Infinite Jest Read Free Page A

room.
    There is a new silence. The yellow Dean’s eyebrows go circumflex. The two other Deans look to the Director of Composition.
     The tennis coach has moved to stand at the broad window, feeling at the back of his crewcut. Uncle Charles strokes the forearm
     above his watch. Sharp curved palm-shadows move slightly over the pine table’s shine, the one head’s shadow a black moon.
    ‘Is Hal all right, Chuck?’ Athletic Affairs asks. ‘Hal just seemed to… well, grimace. Is he in pain? Are you in pain, son?’
    ‘Hal’s right as rain,’ smiles my uncle, soothing the air with a casual hand. ‘Just a bit of a let’s call it maybe a facial
     tic, slightly, at all the adrenaline of being here on your impressive campus, justifying his seed so far without dropping
     a set, receiving that official written offer of not only waivers but a living allowance from Coach White here, on Pac 10 letterhead,
     being ready in all probability to sign a National Letter of Intent right here and now this very day, he’s indicated to me.’
     C.T. looks to me, his look horribly mild. I do the safe thing, relaxing every muscle in my face, emptying out all expression.
     I stare carefully into the Kekuléan knot of the middle Dean’s necktie.
    My silent response to the expectant silence begins to affect the air of the room, the bits of dust and sportcoat-lint stirred
     around by the AC’s vents dancing jaggedly in the slanted plane of windowlight, the air over the table like the sparkling space
     just above a fresh-poured seltzer. The coach, in a slight accent neither British nor Australian, is telling C.T. that the
     whole application-interface process, while usually just a pleasant formality, is probably best accentuated by letting the
     applicant speak up for himself. Right and center Deans have inclined together in soft conference, forming a kind of tepee
     of skin and hair. I presume it’s probably
facilitate
that the tennis coach mistook for
accentuate,
though
accelerate,
while clunkier than
facilitate,
is from a phonetic perspective more sensible, as a mistake. The Dean with the flat yellow face has leaned forward, his lips
     drawn back from his teeth in what I see as concern. His hands come together on the conference table’s surface. His own fingers
     look like they mate as my own four-X series dissolves and I hold tight to the sides of my chair.
    We need candidly to chat re potential problems with my application, they and I, he is beginning to say. He makes a reference
     to candor and its value.
    ‘The issues my office faces with the application materials on file from you, Hal, involve some test scores.’ He glances down
     at a colorful sheet of standardized scores in the trench his arms have made. ‘The Admissions staff is looking at standardized
     test scores from you that are, as I’m sure you know and can explain, are, shall we say… subnormal.’ I’m to explain.
    It’s clear that this really pretty sincere yellow Dean at left is Admissions. And surely the little aviarian figure at right
     is Athletics, then, because the facial creases of the shaggy middle Dean are now pursed in a kind of distanced affront, an
     I’m-eating-something-that-makes-me-really-appreciate-the-presence-of-whatever-I’m-drinking-along-with-it look that spells
     professionally Academic reservations. An uncomplicated loyalty to standards, then, at center. My uncle looks to Athletics
     as if puzzled. He shifts slightly in his chair.
    The incongruity between Admissions’s hand- and face-color is almost wild. ‘— verbal scores that are just quite a bit closer
     to zero than we’re comfortable with, as against a secondary-school transcript from the institution where both your mother
     and her brother are administrators —’ reading directly out of the sheaf inside his arms’ ellipse — ‘that this past year, yes,
     has fallen off a bit, but by the word I mean “fallen off” to outstanding from three previous years of frankly