David Wallace - Infinite jest

There were two ways of going, and Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents were prepared to pursue both these. Less better was the indirect route: surveillance and infiltrating the surviving associates of the Entertainment’s au-teur, its actress and rumored performer, relatives — if necessary, taking them and subjecting them to technical interview, leading with hope to the original auteur’s cartridge of the Entertainment. This had risks and exposures and was held abeyant until the directer route — to locate and secure a Master copy of the Entertainment on their own — had been exhausted. It was this way that thus they were now still here, in the Antitois’ shop of Cambridge, to — comme on dit — be turning all the stones.

The secret to sprinting in high heels, Poor Tony Krause knew, was to run on one’s toes, inclined way forward, with so much forward momentum that one stayed well up on her toes and the heels never came into play. Evidently the wretched Creature behind him knew this trade-secret too. They careered up Prospect, the Creature’s clutching hand just mm. away from the trailing boa. Poor Tony held the two purses together tucked away against his side like a football in U.S. football. Pedestrians moved artfully aside, long-practiced. Poor Tony saw the pedestrians’ faces very clearly as his odor preceded him like a shock-wave. A man in a car coat made a smell-face and did a kind of artful veronica to let the two of them career past. Poor Tony’s breath came in great ragged stitchy gasps. He had not banked on victim-pursuit. He felt the Creature’s hand grope for purchase on the remains of his boa. The Donegal cap flew off and was not mourned. The Thing’s own breathing was also ragged, but the obscenities she hurled still came from the diaphragm, with conviction and vigor. The other Thing had impacted a pole with a meaty sound Tony had shuddered to hear. His own father had struck himself about the head and shoulders as he grieved for his symbolically dead son. The moment after the impact and the strap gave way, Tony was up on his toes and in full flight, not banking on pursuit from the other one, this black Creature screaming and just off his tail. For the first couple blocks the Creature had shouted for Help and to Stop The Bitch, and Poor Tony, then with a decent lead, had countered by also yelling Help! and For God’s Sake Stop Her, flummoxing any would-be citizens. An ancient trade-device among Harvard Square crews. But now the black Creature had closed to within mm., and now it had real hold of the boa as they careered breathing at full speed on their toes, and Krause unlooped the thing from his neck with a flourish and sacrificed the boa to the Thing, but the loathsome Creature’s hand came right back, clutching at the air just over his leather collar, its ragged breath in his ear, cursing him. Poor Tony grieved in mid-stride at the thought that the Thing had doubtless just tossed the boa carelessly aside into the street or gutter. Their shoes’ toes formed complex and variable rhythms on the pavement; sometimes their footfalls were in sync, then they were not. The Thing stayed agonizingly just behind. Bold-print signs for FRESH-KILLED CHICKEN and COMPLETE DESTRUCTION flashed past; Antitoi Entertainment was just over two long north-south blocks distant. Krause and pursuer both jay-ran through a gridlocked intersection. Poor Tony shouted Help! and Please! The hand and hissed breath just behind him was like one of those simply horrid dreams where something unimaginable is chasing you for km. after km. and just before its talons close on the back of your collar you wake up sitting bolt upright; except this horrid Creature’s-clutching-hand-just-behind-him scenario went on and on, storefront and curb and leaping pedestrians all melting together at the periphery due right. Antitoi Ent.’s discreet back door was accessible by a parking alley that cut west off Prospect just before Broadway and went west to intersect a smaller and dumpster-lined north-south alley, one of whose dumpsters (in which Poor Tony had occasionally slept, when out late and short of train-fare) was within underhand-toss distance of the Canadian brothers’ rear exit. Poor Tony, purses under arm and the other hand clamped tight to the wig, calculated that if he could get a reasonable lead on the Creature by the time they hit the smaller alley the dumpsters would keep It from seeing just which hopefully unlocked rear door P.T. sought basic human kindly refuge behind. He feinted around a bodega’s sidewalk fruit display and shot a quick look back, hoping the Creature would crash itself ass-over-teakettle into the stacked fruit. It did not. It was still right there, breathing. Its stutter-step around two cardboard tiers of Cape cranberries was discouragingly deft. This Thing had all too clearly chased persons before. Its breath had a ragged implacability about it. It was all too clearly in this for the long haul. It was no longer shouting Stop or gutterish obscenities. Poor Tony’s breaths felt flamish. It sounded as if he were weeping, almost. He tried to shout Help! and could not; he hadn’t the breath to spare; black specks floated upward through his vision; only certain of the streetlamps worked; his heartbeat was zuckungzuckungzuckung. Poor Tony hurdled a queerly placed cardboard display for something wheelchaired and heard the Creature vault it also and land lightly on its toes. Its uppers were not straps and could not dig like the fine Aigners; Tony felt blood on his feet. The entrance to the parking alley west was between a Tax Preparer’s and something else; it was right around here; Krause squinted; the black specks were tiny rings with opaque centers and floated upward through his sight like balloons, lazily; Poor Tony was post-seizure, infirm, not to mention Withdrawn; his breath came in stitches and half-sobs; he could barely stay on his toes; he had not consumed food since before the library’s men’s room stall, which was how many days; he scanned the blurred storefronts ripping past; an elderly person went down with a noise as the Creature stiff-armed him; somewhere a rape-whistle blew; the Tax Preparer’s had the odd storefront announcement ON PARLE LE POR-TUGAIS ICI. Its hand’s finger knocked the rim of Tony’s leather collar with each footfall until it moved up and Poor Tony could feel its fingers in the hair of the chignon he held clamped to his head with a hand. Poor Tony’s father used to come home to 412 Mount Auburn Street Watertown at the completion of a long day of cesareans and sit in a chair in the darkening kitchen, scratching at his head where his mask’s green strings had dug into the head. Its doubtlessly luridly long-nailed fingers were twining for purchase in his wig’s hair when they hit the Preparer’s and Tony cut a sharp right, breaking a heel on the pivot but gaining several steps toward a lead as the Creature’s momentum carried it past the alley’s recessed mouth. Krause whimpered raggedly and flew west, up on his bloody toes, hearing his breath off both alley walls, negotiating broken glass and the homeless supine, hearing it back behind him several steps crying a tight-echoed Stop Motherfucking Stop! with a supine person Krause vaulted lifting a decayed head from the alley floor to counter with: Go.

Having traced — through the strenuous technical interview of the sar-torially eccentric cranio-facial-pain-specialist, whom they had traced through the regrettably fatal technical interview of the young burglar [300]whose electrical-surge-tolerance proved considerably lower than that of his room’s computer’s machinery — having traced their best chances at a copy to the hapless Antitois’ establishment, it had taken the A.F.R. then several days to find it there, the real Entertainment.