Read Online The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel by David Foster Wallace - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Foster Wallace
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could feel the start of a jumping muscle in one of his eyelids. Explain the tax treatment of somebody giving appreciated stock to a charity vs. that same person selling the stock and giving the proceeds to the charity. The sides of the rural road looked chewed. The light outside was the sort of light that makes you turn on your headlights but then keeps them from doing any good because technically it’s still light out. It was unclear if this was a van or a max. capacity 24 bus. The one who’d asked had a sideburn and the invulnerable smile of someone who’s had two airport cocktails and nothing but nuts. The driver of the last van, to which Sylvanshine as a GS-9 had been assigned, rode the wheel as if his shoulders were too heavy for his back. As if clinging to the wheel to support himself. What kind of driver wore a white paper cap? A strapwas all that held the vertiginous pile of bags in place. ‘I’m the Special Assistant to the new Human Resources Systems Deputy, whose name is Merrill Lehrl, who is coming soon.’
‘New to the Post. Freshly assigned I meant.’ The man’s voice was clear even though he seemed to address the window, which was unclean. Sylvanshine felt hemmed in; the seats were more a cushioned bench and there were no armrests to provide even the illusion or impression of personal space. Plus the van swayed alarmingly on the road, which was either a road or a sort of rural highway, and you could hear the chassis’s springs. The rodential man, whose aura was timid but kind, a sad kind man who lived in a cube of fear, had his hat in his lap. Capacity 24 and full. There was the yeasty smell of wet men. The energy level was low; they were all coming back from something that had consumed a lot of energy. Sylvanshine could almost literally see the small pink man drinking Pepto-Bismol straight out of the bottle and going home to a woman who treated him like an uninteresting stranger. The two men either worked together or knew each other very well; they were talking in tandem without even being quite aware of it. An alpha-beta tandem, which meant either Audit or CID. It occurred to Sylvanshine that the window held a faint oblique reflection of him and that the alpha of the two men was amusing himself slightly by addressing Sylvanshine’s reflection as if it were him, while the hamster affected the facial expression of address but said nothing. Stock donations are disguised capital-gains treatments—there was also a sound, gassy and tinkly like half a bar of calliope, when the driver downshifted or the boxy van swayed hard on a reverse-S next to a billboard that read DOWNSIZE THIS and then a picture Sylvanshine didn’t catch, and while the urbane man was offhandedly introducing them (Sylvanshine didn’t catch the names, which he knew would cause trouble because it was insulting to have forgotten people’s names, especially if you were attached to an alleged wunderkind in Personnel and Personnel was your business, and he would have to go through all sorts of conversational gymnastics in the future to avoid using their names, and God help him if they were climbers and expected one day to come up and have him make introductions to Merrill, although if they were CID this wouldbe less likely because Investigations and Fraud usually had their own infrastructure and office space, often in a separate building, at least in Rome and Philly, because forensic accountants like to think of themselves more as law enforcement than Service, and didn’t as a rule much mix, and in fact the taller man, Bondurant, did identify both himself and Britton as CID GS-9s, which Sylvanshine was too occupied with mortification at missing their names to internalize until much later that evening, when he would recollect the substance of the conversation and experience a moment of relief). The timorous man rarely lied; the more urbane CID agent lied rather a lot, Sylvanshine could feel. The window clicked with a fine rain, the sort
‘New to the Post. Freshly assigned I meant.’ The man’s voice was clear even though he seemed to address the window, which was unclean. Sylvanshine felt hemmed in; the seats were more a cushioned bench and there were no armrests to provide even the illusion or impression of personal space. Plus the van swayed alarmingly on the road, which was either a road or a sort of rural highway, and you could hear the chassis’s springs. The rodential man, whose aura was timid but kind, a sad kind man who lived in a cube of fear, had his hat in his lap. Capacity 24 and full. There was the yeasty smell of wet men. The energy level was low; they were all coming back from something that had consumed a lot of energy. Sylvanshine could almost literally see the small pink man drinking Pepto-Bismol straight out of the bottle and going home to a woman who treated him like an uninteresting stranger. The two men either worked together or knew each other very well; they were talking in tandem without even being quite aware of it. An alpha-beta tandem, which meant either Audit or CID. It occurred to Sylvanshine that the window held a faint oblique reflection of him and that the alpha of the two men was amusing himself slightly by addressing Sylvanshine’s reflection as if it were him, while the hamster affected the facial expression of address but said nothing. Stock donations are disguised capital-gains treatments—there was also a sound, gassy and tinkly like half a bar of calliope, when the driver downshifted or the boxy van swayed hard on a reverse-S next to a billboard that read DOWNSIZE THIS and then a picture Sylvanshine didn’t catch, and while the urbane man was offhandedly introducing them (Sylvanshine didn’t catch the names, which he knew would cause trouble because it was insulting to have forgotten people’s names, especially if you were attached to an alleged wunderkind in Personnel and Personnel was your business, and he would have to go through all sorts of conversational gymnastics in the future to avoid using their names, and God help him if they were climbers and expected one day to come up and have him make introductions to Merrill, although if they were CID this wouldbe less likely because Investigations and Fraud usually had their own infrastructure and office space, often in a separate building, at least in Rome and Philly, because forensic accountants like to think of themselves more as law enforcement than Service, and didn’t as a rule much mix, and in fact the taller man, Bondurant, did identify both himself and Britton as CID GS-9s, which Sylvanshine was too occupied with mortification at missing their names to internalize until much later that evening, when he would recollect the substance of the conversation and experience a moment of relief). The timorous man rarely lied; the more urbane CID agent lied rather a lot, Sylvanshine could feel. The window clicked with a fine rain, the sort
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