Page 87
One sentence again — the medical attaché's Boston living room, mid-afternoon on 2 April, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. This is the latest of the little check-ins the book has been making on this apartment since p. 33, and the room is no longer private: the sentence is mostly a roster of who's in it now, and the roster runs to eight people. Nobody speaks, nothing moves; the scene is a headcount.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Prince Q——— (p. 87) — the Saudi Minister of Home Entertainment, the attaché's Töblerone-ravaged employer from pp. 33–34.
- candidiatic (p. 87) — invented adjective: suffering from Candida, the Prince's chronic yeast affliction (p. 34).
- Seventh Day Adventist (p. 87) — real denomination, known for door-to-door pamphleteering.
- the recursive loop (p. 87) — the cartridge rigged to replay endlessly; the attaché set it up at p. 54.
- TP (p. 87) — teleputer, the era's TV-computer; its viewer plays the cartridges.
After you read: three things
1. The sentence is built as a chain of search parties. The assistant came to see why the attaché missed work; the physician came to see why the assistant didn't come back; the Prince dispatched two armed guards after that; the pamphleteers just found the door unlocked. Rank, force, and faith walk in one after another — and the sentence gives every one of them the same ending, "very still and attentive."
2. Find the wife in the list. At 0145h. (pp. 78–79) she was crying her husband's name and turning to follow his line of sight. Here, roughly twelve hours later, she appears as the roster's second item — "his devout wife" — with no comment at all. The book reports what happened to her purely by where her name now sits. The clock on this thread: home at "like 1840h." on 1 April (p. 35), and it's now mid-afternoon on the 2nd.
3. The last clause carries the whole verdict. Eight people "looking not one bit distressed or in any way displeased, even though the room smelled very bad indeed." And notice what got the pamphleteers inside: they'd "seen human heads through the living room window and found the front door unlocked." A sightline and an open door are the entire mechanism; the prose stays in its mild inventory voice the whole way down.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.