the bad ankle soaking in a janitor-pail
Hal Incandenza sits on the edge of his unmade bed, undressed, with the good right leg curled under him and the bad ankle soaking in a janitor-pail of dissolved Epsom salts, looking through one of Mario’s old Hush Puppy shoeboxes of letters and snapshots.
Context
The whole geopolitical marathon of endnote 110 is framed by a body doing its rehab. Hal sits "with the good right leg curled under him and the bad ankle soaking in a janitor-pail of dissolved Epsom salts" — the injury-maintenance ritual (Epsom-water that "whitens his calluses," the ideal second bucket of cold water) running the entire length of the phone call. Underneath all of Orin's Québec-samizdat theorizing, the actual scene is a junior athlete servicing a chronic ankle in a repurposed janitor's pail, foot pruning white, waiting to go dry it and play. The body and its small ongoing repair is the ground the talk floats on. (The Orin/Québec/samizdat geopolitics is nationalism-onan's.)