Port Washington: the pre-match nerves, the 'drine dependence, the default win

texture · 6 Nov YDAU

• When: 6 Nov YDAU (the annual E.T.A.-P.W.T.A. meet, Long Island)
• What: The counter-image to Pemulis's cool competence: before competitive play he is "a whole different person," down on one knee vomiting into a ball-bucket from "nervous incapacity," Schacht holding his head. Pemulis insists he takes "elaborate precautions" (stops all substances the day before; "in bed the night before by 2300 all pink-cheeked and clean"), but Schacht privately reads it as withdrawal: "Schacht suspects Pemulis is physically 'drine-dependent, Preludin or Tenuate or something." He wins his #6-B match by default (jr.-circuit "V.D.") after his opponent gets "weirdly lethargic and then disoriented," ate hors d'oeuvres without hands, and propositioned the P.W. Headmaster's wife — with Pemulis "whistling and staring innocently up at the pre-fab ceiling" (scene 067). The dosing is only quietly implied in-scene but is later stated flatly by Hal: "Pemulis publicly dosed his opponent at Port Washington. It was impossible to miss. The kid was a devout Mormon." (scene 157 — the opponent is "storky" in 065 and "a devout Mormon" in Hal's telling; both authorial, as printed.) deLint's standing verdict on Pemulis's practice-vs-match gap is scathing (event 13, n77); his technical read (scene 130) is that Pemulis has "great, great volleys, he's a natural at net" and the best lob on the coast, but "Pemulis's strengths cancel each other out" — no complete gestalt game (the same lob-dependence Orin is compared to as "the equally weak-passing Eschaton-prodigy," scene 068). Hal privately files Pemulis and Troeltsch as the ones who "always seem to let a lead slip away," "Tightening Up" (scene 064); his weak ranking also earns him a lie-in while the top players do dawn drills (scene 094). The WhataBurger trip he needs the win for looms over the whole arc.