Infinite Jest (90 page)

Then, blessedly, on the seventh court, physically undemanding Finesse drills. Drops,
drops for angles, topspin lobs, extreme angles, drops for extreme angles, then restful
microtennis, tennis inside the service lines, very soft and precise, radical angles
much encouraged. Touch- and artistry-wise nobody comes close to Hal in microtennis.
By this time Hal’s turtleneck is soaked through under the alpaca jacket, and exchanging
it for a sweatshirt out of the gear bag is a kind of renewal. What wind there is down
here is out of the south. The temperature is now probably in the low 10’s C.; the
sun’s been up an hour, and you can almost see the light-pole and transom shadows rotating
slowly northwest. The Sunstrand stacks’ plumes stand there cigarette-straight, not
even seeming to spread at the top; the sky is going a glassy blue.

No (tennis) balls required on the final court. Wind sprints. Probably the less said
about wind sprints the better. Then more Gatorade, which Hal and Coyle are breathing
too hard to enjoy, as Schtitt comes slowly down from the transom. It takes a while.
You can hear his steel-toed boots hit each iron step. There is something creepy about
a very fit older man, to say nothing of jackboots w/ Fila warm-ups of claret-colored
silk. He’s coming this way, both hands behind his back and the pointer poking out
to the side. Schtitt’s crew cut and face are nacreous as he moves east in the yellowing
A.M.
light. This is sort of the signal for all the quartets to gather at the Show Courts.
Behind them the girls are still hitting groundstrokes in baroque combinations, much
high-pitched grunting and the lifeless
chung
of cold hit balls. Three 14’s are made to squeegee the more extrusive melt back into
the little banks of frozen leaves along the fence. At the horizon to the north a bulbous
cone of picric clouds that gets taller by the hour as the Methuen–Andover border’s
mammoth effectuators force northern MA’s combined oxides north against some sort of
upper-air resistance, it looks like. You can see little bits of glitter from broken
monitor-glass in the frozen stuff up by the fences behind 6–9, and one or two curved
shards of floppy disk, and they’re a troubling sight, Penn being absent amid troubling
leg-rumors, Postal-Weight with two black eyes and his nose covered with horizontal
bandages that are starting to loosen and curl at the edges from sweat, and Otis P.
Lord alleged to have come back from the emergency room at St. Elizabeth’s last night
with the Hitachi monitor over his head, still, its removal, with all the sharp teeth
of the broken screen’s glass pointing at key parts of Lord’s throat, apparently calling
for the sort of esoteric expertise you have to fly in by private medical jet, according
to Axford.

They all get on the outside of three cones of Gatorade, bent or squatting, sucking
wind, while Schtitt stands at a sort of Parade Rest with his weatherman’s pointer
behind his back and shares overall impressions with the players on the morning’s work
thus far. Certain players are singled out for special mention or humiliation. Then
more wind sprints. Then a brief like strategy-clinic-thing from Corbett Thorp on how
approach shots down the line aren’t always the very best tactic, and why. Thorp’s
a first-rate tennis mind, but his terrible stutter makes the boys so uncomfortable
they have a hard time listening.
¹⁸¹

The whole first shift’s on the eighth court for the final conditioning drills.
¹⁸²
First are Star Drills. A dozen-plus boys on either side of the net, behind the baselines.
Form a line. Go one at a time. Go: run up the side line, touch the net with your stick;
then backwards to the outside corner of the service box and then forward to touch
the net again; backward to the middle of the service box, forward to touch net; back
to the baseline’s little jut of centerline, up to net; service box’s other outside
corner, net, baseline’s corner, net, then turn and run like hell for the corner you
started from. Schtitt has a stopwatch. There’s a janitorial bucket
¹⁸³
placed in the doubles alley by the finish point, for potential distress. They each
do the Star Drill three times. Hal has 41 seconds and 38 and 48, which is average
both for him and for any seventeen-year-old with a resting pulse rate in the high
50s. John Wayne’s low of 33 occurs on his third Star, and he stops dead at the finish
point and always just stands there, never bending or walking it off. Stice gets a
29 and everyone gets very excited until Schtitt says he was slow starting the watch:
the arthritis in a thumb. Everyone but Wayne and Stice uses the retch-bucket in a
sort of pro forma way. Sixteen-year-old Petropolis Kahn, a.k.a. ‘W.M.’ for ‘Woolly
Mammoth’ because he’s so hairy, gets a 60 and then a 59 and then pitches forward onto
the hard surface and lies very still. Tony Nwangi tells people to walk around him.

The cardiovascular finale is Side-to-Sides, conceived by van der Meer in the B.S.
’60s and demonic in its simplicity. Again split into fours on eight courts. For the
top 18’s, prorector R. Dunkel at net with an armful of balls and more in a hopper
beside him, hitting fungoes, one to the forehand corner and then one to the backhand
corner and then farther out to the forehand corner and so on. And on. Hal Incandenza
is expected at least to get a racquet on each ball; for Stice and Wayne the expectations
are higher. A very unpleasant drill fatigue-wise, and for Hal also ankle-wise, what
with all the stopping and reversing. Hal wears two bandages over a left ankle he shaves
way more often than his upper lip. Over the bandages goes an Air-Stirrup inflatable
ankle brace that’s very lightweight but looks a bit like a medieval torture-implement.
It was in a stop-and-reverse move much like Side-to-Sides
¹⁸⁴
that Hal tore all the soft left-ankle tissue he then owned, at fifteen, in his ankle,
at Atlanta’s Easter Bowl, in the third round, which he was losing anyway. Dunkel goes
fairly easy on Hal, at least on the first two go-arounds, because of the ankle. Hal’s
going to be seeded in at least the top 4 at the WhataBurger Inv. in a couple weeks,
and woe to the prorector who lets Hal get hurt the way Hal let some of his Little
Buddies get hurt yesterday.

What’s potentially demonic about Side-to-Sides is that the duration of the drill and
pace and angle of the fungoes to be chased down from side to side are entirely at
the prorector’s discretion. Prorector Rik Dunkel, a former 16’s-doubles runner-up
at Jr. Wimbledon and a decent enough guy, the son of some kind of plastic-packaging-systems
tycoon on the South Shore, tied with Thorp for brightest of the prorectors (more or
less by default), regarded as kind of a mystic because he refers people sometimes
to Lyle and has been observed sitting at community gatherings with his eyes closed
but not sleeping… but the point is a decent enough guy but not much into any kind
of exchange of quarter. He seems to have received instructions to put the particular
hurt on Ortho Stice this time, and by his third go-around Stice is trying to weep
without breath and mewing for his aunts.
¹⁸⁵
But anyway everybody goes through Sides-to-Sides three times. Even Petropolis Kahn
staggers through them, who after Stars had had to be sort of lugged over by Stephan
Wagenknecht and Jeff Wax with his Nikes dragging behind him and his head swinging
free on his neck and given kind of a swingset-shove to get started. Hal feels for
Kahn, who’s not fat but is in the Schacht-type mold, very thick and solid, except
also carrying extra weight in terms of leg-and-back-hair, and who always tires easily
no matter how hard he conditions. Kahn makes it through but stays bent over the distress-bucket
long after the third go-around, staring into it, and stays that way while everybody
else removes more soaked bottom layers of clothing and accepts clean towels from a
halfway-house part-time black girl with a towel cart, and picks up balls.
¹⁸⁶

It is 0720h. and they are through with the active part of dawn drills. Nwangi, at
the edge of the hillside, is whistling the next shift over for opening sprints. Schtitt
shares more overall impressions as minimum-wage aides dispense Kleenex and paper cones.
Nwangi’s reedy voice carries; he’s telling the B’s he wishes to see nothing but assholes
and elbows on these sprints. It’s unclear to Hal what this might connote. The A-players
have formed those ragged rows behind the baseline again, and Schtitt paces back and
forth.

‘Am seeing sluggish drilling, by sluggards. Not meaning insults. This is the fact.
Motions are gone through. Barely minimal efforts. Cold, yes? The cold hands and nose
with mucus? Thoughts on getting through, going in, hot showers, water very hot. A
meal. The thoughts are drifting toward the comfort of ending. Too cold to demand the
total, yes? Master Chu, too cold for tennis at the high level, yes?’

Chu: ‘It does seem pretty cold out, sir.’

‘Ah.’ Pacing back and forth with about-faces at every tenth step, stopwatch around
his neck, pipe and pouch and pointer in his hands behind his back, nodding to himself,
clearly wishing he had a third hand so he could stroke his white chin, pretending
to ruminate. Every
A.M.
essentially the same, except when Schtitt does the females and the males get dressed
down by deLint. All the older boys’ eyes are glazed with repetition. Hal’s tooth gives
off little electric shivers with each inbreath, and he feels slightly unwell. When
he moves his head slightly the monitor-glass bits’ glitter shifts and dances along
the opposite fence in a sort of sickening way.

‘Ah.’ Turns crisply toward them, looking briefly skyward. ‘And when is hot? Too pretty
hot for the total self on the court? The other hand of the spectrum? Ach. Is always
something that is
too
. Master Incandenza who cannot quickly get behind lob’s descent so weight can move
forvart
into overhand,
¹⁸⁷
please tell your thinking: it is always hot or cold, yes?’

A small smile. ‘ ’s been our general observation out there, sir.’

‘So then then so, Master Chu, from California’s temperance regions?’

Chu brings down his hankie. ‘I guess we have to learn to adjust to conditions, sir,
I believe is what you’re saying.’

A full sharp half-turn to face the group. ‘Is what I am
not
saying, young LaMont Chu, is why you cease to seem to give total effort of self since
you begin with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive
tape and walls. No? Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always
something that is
too
. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright
hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside
is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overclose to baseline,
not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk
of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting,
so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgrass in cracks along baseline.
Who could give the total, with crabgrass. Look here is low net high net. Opponent’s
relatives heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You
hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching
as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in
audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small
to inspire. Always something.’

His turns as he paces are crisp and used to punctuate. ‘Adjust. Adjust? Stay the
same
. No? Is not stay the same? It is cold? It is wind? Cold and wind is the world. Outside,
yes? On the tennis court the you the player: this is not where there is cold wind.
I am saying. Different world
in
side. World built inside cold outside world of wind breaks the wind, shelters the
player, you, if you stay the same, stay inside.’ Pacing gradually faster, the turns
becoming pirouettic. The older kids stare straight ahead; some of the younger follow
every move of the pointer with wide eyes. Trevor Axford is bent at the waist and moving
his head slightly, trying to get the sweat dripping off his face to spell something
out on the surface. Schtitt is silent for two fast about-faces, ranging before them,
tapping his jaw with the pointer. ‘Not ever I think this adjusting. To what, this
adjusting? This world inside is the same, always, if you stay there. This is what
we are making, no? New type citizen. Not of cold and wind outside. Citizens of this
sheltering second world we are working to show you every dawn, no? To make your introduction.’
The Big Buddies translate Schtitt into accessible language for the littler kids, is
a big part of their assignment.

‘Borders of court for singles Mr. Rader are what.’

‘Twenty-four by eight sir,’ sounding hoarse and thin.

‘So. Second world without cold or purple dots of bright for you is 23.8 meters, 8
I think .2 meters. Yes? In that world is joy because there is shelter of
something else,
of purpose past sluggardly self and complaints about uncomfort. I am speaking to
not just LaMont Chu of the temperance world. You have a chance to
occur,
playing. No? To make for you this second world that is always the same: there is
in this world you, and in the hand a tool, there is a ball, there is opponent with
his tool, and always only two of you, you and this other, inside the lines, with always
a purpose to keep this world alive, yes?’ The pointer-motions through all this become
too orchestral and intricate to describe. ‘This second world inside the lines. Yes?
Is this
adjusting?
This is not adjusting. This is not adjusting to
ignore
cold and wind and tired. Not ignoring “as if.”
Is
no cold.
Is
no wind. No cold wind where you
occur
. No? Not “adjust to conditions.” Make this second world inside the world: here there
are
no conditions.’