional Tahitian shirt and Gaugin-motif sweater, has to stay sitting down to fit under the Gatorade awning.
"Simple," Scht.i.tt shrugs, so that the upraised pointer seems to stab at the sky. "Hit," he suggests. "Move. Travel lightly. Occur. Be here here. Not in bed or shower or over baconschteam, in the mind. Be here here in total. Is nothing else. Learn. Try. Drink your green juice. Perform the b.u.t.terfly exercises on all eight of these courts, please, to warm down. Mr. deLint, please to bring them back down, make sure of stretching the groins. Gentlemen: hit tennis b.a.l.l.s. Fire at your will. Use a head. You are not arms. Arm in the real tennis is like wheels of vehicles. Not engine. Legs: not either. Where is where you apply for citizenship in second world Mr. consciousness of ankle Incandenza, our revenant?" in total. Is nothing else. Learn. Try. Drink your green juice. Perform the b.u.t.terfly exercises on all eight of these courts, please, to warm down. Mr. deLint, please to bring them back down, make sure of stretching the groins. Gentlemen: hit tennis b.a.l.l.s. Fire at your will. Use a head. You are not arms. Arm in the real tennis is like wheels of vehicles. Not engine. Legs: not either. Where is where you apply for citizenship in second world Mr. consciousness of ankle Incandenza, our revenant?"
Hal can lean out and spit in a way that isn"t insolent. "Head, sir." "Excuse?"
"The human head, sir, if I got your thrust. Where I"m going to occur as a player. The game"s two heads" one world. One world, sir."
Scht.i.tt sweeps the pointer in an ironic morendo arc and laughs aloud: "Play."
Part of Don Gately"s live-in Staff job is that he hurtles here and there on selected Ennet House errands. He cooks the communal supper on week-days, 188 188 which means he does the House"s weekly shopping, which means that at least a couple times a week he gets to take Pat Montesian"s black 1964 Ford Aventura and drive to the Purity Supreme Market. The Aventura is an antique variant of the Mustang, the sort of car you usually only see waxed and static in car shows with somebody in a bikini pointing at it. Pat"s is functional and mint-reconditioned - her shadowy husband with something like ten years sober being big into cars - with such a wicked nice multilayer paint job that its black has the bottomless quality of water at night. It has two different alarm systems and a red metal bar you"re supposed to lock across the steering wheel when you get out. The engine sounds more like a jet engine than a piston engine, plus there"s a scoop poking periscopically from the hood, and for Gately the vehicle"s so terrifically tight and sleek it"s like being strapped into a missile and launched at the site of a domestic errand. He can barely fit in the driver"s seat. The steering wheel is about the size of an old video-arcade game"s steering wheel, and the thin canted six-speed shift is encased in a red leather baglet that smells strongly of leather. The height of the car"s roof compromises Gately"s driving-posture, and his right ham like exceeds the seat and squeezes against the gearshift so that shifting pinches his hip. He does not care. Some of the profoundest spiritual feelings of his sobriety so far are for this car. He"d drive this car if the driver"s seat was just a sharp pointy spike, he told Johnette Foltz. Johnette Foltz is the other live-in Staffer, though between ultra-rabid Commitment-activity in NA and a somehow damaged NA fiance she spends a lot of time pushing around places in a wicker wheelchair, she"s around Ennet House less and less now, and there are rumblings about a possible replacement, which Gately and the heteros.e.xual male residents pray daily will be the leggy alumna and part-time counselor Danielle Steenbok, who"s rumored also to attend s.e.x and Love Addicts Anonymous, which engages everyone"s imagination to the max. which means he does the House"s weekly shopping, which means that at least a couple times a week he gets to take Pat Montesian"s black 1964 Ford Aventura and drive to the Purity Supreme Market. The Aventura is an antique variant of the Mustang, the sort of car you usually only see waxed and static in car shows with somebody in a bikini pointing at it. Pat"s is functional and mint-reconditioned - her shadowy husband with something like ten years sober being big into cars - with such a wicked nice multilayer paint job that its black has the bottomless quality of water at night. It has two different alarm systems and a red metal bar you"re supposed to lock across the steering wheel when you get out. The engine sounds more like a jet engine than a piston engine, plus there"s a scoop poking periscopically from the hood, and for Gately the vehicle"s so terrifically tight and sleek it"s like being strapped into a missile and launched at the site of a domestic errand. He can barely fit in the driver"s seat. The steering wheel is about the size of an old video-arcade game"s steering wheel, and the thin canted six-speed shift is encased in a red leather baglet that smells strongly of leather. The height of the car"s roof compromises Gately"s driving-posture, and his right ham like exceeds the seat and squeezes against the gearshift so that shifting pinches his hip. He does not care. Some of the profoundest spiritual feelings of his sobriety so far are for this car. He"d drive this car if the driver"s seat was just a sharp pointy spike, he told Johnette Foltz. Johnette Foltz is the other live-in Staffer, though between ultra-rabid Commitment-activity in NA and a somehow damaged NA fiance she spends a lot of time pushing around places in a wicker wheelchair, she"s around Ennet House less and less now, and there are rumblings about a possible replacement, which Gately and the heteros.e.xual male residents pray daily will be the leggy alumna and part-time counselor Danielle Steenbok, who"s rumored also to attend s.e.x and Love Addicts Anonymous, which engages everyone"s imagination to the max.
It"s a mark of serious regard and questionable judgment that Director Pat M. lets Don Gately drive her priceless Aventura, even just to like the Metro Food Bank or Purity Supreme, because Gately lost his license more or less permanently back in the Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster for getting pinched on a DUI in Peabody on a license that had already been suspended for a previous DUI in Lowell. This was not the only Loss Don Gately incurred as his chemical careers moved toward their life-reversing climax. Once every couple months now, still, he has to put on his brown dress slacks and slightly irregular green sportcoat from Brighton Budget Large "N Tall Menswear and take the commuter rail up to selected District Court venues on the North Sh.o.r.e and meet with his various P.D.s and P.O.s and caseworkers and sometimes appear briefly up in front of Judges and Review Boards to review the progress of his sobriety and reparations. When he first came to Ennet House last year, Gately had Bad-Check and Forgery issues, he had a Malicious Destruction of Property issue, plus two D&Ds and a bulls.h.i.t Public Urination out of Tewksbury. He had a Break-and-Enter from a silent-alarmed Peabody mansion where he and a colleague got pinched before anything could get promoted. He had a Possession With Intent from 38 50-mg. tablets of Demerol 189 189 in a Pez container which he"d shoved down into the crack of the Peabody Finest"s cruiser"s back seat, but which got found anyway on the routine post-transport cruiser-search all cops perform when the arrestee"s pupils are unresponsive both to light and to head-slaps. in a Pez container which he"d shoved down into the crack of the Peabody Finest"s cruiser"s back seat, but which got found anyway on the routine post-transport cruiser-search all cops perform when the arrestee"s pupils are unresponsive both to light and to head-slaps.
There was, too, of course, a certain darker issue, vis-a-vis a certain up-scale Brookline home whose late owner had been eulogized at terrifying length and headline-size in both the Globe Globe and and Herald Herald. After eight months of indescribable psychic cringing, waiting for the legal footwear to drop on the Nuck-VIP issue - toward the end of his drug-use Gately"d gotten sloppy and crazy and stuck idiotically with a method of straight meter-shunting that he"d learned up at MCI-Billerica and was pretty sure now const.i.tuted a signature Gately M.O., since the older guy that"d taught it to him in the Billerica metal-shop had subsequently got out and gone to Utah and died of a morphine overdose (and like who on earth hopes to get reliable morphine in f.u.c.king Utah? Utah?) over two years ago - after eight months of cringing and nail-biting, the last