Infinite jest - David Wallace

Eventually the buzzer stopped.

The phrase ‘More tattoos than teeth’ also kept going through Gately’s head as it bobbed (the head), even though he had no idea where the phrase came from or who it was supposed to refer to. He hadn’t been to Billerica Minimum yet; he was on bail that Whitey Sorkin had bonded.

The taste of the M&M’s couldn’t cut the weirdly sweet medical taste of hydromorphone in Gately’s mouth. He watched an old stovetop-burner’s crown of blue flame shimmer in the shine of the urine.

During a ruddled sunset-light period Fackelmann had had a small convulsion and a bowel movement in his pants and Gately hadn’t had the coordination to go to Fackelmann’s side during the seizure, to help and just be there. He had the nightmarish feeling that there was something crucial he had to do but had forgot what it was. 10-mg. injections of the Blue Bayou kept the feeling at bay for shorter and shorter periods. He’d never heard of somebody having a convulsion from an O.D., and Fackelmann had indeed seemed to bounce to his version of back.

The sun outside the big windows seemed to go up and down like a yo-yo.

They ran out of the distilled water Fackelmann had in the mixing bowl, and Fackelmann took a cotton and sopped up candy-dyed urine off the floor and cooked up with urine. Gately appeared to himself to be repulsed by this. But there was no question of trying to get to the stripped kitchen for the distilled-water bottle. Gately was tying off his right arm with his teeth, now, his left was so useless.

Fackelmann smelled very bad.

Gately nodded out into a dream where he was on a Beverly-Needham bus whose sides said PARAGON BUS LINES: THE GRAY LINE. In his stu-porous recall over four years later in St. E.’s he realizes that this bus is the bus from the dream that wouldn’t end and wouldn’t go anywhere, but has the sickening realization that the connection between the two buses is itself a dream, or is in a dream, and it’s now that his fever returns to new heights and his line on the heart monitor gets a funny little hitch like a serration at the 1st and 3rd nodes, which makes an amber light flash at the nurse’s station down the hall.

When the buzzer sounded again they were watching the flames-film late at night. Now poor old Pamela Hoffman-Jeep’s voice came to them through the intercom. The intercom and apt.-complex-front-doors-unlocker button were all the way across the living room by the apartment door. The ceiling bulged and receded. Fackelmann had made his hand into the shape of a claw and was studying the claw in the light of the TP’s flames. Mt. Dilaudid was badly caved in on one side; a disastrous avalanche into Lake Urine was a possibility. P.H.-J. sounded drunk as a Nuck. She said to let her in. She said she knew they were in there. She used party as a verb several times. Fackelmann was whispering that it was a lie. Gately remembers he actually had to prod himself in the bladder to feel if he had to go to the bathroom. His Unit felt small and icy cold against his leg in the wet jeans. The ammoniac smell of urine and the breathing ceiling and drunk distant female voice … Gately reached in the dark for the bars of his playpen, grasped them with pudgy fists, hauled himself to his feet. His rising was more like the floor lowering. He wobbled like a toddler. The apt. floor below him feinted right, left, circling for an opening to attack. The luxury windows hung with starlight. Fackelmann had made his claw come alive into a spider and was letting the spider climb slowly down his chest-area. The starlight was smeary; there were no distinct stars. Everything out of the line of fire of the cartridge-viewer was dark as a pocket. The buzzer sounded angry and the voice pathetic. Gately put his foot out in the direction of the buzzer. He heard Fackelmann telling his hand’s claw’s spider it was witnessing the birth of an empire. Then when Gately put his foot down there was nothing there. The floor dodged his foot and rushed up at him. He caught a glimpse of bulged ceiling and then the floor caught him in the temple. His ears belled. The impact of the floor against him shook the whole room. A box of laminates teetered and fell and fanned clear laminates all over the wet floor. The viewer fell off the wall and cast ruddled flames on the ceiling. The floor jammed itself against Gately, pressing in tight, and he grayed out with his scrunched face toward Fackelmann and the windows beyond, with Fackelmann holding the spider out in mid-air at him for his inspection.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake then.

‘I was in two scenes. What else is in there I do not know. In the first scene I’m going through a revolving door. You know, around in this glass revolving door, and going around out as I go in is somebody I know but apparently haven’t seen for a long time, because the recognition calls for a shocked look, and the person sees me and gives an equally shocked look — we’re supposedly formerly very close and now haven’t seen each other in the longest time, and the meeting is random chance. And instead of going in I keep going around in the door to follow the person out, which person is also still revolving in the door to follow me in, and we whirl in the door like that for several whirls.’

‘Q.’

‘The actor was male. He wasn’t one of Jim’s regulars. But the character I recognize in the door is epicene.’

‘Q.’

‘Hermaphroditic. Androgynous. It wasn’t obvious that the character was supposed to be a male character. I assume you can Identify.

‘The other had the camera bolted down inside a stroller or bassinet. I wore an incredible white floor-length gown of some sort of flowing material and leaned in over the camera in the crib and simply apologized.’

‘Q.’

‘Apologized. As in my lines were various apologies. “I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry. I am so, so sorry. Please know how very, very, very sorry I am.” For a real long time. I doubt he used it all, I strongly doubt he used it all, but there were at least twenty minutes of permutations of “I’m sorry.”

‘Q.’

‘Not exactly. Not exactly veiled.’

‘Q.’

‘The point of view was from the crib, yes. A crib’s-eye view. But that’s not what I mean by driving the scene. The camera was fitted with a lens with something Jim called I think an auto-wobble. Ocular wobble, something like that. A ball-and-socket joint behind the mount that made the lens wobble a little bit. It made a weird little tiny whirring noise, I recollect.’

‘Q.’

‘The mount’s the barrel. The mount’s what the elements of the lens are arranged in. This crib-lens’s mount projected out way farther than a conventional lens, but it wasn’t near as big around as a catadioptric lens. It looked more like an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope than a lens. Long and skinny and projecting, with this slight wobble. I don’t know much about lenses beyond basic concepts like length and speed. Lenses were Jim’s forte. This can’t be much of a surprise. He always had a whole case full. He paid more attention to the lenses and lights than to the camera. His other son carried them in a special case. Leith was cameras, the son was lenses. Lenses Jim said were what he had to bring to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself. He made all his own.’

‘Q.’

‘Well I’ve never been around them. But I know there’s something wobbled and weird about their vision, supposedly. I think the newer-born they are, the more the wobble. Plus I think a milky blur. Neonatal nystagmus. I don’t know where I heard that term. I don’t remember. It could have been Jim. It could have been the son. What I know about infants personally you couJd — it may have been an astigmatic lens. I don’t think there’s much doubt the lens was supposed to reproduce an infantile visual field. That’s what you could feel was driving the scene. My face wasn’t important. You never got the sense it was meant to be captured realistically by this lens.’

•Q.’

‘I never saw it. I’ve got no idea.’

‘Q.’

‘They were buried with him. The Masters of everything unreleased. At least that was in his will.’

‘Q.’

‘It had nothing to do with killing himself. Less than nothing to do with it.’

‘Q.’

‘No I never saw his fucking will. He told me. He told me things.

‘He’d stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn’t take it but he’d made a promise.’

‘Q.’

‘I don’t know that he ever even got a finished Master. That’s your story. There wasn’t anything unendurable or enslaving in either of my scenes. Nothing like these actual-perfection rumors. These are academic rumors. He talked about making something quote too perfect. But as a joke. He had a thing about entertainment, being criticized about entertainment v. nonen-tertainment and stasis. He used to refer to the Work itself as “entertainments.” He always meant it ironically. Even in jokes he never talked about an anti-version or antidote for God’s sake. He’d never carry it that far. A joke.’

‘…’

‘When he talked about this thing as a quote perfect entertainment, terminally compelling — it was always ironic — he was having a sly little jab at me. I used to go around saying the veil was to disguise lethal perfection, that I was too lethally beautiful for people to stand. It was a kind of joke I’d gotten from one of his entertainments, the Medusa-Odalisk thing. That even in U.H.I.D. I hid by hiddenness, in denial about the deformity itself. So Jim took a failed piece and told me it was too perfect to release — it’d paralyze people. It was entirely clear that it was an ironic joke. To me.’

‘Q.’

‘Jim’s humor was a dry humor.’

‘Q.’

‘If it got made and nobody’s seen it, the Master, it’s in there with him. Buried. That’s just a guess. But I bet you.’

‘…’

‘Call it an educated bet.’ ‘Q.’

‘…’

‘Q, Q, Q.’

‘That’s the part of the joke he didn’t know. Where he’s buried is itself buried, now. It’s in your annulation-zone. It’s not even your territory. And now if you want the thing — he’d enjoy the joke very much, I think. Oh shit yes very much.’

By a rather creepy coincidence, it turned out that, up in our room, Kyle Dempsy Coyle and Mario were also watching one of Himself’s old efforts. Mario had gotten his pants on and was using his special tool to zip and button. Coyle looked oddly traumatized. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, his eyes wide and his whole body with the slight tremble of something hanging from the tip of a pipette. Mario greeted me by name. Snow continued to whirl and eddy outside the window. The position of the sun was impossible to gauge. The net-posts were now buried almost up to their scorecard attachments. The wind was piling snow up in drifts against all Academy right angles and then pummelling the drifts into unusual shapes. The window’s whole view had the gray grainy quality of a poor photo. The sky looked diseased. Mario worked his tool with great patience. It often took him several tries to catch and engage the tool’s jaws on the tongue of his zipper. Coyle, still wearing his apnea-mouthguard, stared at our room’s little viewer. The cartridge was Himself’s Accomplice! a short melodrama with Cosgrove Watt and a boy no one had ever seen before or since.

‘You woke up early,’ Mario said, smiling up from his fly. His bed was made up drum-tight.

I smiled. ‘Turns out I wasn’t the only one.’

‘You look sad.’

I raised my hand with the NASA glass at Coyle. ‘An unexpected pleasure, K.D.C.’

‘Thtithe fickn meth,’ Coyle said.

I put the glass and toothbrush on my dresser and straightened its doily. I picked some clothing up and began separating it by smell into wearable and unwearable.

‘Kyle says Jim Troeltsch tore some of Ortho’s face off trying to pull him off a window his face got glued to,’ Mario said. ‘And then Jim Troeltsch and Mr. Kenkle tried to put toilet tissue on the ripped parts, the way Tall Paul sometimes puts little bits of Kleenex on a shaving cut, but Ortho’s face was a lot worse than a shaving cut, and they used a whole roll, and now Ortho’s face is covered with toilet tissue, and the tissue’s stuck now, and Ortho can’t get it off, and at breakfast Mr. deLint was yelling at Ortho for letting them put toilet tissue on it, and Ortho ran to his and Kyle’s room and locked the door, and Kyle doesn’t have his key since the accident with the whirlpool.’

I helped Mario on with his police lock’s vest and affixed the Velcro nice and tight. Mario’s chest is so fragile-feeling that I could feel his heartbeat’s tremble through the vest and sweatshirt.

Coyle removed the apnea-guard. Strings of white nighttime oral material appeared between his mouth and the guard as he extracted it. He looked to Mario. ‘Tell him the worst part.’

I was watching Coyle very closely to see what he planned to do with the sickening mouthpiece he held.

‘Hey Hal, your phone has messages, and Mike Pemulis came by and asked if you were up and about.’

‘You haven’t told him the worst part of it,’ Coyle said.

‘Don’t even think about putting that thing down anywhere my bed, Kyle, please.’

Tm holding it away from everything, don’t worry.’

Mario used his tool to zip up the long curved zipper of his backpack. ‘Kyle said there was a problem with a discharge again —’

‘So I heard,’ I said.

‘— and Kyle says he woke up and Ortho was missing, and Ortho’s bed was missing as well, so he turned on the light —’

Coyle gestured with the appliance: ‘And lo and fucking-capital-B behold.’

‘—yes and lo,’ Mario said, ‘Ortho’s bed is up near the ceiling of their room. The frame has some way got lifted up and bolted to the ceiling sometime during the night without Kyle hearing it or waking up.’

‘Until the discharge, that is,’ I said.

This is it,’ said Coyle. The tin cans and accusations I’m moving his stuff around are one thing. I’m going to Lateral Alice for a switch like Troeltsch did. This is the straw.’

Mario said ‘And his bed’s up on the ceiling now, still, and if it falls it’s going to go right through the floor and fall in Graham and Petropolis’s room.’

‘He’s in there right now all mummified in toilet paper, sulking, with his bed hanging overhead, with the door locked, so I can’t even get my apnea-guard-cleaning supplies,’ Coyle said.

I’d heard nothing about Troeltsch apparently switching room-assignments with Trevor Axford. A gigantic wedge of snow slid down a steep part of the roof over our window and fell past the window and hit the ground below with a huge whump. For some reason the fact that something as major as a midterm room-switch could have taken place without my knowing anything about it filled me with dread. There were a few glitters of a possible incipient panic-attack again.