Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 1021

[262] I.e. the Women’s Tennis Association, the distaff equivalent of the A.T.P.

[264] Sic, but it’s pretty obvious what Marathe means here.

[265] Reinforced Aluminum Spectation Unit.

[266] The occasional upscale parent could be seen exiting Comm.-Ad. and crossing behind the West Courts’ south fence to the asphalt lot and what were unmistakably parental autos, all remarkable for their textbook tire-pressure and bristles of cellular antennae and the absence of any little dust-smiles on their rear or side windows. Charles Tavis had spent the morning interfacing with parents of those E.T.A. kids injured in I.-Day’s Es-chaton free-for-all. Lateral Alice Moore, for a treat, had been listening to Tavis and parents on her headphones, while typing, instead of her collection of aerobic favorites. Struck and Pemulis had cruised by before lunch and blarneyed her into putting the exchanges on her intercom’s speaker for a couple minutes. You should hear C.T. enclosed with parents sometime. It was only some of the parents — Todd Possalthwaite’s dad was on honeymoon in the Azores, and Otis P. Lord’s mother had some inner-ear thing and the Lords couldn’t fly. But Pemulis and Struck concurred that everyone with any kind of administration in his blood should hear E.T.A.’s Headmaster with parents and a placative mission, a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact, the interfaces like fluidless seductions — Pemulis said the man’s missed a genuine calling in sales — everyone practically wanting to smoke a cigarette afterward, the parents leave weeping, pumping Tavis’s hands — one parent per hand — practically begging him to accept both their thanks and their apologies for daring to even possibly think, even for a moment. Then, supporting each other, making their way over Lateral Alice’s third rail and past the beaming extremely polite lads by her desk and out through the pressurized glass lobby doors and down off the white-pillared neo-Georgian porch and past courts and bleachers and into their well-maintained autos and out the portcullis and very slowly down the hill’s brick drive before they even recall they’d forgotten to pop in on their injured kid, sign his cast, feel his forehead, say Hey.

[267] I.e. ace/double fault, rather like the ratio of strikeouts to walks for a pitcher.

[268] It was like Steeply’d never seen so many left-handed people: both Hal Incandenza and the boy in black were left-handed, one of the two little girls four courts down was left-handed, deLint was marking the chart with his left hand. Both A.F.R. turncoat Rémy Marathe and Québecer triple-operative Luria P— — were southpaws, though Steeply realized that this could hardly be called significant.

[269]

Saprogenic Greetings*

WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO LET A PROFESSIONAL SAY IT FOR YOU