“You deliver mail, boy,' he said, bearing down on the door's handle. 'You think you can deliver some mail in this office do you?' I trailed him through the noise and fluorescence of the staff's office complex. There were cubicles and desks and Congressional Records and gray machines. The harsh doubled overhead lights threw the range of his shadow over every desk he passed.”
“All envelopes addressed by hand—automatically classified as letters from constituents—were doled out by Mrs. Teane and me among secretaries, interns, typists, low-level staffers. There was often far more of this constituents' mail, these Voices of the People, full of invective or adulation or petition for redress or advantage, far, far more than the low-level personnel could handle in a physical day. I developed and got approval for a few standardized replies, form letters made to look personal, responding to some one or another major and predictable theme in some of this mail, but we were still barely ahead of the Same Day Directive's demands. Backlogs threatened. I began staying at the offices late, telephoning Margaret or Peter to release me from the evening's plans, working to finish up assembling the Senator's replies to his people's every voice. I enjoyed the night's quiet in the staff room, one lamp burning, cicadas thrilling in rhythm out on the grounds. The staffers who handled mail began to appreciate me. A typist kept bringing me loaves of banana bread. Best, I now got access to Mrs. Teane's dark and deeply bitter East Texas coffee; she'd leave me a chuckling[…]”
—
“Our huddle ended, too, long before the official word came. Everyone had a hundred things to do. The small room emptied little by little. Flanked by Pierre and me, Lyndon finally had a few minutes to slouch and reflect in his waiting-room chair. He applied the inhaler to his swollen passages. His spurs made lines on the floor as he stretched out long legs. He held his own forearm, opening and closing his fist. The skin below his eyes was faintly blue. I dispensed some digitalis and all but had to force him to swallow.
We sat. We stared for a time at the little room's “white walls. Connally studied the concession machines”
—
“Steelritter just cannot believe the naïveté of these cynical kids. He'd trade looks with the older flight attendant in the rearview if D.L.'s slender head weren't in the way. D.L. and DeHaven are watching the odometer finally roll all the way over. It's exciting and gorgeous. There's a slot-machine feel about it, which they share, together, and know they share it. The oil light has settled into a kind of stuttered flicker, which is even more dreadful, if you know your oil.”
—
David Foster Wallace. “Girl With Curious Hair.”
