Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

By mid-afternoon on 2 April Y.D.A.U.: the Near Eastern medical attaché; his devout wife; the Saudi Prince Q______’s personal physician’s personal assistant, who’d been sent over to see why the medical attaché hadn’t appeared at the Back Bay Hilton in the A.M. and then hadn’t answered his beeper’s page; the personal physician himself, who’d come to see why his personal assistant hadn’t come back; two Embassy security guards w/ sidearms, who’d been dispatched by a candidiatic, heartily pissed-off Prince Q______; and two neatly groomed Seventh Day Adventist pamphleteers who’d seen human heads through the living room window and found the front door unlocked and come in with all good spiritual intentions—all were watching the recursive loop the medical attaché had rigged on the TP’s viewer the night before, sitting and standing there very still and attentive, looking not one bit distressed or in any way displeased, even though the room smelled very bad indeed.