Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 935

His open eye could see the luxury apt. window. It was dawn outside, a glowing gray, and birds had plenty to say out in the bare trees; and at the big window was a face and a windmill of arms. Gately tried to adjust the vertical hold on his vision. Pamela Hoffman-Jeep was at the window. Their apt. was on the second floor of the luxury complex. She was up in a tree right outside the window, standing on a branch, looking in, either gesturing wildly or trying to keep her balance. Gately felt a rush of concern about her falling out of the tree and was preparing to ask the floor to maybe please relax its hold a second and let him go when P.H.-J.’s face suddenly fell and exited the bottom of the window and was replaced by the face of Bobby (‘C’) C. Bobby C raised a slow two-finger salute to his temple in an impassively mocking Hello as he scanned the evidence of serious bingeing in the room, through the window. Eyeballing Mt. Dilaudid with special attention, nodding down to somebody down under the tree. He edged forward on the branch until he was right up flush with the window and pushed up on its frame with one hand, trying to open the locked window. The rising sun behind him cast a shadow of his head against the wet floor. Gately called out to Fackelmann and tried to roll and sit up. His bones felt full of busted glass. Bobby C held up a six-pack of Hefenreffer and waggled it suggestively, like wanting in. Gately had just managed to sit partly up when C’s fist in its fingerless glove came through the window, spraying double-pane glass. The fallen TP screen continued to show shots of small flames, Gately could see. C’s arm came through and groped for the latch and raised the window. Fackelmann was bleating like a sheep but not moving; a syringe he hadn’t bothered with removing hung from the inside of his elbow. Gately saw Bobby C had glass in his purple hair and a vintage Taurus-PT 9 mm. jammed into his spike-studded belt. Gately sat there dumbly as C clambered on in and kind of tiptoed through the various puddles and rolled Fackelmann’s head back to check his pupils. C clucked his tongue and let Fackelmann’s head fall back against the wall, Fax still softly bleating. He turned smartly on his boot’s heel and started across toward the apartment door, and Gately sat there looking at him. When he got to where Gately was sitting on the floor with his wet legs curved parenthesized out in front of him like some sort of huge pre-verbal rug-rat C stopped as if to say something he’d just remembered, looking down at Gately, his smile wide and warm, and Gately noticed he had a black front tooth just as C caught him over the ear with the Taurus-PT and put him back down. The floor got the back of Gately’s head worse than the gun-butt did. His ears belled. It wasn’t stars he saw. Then Bobby C kicked Gately in the balls, S.O.P. to keep your man down, and Gately drew his knees up and turned his head and was sick out onto the floor. He heard the apartment door opening and the leisurely sound of C’s boots going down the stairs to the complex’s door. Between spasms, Gately urged Fackelmann to go for the window as rickety-tick as he could. Fack-elmann was slumped back against the wall; he was looking at his legs and saying he couldn’t feel his legs, that he was numb from the scalp on down and climbing.