Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

is.’
    Tap tap tap.
    ‘But Himself hallucinates, sometimes, lately, you ought to be apprised, was the thrust. I’m wondering why the Moms let him send me pedalling up here uphill against the wind when I’ve got a challenge match at 3:00 to converse with an enthusiast with a blank door and no diplomas anywhere in view.’
    ‘I, in my small way, would like to think it had as much to do with me as with you. That my reputation preceded me.’
    ‘Isn’t that usually a pejorative clause?’
    ‘I am wonderful fun to talk to. I’m a consummate professional. People leave my parlor in states. You are here. It’s conversation-time. Shall we discuss Byzantine erotica?’
    ‘How did you know I was interested in Byzantine erotica?’
    ‘You seem persistently to confuse me with someone who merely hangs out a shingle with the word Conversationalist on it, and this operation with a fly-by-night one strung together with chewing gum and twine. You think I have no support staff? Researchers at my beck? You think we don’t delve full-bore into the psyches of those for whom we’ve made appointments to converse? You don’t think this fully accredited limited partnership would have an interest in obtaining data on what informs and stimulates our conversees?’
    ‘I know only one person who’d ever use full-bore in casual conversation.’
    ‘There is nothing casual about a professional conversationalist and staff. We delve. We obtain, and then some. Young sir.’
    ‘Okay, Alexandrian or Constantinian?’
    ‘You think we haven’t thoroughly researched your own connection with the whole current intra-Provincial crisis in southern Quebec?’
    ‘What intra-Provincial crisis in southern Quebec? I thought you wanted to talk racy mosaics.’
    ‘This is an upscale district of a vital North American metropolis, Hal. Standards here are upscale, and high. A professional conversationalist flat-out full-bore delves. Do you for one moment think that a professional plier of the trade of conversation would fail to probe beak-deep into your family’s sordid liaison with the pan-Canadian Resistance’s notorious M. DuPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensis-cum-operative, Luria P–?’
    ‘Listen, are you okay?’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I’m ten for Pete’s sake. I think maybe your appointment calendar’s squares got juggled. I’m the potentially gifted ten-year-old tennis and lexical prodigy whose mom’s a continental mover and shaker in the prescriptive-grammar academic world and whose dad’s a towering figure in optical and avant-garde film circles and single-handedly founded the Enfield Tennis Academy but drinks Wild Turkey at like 5:00 A.M. and pitches over sideways during dawn drills, on the courts, some days, and some days presents with delusions about people’s mouths moving but nothing coming out. I’m not even up to/yet, in the condensed O.E.D., much less Quebec or malevolent Lurias.’
    ‘…of the fact that photos of the aforementioned… liaison being leaked to Der Spiegel resulted in the bizarre deaths of both an Ottawan paparazzo and a Bavarian international-affairs editor, of an alpenstock through the abdomen and an ill-swallowed cocktail onion, respectively?’
    ‘I just finished jew’s-ear. I’m just starting on jew’s-harp and the general theory of oral lyres. I’ve never even skied.’
    ‘That you could dare to imagine we’d fail conversationally to countenance certain weekly shall we say maternal … assignations with a certain unnamed bisexual bassoonist in the Albertan Secret Guard’s tactical-bands unit?’
    ‘Gee, is that the exit over there I see?’
    ‘…that your blithe inattention to your own dear grammatical mother’s cavortings with not one not two but over thirty Near Eastern medical attaches…?’
    ‘Would it be rude to tell you your mustache is askew?’
    ‘…that her introduction of esoteric mnemonic steroids, stereo-chemically not dissimilar to your father’s own