The Broom of the System - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,4

thrilled. They all look at each other. Lenore gets a nod from Clarice and jumps up and goes to Mindy’s little annex bedroom to put on her dress as Clarice starts glaring in earnest at Mindy and Mindy gives little stuff-it signals to Sue Shaw, over in the comer.

Lenore brushes her teeth in a tiny bathroom redolent of Metalman and Shaw, washes her face, dries it with a towel off the floor, puts Visine in, finds some of that bright wet-looking lipstick Mindy owns in an old Tampax box on the toilet, gets the lipstick out, knocks the Tampax box over, a compact falls in the toilet and she has to fish it out, her shirt’s wet, the arm’s soaked, she takes the shirt off and goes into Mindy’s bedroom. She has to get her bra, since the dress fabric is really thin, violet cotton, pretty as hell with her brown hair, which is luckily clean, and a bit of lipstick, she looks eighteen, very nearly, and her bra’s in the bottom of her bag on Mindy’s bed. Lenore rummages in her bag. Mindy’s room is really a sty, clothes all over, an Exercycle, big James Dean poster on the inside of the door, Richard Gere too oh of course, pictures of some nonfamous guy on a sailboat, Rolling Stone magazine covers, joumey concert poster, super-high ceiling like the other rooms, here with a bright blanket tacked one side on the ceiling and one on the wall and sagging, a becalmed candy sail. There’s a plastic thing on the dresser, and Lenore knows it’s a Pill-holder, for the Pill, because Clarice has got one and so does Karen Daughenbaugh, who’s more or less Lenore’s best friend at Shaker School. There’s the bra, Lenore puts it on. The dress. Combs her hair with a long red comb that has black hair in it and smells like Flex.

A scritch. The Cat Stevens goes off all of a sudden, in the main room. There’s loud knocking on the front door, Lenore can hear. She comes back in with the others with her white dress pumps in her hand as Sue Shaw opens the door and Mindy tries to disperse smoke with an album cover. There’s two guys outside, filling the doorway, grinning, in matching blue blazers and tartan ties and chinos and those shoes. There’s nobody with them.

“Hey and howdy, ma‘am,” says one of them, a big, tall, tan-in-the-spring-type guy with thick blond hair and a sculptured part and a cleft chin and bright green eyes. “Does Melinda Sue Metalman live here, by any chance at all?”

“How did you get up here,” says Sue Shaw. “No one gets upstairs here without an escort, see.” -

The one guy beams. “Please to meet you. Andy ‘Wang-Dang’ Lang; my colleague, Biff Diggerence.” And he not very subtly pushes the door open with one big hand, and Sue goes back a little on her heels, and the two just walk right in, all of a sudden, Wang-Dang and Biff. Biffs shorter than Lang, and broader, a rectangular person. They’ve both got Comonawannaleiya cups, with beer, in their hands. They’re a bit tight, apparently. Biff especially: his jaw is slack and eyes are dull and his cheeks are all red in hot patches.

Wang-Dang Lang finally says to Sue, while he’s looking at Clarice, “Well I’m just afraid your security personnel here are pretty trusting, ‘cause when I told them I was Father Mustafa Metalman, Miss Metalman’s second cousin and spiritchul advisor, and then gave them some spiritchul advice of their own, they just ...” He stops and looks around and whistles. “Unbelievably nice room here. Biff you ever see ceilings so hah in a dorm?”

Lenore sits back down in her chair by the door to Mindy’s room, barefoot, watching. Mindy pulls up her sweatshirt. Clarice and Sue face the two men, their arms crossed.

“I’m Mindy Metalman,” says Mindy Metalman. The guys don’t even look over at her for a second, they’re still looking the room over, then the tall one looks at Mindy, and he starts nudging Biff, staring at her.

“Hi Mindy, I’m Wang-Dang Lang, Biff Diggerence on my right, here,” gesturing, looking at Mindy all wide-eyed still. Comes over and shakes her hand, Mindy sort of shakes it back, looking around at the others.

“Do I know you?”

Wang-Dang smiles. “Well now quite regrettably I must say no, but you do, if I’m not entirely mistaken, know Doug Dangler, over at Amherst College? He’s my roommate, or rather me