David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘Rococo’s a pretty word.’

‘So now I’ve established a subtype of the over-elaborator type. This is the liar who used to be an over-elaborator and but has somehow snapped to the fact that rococo elaborations give him away every time, so he changes and now lies tersely, sparely, seeming somehow bored, like what he’s saying is too obviously true to waste time on.’

‘…’

‘I’ve established that as a sort of subtype.’ ‘You sound like you can always tell.’

‘Pemulis could have sold that urologist land in there, Boo. It was an incredibly high-pressure moment. I never thought he had it in him. He was nerveless and stomachless. He projected a kind of weary pragmatism the urologist found impossible to discount. His face was a brass mask. It was almost frightening. I told him I never would have believed he had that kind of performance in him.’

‘Psychosis live on the radio used to read an Eve Arden beauty brochure all the time where Eve Arden says: “The importance of a mask is to increase your circulation,” quote.’

‘The truth is nobody can always tell, Boo. Some types are just too good, too complex and idiosyncratic; their lies are too close to the truth’s heart for you to tell.’

‘I can’t ever tell. You wanted to know. You’re right. It never crosses my mind.’

‘…’

‘I’m the type that’d buy land, I think.’

‘You remember my hideous phobic thing about monsters, as a kid?’

‘Boy do I ever.’

‘Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there’s simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.’

‘But then how do you know they’re monsters, then?’

‘That’s the monstrosity right there, Boo, I’m starting to think.’

‘Golly Ned.’

‘That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.’

‘Can I ask you how it is being in that thing?’

Thing?’

‘You know. Don’t play dumb and embarrass me.’

‘A wheelchair is a thing which: you prefer it or do not prefer, it is no distance. Difference. You are in the chair even if you do not prefer it. So it is better to prefer, no?’

‘I can’t believe I’m drinking. There’s all these people in the House they’re always worried they’re going to drink. I’m in there for drugs. I’ve never had more than a beer ever in my life. I only came in here to throw up from getting mugged. Some street guy was offering to be a witness and he would not leave me alone. I didn’t even have any money. I came in here to vomit.’

‘I know what it is you are meaning.’

‘What’s your name one more time?’

‘I call myself Rémy.’

‘This is a beautiful thing as Hester would say. I don’t feel horrid anymore. Ramy I feel better than I feel, felt in ever so I don’t know how long. This is like novocaine of the soul. I’m like: why was I spending all that time doing one-hitters when this is really what / call feeling better.’

‘Us, I do not take any drugs. I drink infrequently.’

‘Well you’re making up for lost time I have to say.’

‘When I drink I have many drinks. This is how it is for my people.’

‘My mom won’t even have it in the house. She said it’s what made her father drive into concrete and wipe out his entire family. Which like I’m so tired of hearing it. I came in here — what is this place?’

‘This, it is Ryle’s Inman Square Club of Jazz. My wife is dying at home in my native province.’

‘There’s this thing in the Big Book they make us every Sunday we have to drag ourselves out of bed at the absolute crack of dawn and sit in a circle and read out of it and half the people can barely even read and it’s excruciating to listen to!’

‘You should make your voice lower, for in the hours of no jazz they enjoy low voices, coming in for quiet.’

‘And there’s a thing about a car salesman trying to quit drinking, it’s about the they call it the insanity of the first one, drink — he comes in a bar for a sandwich and a glass of milk — are you hungry?’

‘Non.’

‘What am I saying I don’t have any money. I don’t even have my purse. This stuff makes you stupid but it makes you feel quite a bit improved. He wasn’t thinking of a drink and then all of a sudden he thinks of a drink. This guy-’

‘Out of a blue place, in one flashing instant.’

‘Exactly. But the insanity is after all this time in hospitals and losing his business and his wife because of drinking he suddenly gets it into his head that one drink won’t hurt him if he puts it in a glass of milk.’ 1

‘Crazy in his head.’

‘So when this absolutely reptilian character you saved me from by sitting down, rolling over, whatever. Sor-ry. When he says can he buy me a drink the book flashes in my mind and for sort of as it felt like a joke I ordered Kahlua and milk.’

‘Me, I come in for nights I am tired, after the music has packed away, for the quiet. I use the telephone here as well, sometimes.’

‘I mean even before the mugging I was walking along soberly deciding how to kill myself, so it seems a little silly to worry about drinking.’

‘You have a certain expression of resemblance of my wife.’

‘Your wife is dying. Jesus I’m sitting here laughing and your wife is dying. I think it’s that I haven’t felt decent in so freaking long, do you know what I’m saying? I’m not talking like good, I’m not talking like pleasure, I wouldn’t want to go overboard with this thing, but at least at like zero, even, what do they call it Feeling No Pain.’

‘I know of this meaning. I am spending a day to find someone I think my friends will kill, all the time I am awaiting the chance to betray my friends, and I come here and telephone to betray them and I see this bruised person who strongly resembles my wife. I think: Rémy, it is time for many drinks.’

‘Well / think you’re nice. I think you just about saved my life. I’ve spent like nine weeks feeling so bad I wanted to just about kill myself, both getting high and not. Dr. Garton never mentioned this. He talked plenty about shock but he never even freaking mentioned Kahlua and milk.’

‘Katherine, I will tell you a story about feeling so bad and saving a life. I do not know you but we are drunk together now, and will you hear this story?’

‘It’s not about Hitting Bottom ingesting any sort of Substance and trying to Surrender, is it?’

‘My people, we do not hit the bottoms of women. I am, shall we say, Swiss. My legs, they were lost in the teenage years being struck by a train.’

‘That must have smarted.’

‘I would have temptation to say you have no idea. But I am sensing you have an idea of hurting.’

‘You have no idea.’

‘I am in early twenty years, without the legs. Many of my friends also: without legs.’

‘Must have been an awful train crash.’

‘Also my own father: dead when his Kenbeck pacemaker came within range of a misdialed number of a cellular phone far away in Trois Rivieres, in a freakish occurrence of tragedy.’