Pages 223–227
The walk resumes — same 7 November, same veiled woman, the chronology list having interrupted her mid-stride. Joelle continues down Boylston Street along the Common, past a war memorial draped overnight by Québécois militants for Interdependence Eve, and a gauntlet of very young dealers outside the toy store; a flashback supplies her morning. The suicide plan from pp. 219–223 is still in force; this stretch is where the book quietly hands you most of what it's so far willing to say about who she is.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Lemon Pledge husks (p. 223) — molted casts of the p. 174 sunscreen practice: legs, arms, five-holed masks; Orin's childhood collection.
- Colonel Shaw and the MA 54th (p. 223) — real: the Boston Common memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Civil War's most famous Black regiment.
- fleur-de-lis (p. 223) — Québec's real flag, white irises on blue; this one's stems are altered to red blades.
- F.A.O. Schwartz (p. 224) — the real luxury toy store (the book's spelling); its sidewalk hosts the dealers.
- tumbrel or hack (p. 225) — real words: the cart that hauled the condemned to the guillotine; a hired cab.
- Lady Delphina (p. 225) — Joelle's dealer; the name surfaced once before, in the p. 131 crew's deliberations.
- Lend-Lease (p. 226) — real: the WWII program of U.S. aid to Britain, dating the founding anecdote.
- scopophobic (p. 226) — real term: morbid fear of being looked at.
- the Churchill quip (p. 226) — a real anecdote ("…but I shall be sober in the morning"), traditionally told of an M.P.; here re-staged as a founding wound.
After you read: three things
1. The history arrives in subordinate clauses (pp. 223–225). Orin is "dodger of flung acid extraordinaire"; then: "after the acid, after first Orin left and then Jim came and made her sit through that filmed apology-scene and then vanished and then came back but only to… leave," four years seven months six days ago. And: "Jim at the end had filmed her at prodigious and multi-lensed length, and refused to share what he'd made of it, and died w/o a note." Her private name for him: "Infinite Jim." The narration also confirms the pp. 219–223 suspicion in passing — "Joelle van Dyne, a.k.a. Madame P." Read this stretch twice; it's told as if you already knew it.
2. The anti-ad (p. 224). A 2-D wheelchaired figure, face reddened "with some terrible joy," eyes cast up, an unlabelled black cartridge protruding from his palm — "It's some kind of anti-ad. To direct attention at what is not said." You have the parts to assemble: unlabelled cartridges (p. 36), faces locked in ecstasy before a screen (pp. 78–79), wheelchairs (pp. 87 on). Joelle pulls the cartridge, looks at it, and shoves it home with a click. Nobody else on the sidewalk even glances.
3. The card (pp. 225–227). On the morning platform, an older gentleman asks about the veil — in-ter-es-ted, four syllables — and "Joelle had engaged with him completely, which was extremely rare." What she shows him: the laminated U.H.I.D. membership card, whose Churchill founding-legend turns on the retort that "she, dear lady, would tomorrow still be hideously and improbably deformed," in type so tiny the card looks "both blank and defaced." The circular she read on-air (pp. 187–192) now has an origin story — and a member.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.