Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 1007

[210] Hal and Mario have long since had to accept^a the fact that Avril, at 50+, is still endocrinologically compelling to males.

a. ‘Accept’ isn’t the same as ‘be crazy about,’ of course.

[211] As with the neuro-gastric thing, only Ted Schacht and Hal know that Pemulis’s deepest dread is of academic or disciplinary expulsion and ejection, of having to schlepp back down Comm. Ave. into blue-collar Allston diploma- and ticket-outless, and now in his final E.T.A. year the dread’s increased many-fold, and is one reason Pemulis takes such elaborate precautions in all extracurriculars — making a Substance-customer explicitly suborn him, etc. — and is why Hal and Schacht presented him on his last birthday with the poster over Pemulis’s room’s console that has a careworn large-crowned King sitting on his throne stroking his chin and brooding, with the caption: YES, I’M PARANOID — BUT AM I PARANOID ENOUGH?

[212] Though it’s unmentioned, everyone in the waiting room except Ann Kittenplan is keenly aware that Lord and Postal Weight are Pemulis’s charges, Penn and Ingersoll Ax-handle’s; plus that neither Struck nor Troeltsch seems to have been summoned for potential discipline.

[213] Since tennis courts are laid side to side and played on by hard-hitting but fallible humans, errant shots are always going off sticks’ frames and net-posts and even fences and bouncing and rolling into other people’s territory. In starting at usually the quarterfinal rounds of serious tournaments there are ballboys to retrieve them. In early rounds and practice, though, the delicate etiquette is that you suspend play and get other people’s balls for them, if they come rolling across, and shoot them back over to the court of origin. The way to signal for this sort of help is to yell ‘Sorry!’ or ‘A little help on Three?’ or something. But both Hal and Axford seem constitutionally incapable of doing this, asking for help with errant balls. They both have to hold everything and go and run all the way over to some other court, halting at each intervening court to wait for a point to be finished, to get their own balls. It’s a curious inability to request aid that no amount of negative reinforcement from Tex Watson or Aubrey deLint can seem to correct.

[214] Where it’s a non-overhead run-back-to-the-baseline-after-an-offensive-lob-then-run-all — the — way — back — up — and — tap — the — netcord — with — your — stick — j ust — as — Nwangi — or — Thode-hits-another-offensive-lob-over-your-head-you-have-to-run-back-and-get-successfully-back-or-they-pile-extra-lobs-onto-your-regular-allotment pure pain-fest.