Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 976

‘You’ll probably need to wear some sort of sign around your neck so I know it’s you.’

‘So then you’ll be up here just as we’re down there, oddly, playing.’

‘It goes without saying you’d give me the advance skinny if anybody I didn’t want to see was by any chance flying down there with you guys.’

‘The C versus A thing’s been more like grotesque than confidence-building. Guys are taking out stress in kind of twisted ways. Struck beat Gloeckner in 40 minutes and then made a show of revealing he’d had 3-kilo ankle-weights on under his socks. Wayne made van Slack cry right there in front of everybody.’

‘Word is Wayne has exactly one gear.’

‘Then Thursday Coyle had his left wrist tied to his right ankle and was still beating this new kid Stockhausen until Schtitt sent Tex Watson down to tell him to knock it off.’

‘So but the reason I’m really calling, Hallie.’

‘And you’re being evasive about the dread about the disabled. The like rolling stalkers.’

‘I haven’t seen wheel one in days. I’m thinking possibly this was a kind of very shy sort of fan club of people without legs that look up to me —’

‘Grotesque entendre, O.’

‘— as, like, the ultimate leg. They use different ruses to follow me around and never come close or say anything because they’re really shy because they don’t have legs. So now my mind’s resting easier.’

‘Now if the roach- and spiders-at-heights fears’d subside you could really hold the head high.’

‘So the reason I’m calling.’

‘I already said I’d let you know when and if. No sightings of any journalists. Your Moment profiler.’

‘I’m actually glad I got you in person. I was going to ask you to call me ASAP.’

Tm pleased to call you a sap whenever you like, O.’

‘That’s below you. And I can hear you still chewing that grisly shit. That shit’s going to make your lower jaw fall right off. I’ve seen it happen down here, believe me. And you’re wondering why the tooth problems all the time suddenly.’

‘Snuff’s saliva-stimulating. It’s actually oral-hygiene-enhancing, when you factor in all the extra brushing. The caries are Himself’s legacy. You know that. The Himself whose root canals put Dr. Zegarelli’s kids through Andover.’

‘This basically nonsocial call, H., is because I need your feedback on some issues from these half-dozen or so very complex and far-ranging and in-depth conversations I had with a certain Subject.’

‘Not the mobile-home person, surely.’

‘Whole different ballpark of Subject. The Dickinson theory I have to admit came from these conversations.’

‘Sounds like one deep lady.’

‘Whole levels and dimensions to this one. We’ve had a whole series of very intense verbal interchanges. Transcendentalist poetics was just one of the in-depth issues ranged over. This subject keeps me on the cerebral toes.’

‘Dickinson’s about as Transcendentalist as Poe. Your Subject’s 0 for 2.’

‘This is all off to the side of the call. I told this Subject I’d consider certain issues very carefully before I really responded.’