David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘Me,’ Marathe responded, ‘I will attempt to pray at a moment’s order.’ Aiding the ruse of application, he and Fortier discovered, was that U.S.A. recovery from the addictions was somewhat paramilitary in nature. There were orders and the obeying of orders. The A.F.R. had reviewed cartridges of antique U.S.A. programming, which they had found through luck in the inventory of Antitoi, and had watched to learn many things. But casting his veiled face desperately upward while saying allowed that Marathe could scan along the plastic cases of cartridges’ spines. Among the small-of-font titles such as Focal Length Parameters X–XL and Drop Volley Ex. II were two cases of plain brown plastic, blank, except for — this was why his veil, it remained tilted upward for so much longer that he was concerned that this woman of authority — except for — but it was difficult of sureness, for the office’s light was the deadening fluorescence of U.S.A., and the cabinet’s mouth in the shadow of the lid and the cheesecloth veil made less his focus — except maybe for tiny round faces of embossed smiles upon the brown cases. Marathe felt suddenly the excitement of himself — M. Hugh Steeply’s wording for this had been from somewhere blue.

The authority spoke also: ‘Not to mention U.H.I.D. members, you might want to know.’ Gesturing then at the veil of Marathe neither was mentioning. The woman attempted to affix a sheet of faint toner to a board with a clip. ‘In fact we have a U.H.I.D. member in early residency right now.’

Marathe blinked twice more. He said ‘I am deformed, me.’

‘She might be able to help you adjust, identify. Be good for her, too.’

Marathe had begun locking down in RAM every detail of every moment since his entering the Ennet House demi-maison. He in another part of his brain considered whether he would report truly first to M. Fortier or to the Steeply of U.S.B.S.S., whose contact number had always the prefix of 8000, he had jested. In another part was whether to seem eager for meeting the Entertainment’s performer here now, a fellow veil. To think of what a desperate addict would have eagerness in. Marathe was throughout this thinking smiling largely at the woman, forgetting she could not witness it. ‘This is happy,’ finally he said.

‘Your facial issues —’ the person stated, leaning in over the crossed legs in her chair. ‘Are they connected to your use and abuse? Did they work with you on progression and Y.E.T.s [312]and owning consequences at Chit Chat?’

Marathe was in little hurry now to leave for returning to chez Antitoi. He utilized his abilities to recite complex lines of covering-story on addiction while also at the time reviewed locking down the face and locations of every person at the Ennet House he had regarded. For they would come here again, the A.F.R., and maybe Services Without Specificity of Steeply and Tine, as well. He had the ability of splitting his mind’s thinking along several parallel tracks.

‘The legs — I do an overdose in Berne, which is in my home of Switzerland, while alone, and I fall down face-down while my legs, they remain how you say tangle, tangled in the chair on which occurred this injection, fix. A stupid. I lie down without conscious or to move for many days, and my legs, they — comment-on-dití — they are sleepy, lose the circulating, suffer gangrene, become infectious.’ Marathe sniffed while stoically shrugging. ‘As well the nose and mouth, from facial squishing of lying face-down in a position without conscious for days. I die almost. All is amputated, for my life. I withdraw from the scag, smack, and H, in I’infirmière. A result of abuse of the drugs.’

‘This is your story. This is your first step.’

Marathe shrugged. ‘My legs, my nose and oral. All as a consequence of the progression. At the Chit Chat, I admit all the things, I realize I am addicted desperately.’ Marathe was trying to decide if to find ways to make the authority woman briefly leave the office, so that Marathe might rapidly arm-climb up to the cabinet to regard the smiling cases of cartridge closely before the cabinet’s locking. Or instead also to return on pretext to remain and hang roundly in the living room for waiting persons, to find a glimpse of who is this mentioned resident with her female U.H.I.D. veil; for this is the purpose of coming to demi-maisons M. Fortier gave. Marathe could give the fact of the cartridges to Fortier and the veiled girl to Steeply, or oppositely. The fatigue returned. But Steeply, before committing to overt action, will wish for confirmation that those in the cabinet were items of the true Entertainment, not the blank and joking F.L.Q. displays. There was truly a faint whirring noise coming from the head, he imagined. Marathe’s sidearm sat in its holster under the seat of him, hidden by the plaid-colored blanket of his lap. To easily kill the person in authority was inutile at this time of not glimpsing the girl, he had decided, plus impractical of surrounding witness. Marathe’s fauteuil could travel 45 kph on a level surface over short distance. The authority figure liked to comb at the bright hair with her claw of the deformed hand. She was telling Marathe the false addict that she found his honesty encouraging and saying to sign these forms, for releasing. As Marathe signed slowly the name of a deceased Health-Benefits administrator at the Caisse de Depot et Placement, [313] the woman began to ask about what lengths he believed he was willing to go to.

The whole family was lousy with secrets, she’d decided, was part of the nonturkey dinner’s sadness. From each other, themselves, itself. A big one being this pretense that overt eccentricity was the same as openness. I.e. that they were all ‘exactly as crazy as they seem’ — the punter’s phrase.

We’re all a lot more intuitive about our lovers’ families than we are about our own families, she knew. Charlotte Treat’s face glistened; her cheek’s deep scars were a more violent red than the rest. Her ribs under the wet Michelob Dry T-shirt were starting to stand out, her neck to get that skinny stemmy look of katexia. She looked like a ravaged fowl. Kate Gompert’s bed sat unmade, a copy of some yellow paperback called Feeling Good open facedown on the mattress and starting to curl. Joelle had this weird fear that Gompert, who made Joelle extremely nervous at the best of times, would come home and walk in and find Joelle cleaning with her hair in a kerchief and veil damply clinging. She used the last of the room’s Kleenex dusting all five bedside tables, wiping in careful rings around objects she wasn’t to touch.

There was then some trickiness in the situation when the demi-maison’s woman offered the extension of a place for Marathe. Desperately addicted Henri the Swiss could sleep upon the Convertisofa in the rear office this very P.M., she said, if he was willing to endure the mess and sometimes insects of the rear office. The woman had a ripe spot of sympathique for the disableds, Marathe could see. For trickiness in the situation, no lines had been prepared by Fortier to defer this offer of the extension of the spot of treatment in the demi-maìson. The woman in authority smiled that she could see in his playing with the fauteuil’s wheels the addicted struggle between desperation and denial, she said. Marathe was rapidly calculating should he falsely accept and remain here for one night to observe for himself the description of the veiled patient from U.H.I.D., against should he exit and roll like no person’s business to the nearest place of private telephoning to alert the A.F.R. at the shop that here at this demi-maison were of possibility real cartridges of the Entertainment, perhaps including a duplicatable Master or the anti-samizdat remedy cartridge of F.L.Q.’s allegation, to return to chez Antitoi and return later in squeaking force to the demi-maison and acquire both the cartridges and the veiled performer, if the U.H.I.D. patient of treatment is revealed as the disguised performer. The engineer of radio had spoken volubly of this person’s veil and screen. Or calculating also whether to telephone not Antitoi Entertainent but the 24-hour costless prefix of M./Mlle. Steeply and convey the very same information instead, finally, first, to Bureau des Services sans Spécificité, placing bets on O.N.A.N. and against Fortier, casting his lots finally with one side only, conveying his restenotic wife and entertainment-hungry children down from St.-Remi-d’Amherst’s Convexity-ravaged wastes to live with him the rest of their lives down here among U.S.A.’s confusion of choices, demanding hidden protection from Steeply and high-income medical care for the heart- and head-difficulties of beloved Gertraude.