Pages 32–33
9 MAY, YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT — the Erdedy year (p. 17), and the book's first ordinary morning at the Enfield Tennis Academy inside it. Hal, in his dorm room before 0600, is packing gear for dawn drills in the dark; his older brother Mario is asleep in the other bed. Mario is effectively new — this is your introduction, and it happens sideways, in the dark. Note the camera: Hal in third person now, not the first-person voice of the Arizona pages. The whole scene is two pages and one phone call.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Mmmyellow (p. 32) — Hal's phone-answering hello; the scene's first two sentences tell you exactly where a locution like that comes from.
- telephone console (p. 32) — the standard phone here, antenna and all; Erdedy spent ten pages guarding one (pp. 17–27).
- Dunlop widebodies (p. 33) — tennis racquets; "complimentary" Dunlops were a fixation of the rant one page-turn back (p. 31).
- Kenkle and Brandt (p. 33) — heard laughing down the hall with janitorial buckets; first mention, and the names are all you get.
After you read: three things
1. The aphorism is the lens. The scene opens with a general law: sons answer the telephone with their fathers' locutions, "regardless of whether the fathers are still alive" (p. 32). Then a phone rings and Hal answers "Mmmyellow." The generalization is placed exactly where it is so that you hear a father inside that one word — and so that the caller, dialing home, hears one too.
2. The call runs on borrowed words. "I want to tell you… My head is filled with things to say" — and Hal, softly: "I don’t mind… I could wait forever" (pp. 32–33). Those are, near-verbatim, the opening lines and bridge of a real Beatles song, George Harrison's "I Want to Tell You": the caller opens the script and Hal completes it. Only the kiss-off is off-script — "That’s what you think" — then the connection cuts, and only then the name: "It had been Orin" (p. 33), the brother from the garden memory (p. 10).
3. Mario is introduced entirely by accommodation. He "didn’t drill and couldn’t play, and needed all the sleep he could get" (p. 32); his oversized skull takes four pillows; his one line is "Is it still dark out, or is it me?" (p. 33). No condition is named, no history given — the sideways facts are the introduction. And watch Hal absorb the call alone, deactivating the ringer and deflecting: "No one you know, I don’t think" (p. 33).
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.