‘Get your manner down just conflicted-looking enough and the Subject herself’ll actually start drawing you out on this fact, the involuntary attraction that’s so painful to you and so flattering and tributary to her.’
‘So wait. This is like a conversation where you’re affecting all this flickering and groaning? Like you mean a cocktail-party-small-talk conversation? Or do you just brandish your fake ring at some girl at a bus stop and start a tortured tribute to your seraphic wife?’
‘It takes place anywhere. Venue-adjustable. 7’s portable and never-miss. The point is to maneuver the issue of your devoted attracted conflicted pain to the point where you can appear to almost sort of break down and can ask the Subject in all tortured sincerity if she thinks your involuntarily finding her so visibly female and attractive makes you a bad husband. Display vulnerability and ask her to evaluate the like integrity of your heart. Seem desperate. Your whole married self-concept shaken. Practically beg the Subject to reassure you you’re not a bad-hearted man. Plead with the Subject to say what she thinks it might be about her charms that could drive your serapic wife even momentarily from your heart. You present the attraction you feel for the Subject as this involuntary identity-threatening soul-searing-type crisis you just desperately need her help with, the Subject’s, person to person.’
‘Sounds very moving.’
‘And if it so happens you really are married, the additional advantage to 7’s pitch is that you and the Subject both, however briefly, get to believe it. The pitch. The involuntary passionate doomed knight-errant-type pitch.’
‘And of course, O., the Subject just happens to be married herself, often with small children, putting her directly in your crosshairs.’
‘A matter of what’s the word personal preference and taste that doesn’t impact 7’s surefire no-miss quality one way or the other. It’s the doomed involuntary conflicted good-man’s-downfall-type quality that no Subject can seemingly resist.’
‘Ainsi, then.’
‘Well O. the thing’s sick. It’s even sicker than 4. Was it 4? The one you said that Loach inspired, where you’d supposedly just that very day dropped out of Jesuit seminary after umpteen years of disciplined celibacy because of carno-spiritual yearnings you hadn’t even been quite in touch with as carno-spiritual in nature until you just now this very moment laid eyes on the Subject? With the breviary and rented collar?’
‘That was 4, yes. 4’s pretty much of a gynecopia also, but within a kind of narrower demographic psychological range of potential Subjects. Notice I never said 4 was no-miss.’
‘Well you must be a very proud young man. This is even sicker. The fake ring and fictional spouse. It’s like you’re inventing somebody you love just to seduce somebody else into helping you betray her. What’s it like. It’s like suborning somebody into helping you desecrate a tomb they don’t know is empty.’
‘This is what I get for passing down priceless fruits of hard experience to somebody who still thinks it’s exciting to shave.’
‘I ought to go. I have a blackhead I have to see to.’
‘You haven’t asked why I called right back. Why I’m calling during high-toll hours.’
‘Plus I feel some kind of toothache starting, and it’s the weekend, and I want to see Schacht before Mrs. Clarke’s confectionery day in the sun tomorrow. Plus I’m naked.’
‘I’m surprised you were even there. In person. I was expecting the Disembodied Voice and asking you to call back ASAP on this. What is it out there, 1600? Why aren’t you outside hard at play? Don’t tell me Schtitt started cancelling P.M.’S for I.-Day Eve.’
‘I tagged this kid Pemberton in the eye up at net. It was inadvertent. We were only four games in. He hit a big soft fluffy goose of an approach and I was trying to handcuff him. I hit it at him only to handcuff him. He never even got his stick up. Right in the left socket. It made a sound like a champagne cork. A prorector named Corbett Thorp said he thought Pemberton might have detached a retina. Something sure seemed detached. He was walking around in diminishing circles like he’d been hit with a mallet.’
‘You sound really, like, remorse-riddled.’
‘Kitchens arid heat, O. I’ve taken my share of balls in various spots. And whence bizarre metric theories about Emily Dickinson all of a sudden, by the way? And what’s up with the lurking figures with wheelchairs?’
‘You’re a Top-Ten junior stickman suddenly now this year, Hallie, what’s Schtitt doing giving you a cloth mouse like Hugh Pemberton to bat around anyway?’
‘You remember him?’
‘Who could forget a kid that looks like he’s curtsying when he serves? With the white visor and the little amber glasses? That kid’s been hanging from the bottom of the ladder by his nails since he was nine.’
‘It’s been carnage all week. Schtitt’s playing the C teams against the A’s. It’s for the C’s development, Donni said. Also because today word’s down from the tower some of the staff thought some of the A’s looked tentative against Port Wash.’
‘They despise tentativity.’
‘I think they want us just short of cocky for the Fundraiser and then the WhataBurger, where Wayne’s got a chance to knock this Veach kid off the pole.’
‘Let’s not forget you though either, H. I can get down for at least the WhataBurger semis if you get there, if you want incentive.’
‘As in in person, O.?’
‘Word is you’re worth watching now.’
‘Word?’
‘I keep my ear to the cement, Hallie.’
‘At least for very short Subjects, I’d imagine.’
‘We take off for the Patriots that Friday, what is that like the 27th or -8th, but it’s a Saturday afternoon game. I can be down there by midday Sunday if you’re still in the thick.’
‘You’ll probably need to wear some sort of sign around your neck so I know it’s you.’
‘So then you’ll be up here just as we’re down there, oddly, playing.’
‘It goes without saying you’d give me the advance skinny if anybody I didn’t want to see was by any chance flying down there with you guys.’
‘The C versus A thing’s been more like grotesque than confidence-building. Guys are taking out stress in kind of twisted ways. Struck beat Gloeckner in 40 minutes and then made a show of revealing he’d had 3-kilo ankle-weights on under his socks. Wayne made van Slack cry right there in front of everybody.’
‘Word is Wayne has exactly one gear.’
‘Then Thursday Coyle had his left wrist tied to his right ankle and was still beating this new kid Stockhausen until Schtitt sent Tex Watson down to tell him to knock it off.’
‘So but the reason I’m really calling, Hallie.’
‘And you’re being evasive about the dread about the disabled. The like rolling stalkers.’
‘I haven’t seen wheel one in days. I’m thinking possibly this was a kind of very shy sort of fan club of people without legs that look up to me —’
‘Grotesque entendre, O.’
‘— as, like, the ultimate leg. They use different ruses to follow me around and never come close or say anything because they’re really shy because they don’t have legs. So now my mind’s resting easier.’
‘Now if the roach- and spiders-at-heights fears’d subside you could really hold the head high.’
‘So the reason I’m calling.’
‘I already said I’d let you know when and if. No sightings of any journalists. Your Moment profiler.’
‘I’m actually glad I got you in person. I was going to ask you to call me ASAP.’
Tm pleased to call you a sap whenever you like, O.’
‘That’s below you. And I can hear you still chewing that grisly shit. That shit’s going to make your lower jaw fall right off. I’ve seen it happen down here, believe me. And you’re wondering why the tooth problems all the time suddenly.’