Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,132

Kuwait as part of a maintenance crew in Operation Desert Storm], and the fellows on shitter [latrine, hygienic] detail—[latrine] detail is they soak the [military unit’s solid wastes] in gas and burn it with a [flamethrower]—and up the [material] goes and in the fire one of the fellows saw something peculiar there in amongst the [waste material] and calls the sergeant over and they kick up a [fuss] because at first they’re thinking somebody tossed something in the [latrine] for a joke, which is against regs, and the sergeant said when he found out who it was he was going to crawl up inside the [responsible party’s] skull and look out his eyeholes, and they made the [latrine] detail [douse] the fire and get it [the artwork] out and come to find it weren’t a[n illicit or unpatriotic object], and they didn’t know whose [solid waste] it was, but I was pretty sure it was mine [because subj. then reports having had prior experiences of roughly same kind, which renders entire anecdote more or less pointless, but could foreseeably be edited out or massaged].’

3.

The Mount Carmel Holiday Inn regretfully had neither scanner nor fax for guests’ outgoing use, Atwater had been informed at the desk by a man whose blazer was nearly identical to his own.

Temperatures had fallen and the sodium streetlights come on by themselves as Skip Atwater drove the artist and his spouse home from Ye Olde Country Buffet with a styrofoam box of leavings for a dog he’d seen no sign of; and the great elms and locusts were beginning to yaw and two thirds of the sky to be stacked with enormous muttering masses of clouds that moved in and out of themselves as if stirred by a great unseen hand. Mrs. Moltke was in the back seat, and there was a terrible noise as the car hit the driveway’s grade. Blinds that had been open on the duplex’s other side were now closed, though there was still no vehicle in that side’s drive. The other side’s door had a US flag as well. As was also typical of severe weather conditions in the area, a gray luminescence to the light made everything appear greasy and unreal. The rear of the artist’s company van listed a toll free number to dial if one had any concerns about the employee’s driving.

It had emerged that the nearest Kinko’s was in the nearby community of Scipio, which was only a dozen miles east on SR 252 but could be somewhat confusing to get around in because of indifferent signage. Scipio evidently also had a Wal Mart. It was Amber Moltke who suggested that they leave the artist to watch his Sunday Reds game in peace the way he liked to and proceed together in Atwater’s rented Chevrolet to that Kinko’s, and decide together which photos to scan in and forward, and to also go on and talk turkey in more depth respecting Skip’s article on the Moltkes for Style. Atwater, whose fear of the region’s weather was amply justified by childhood experience, was unsure about either driving or using the Moltke’s land line to call Laurel Manderley during an impending storm that he was pretty sure would show up at least yellow on Doppler radar—though on the other hand he was not all that keen about returning to his room at the Holiday Inn, whose wall had an immovable painting of a clown that he found almost impossible to look at—and the journalist ended up watching half an inning of the first Cincinnati Reds game he had seen in a decade while sitting paralyzed with indecision on the Moltkes’ davenport.

Besides the facts that she walked without moving her arms and in general reminded him unpleasantly of the girl in Election, the core reason why Atwater feared and avoided Ellen Bactrian was that Laurel Manderley had once confided to Atwater that Ellen Bactrian—who had been in madrigals with Laurel Manderley for a year of their overlap at Wellesley, and at the outset of Laurel’s internship more or less took the younger woman under her wing—had told her that in her opinion Skip Atwater was not really quite as spontaneous a person as he liked to seem. Nor was Atwater stupid, and he was aware that his being so disturbed over what Ellen Bactrian apparently thought of him was possible evidence that she might actually have him pegged, that he might be not only shallow but at root a kind of