Pages 97–105

30 April Y.D.A.U. — Marathe and Steeply · first-time reader guide · all scenes

When you've finished these pages: three things worth a second look, at the bottom.

Same locker room, same slump, continuous with pp. 95–97: Tuesday 3 November, around 1700h. The upperclassmen stay on the floor in their towel-kilts while the narrator wanders — into the Big Buddy System (older players mentoring "quar-to-sextets" of little kids, three of whom sit on the benches here), into tennis-tan lore, into Incandenza family genetics, and into some things Hal does that nobody in the room knows about. No plot advances; the scene is E.T.A. daily life given real depth of field.

Terms, in order of appearance

ephebes (p. 98) — Greek: adolescent trainees; here, the Little Buddies.
Lateral Alice Moore (p. 98) — C.T.'s administrative assistant; the "Lateral" goes unexplained for now.
Lemon Pledge (p. 99) — the real furniture polish; academy lore has it drying into a UV-40 sunscreen crust.
semion (p. 100) — semiotics jargon: a meaning-carrying sign or gesture.
cognomen (p. 100) — Latin: nickname; Stice's is "The Darkness."
Visine AC (p. 101) — real eyedrops for redness; travels in Hal's gear bag with mint floss.
"Chances Are" (p. 102) — real Johnny Mathis croon, 1957; Pemulis "loves to sing around tile."
Interdependence Day (p. 102) — evidently a November holiday, with an Eve and a Gala; the name is all the scene gives.
Crohn's Disease (p. 103) — real chronic bowel disease, Schacht's affliction; endnote 43 rides it. His "carminative" pills are anti-gas.
the Show (p. 104) — pro tennis's big time; the argot's been in use since p. 53.
Port Washington (p. 104) — an upcoming opposing academy, from context ("no silly songs at Port Washington").

After you read: three things

1. The tunnel paragraph hides in plain sight — don't let it slide by (pp. 101–102). Mid-scene, the narrator lays out Hal's "casual" routine: drifting down into the tunnels on non-Buddy days, returning "substantially altered in mood," showering with the little kids, Visine and floss and gargle. You know what this is — the pump-room ritual of pp. 49–54; the room doesn't: Schacht regards the floss kit "as an example to them all." Concealment written up as good grooming. Also quietly Hal's: the swollen, blue-tinged left ankle (p. 104) he keeps flexing — p. 16 mentioned a "bad ankle."

2. The genetics paragraph does a death in a relative clause (pp. 100–101). The family sorted by phenotype: Orin got the Moms's Anglo-Nordic side and the cheerleader flexibility; Hal got his father's Pima-dark sleekness (and worries secretly he looks half-feminine); "Mario doesn't seem to resemble much of anyone they know." And in the middle, the quietest sentence in the scene: "Himself had looked ethnic, but he isn't extant" — the father's death handled as a usage joke about the verb to be.

3. Let the digressions be the event. The plot content here is zero; the riches are the set pieces the banter keeps sprouting: fatigue outrunning the dictionary ("We need an inflation-generative grammar"), the Pledge-sunscreen legend, and Schacht's feet under the stall door swelling into a millennial meditation — Luther's shoes "awaiting epiphany," centurions' sandals, Popes' slippers. Then the closing key: "they've all been just here before, just like this, and will be again tomorrow... a grief felt in the bones." Locker-room time is the scene's real subject.

Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.