Pages 593–596

Randy Lenz, out at night · first-time reader guide · all scenes

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

Inside Ennet House, same 11 November evening running toward 11 p.m. — this is the interior of the building Mario has just been circling on pp. 589–593. Don Gately works through a live-in Staffer's shift, and the prose takes the shape of the job: an iterative catalog of "Gately has to..." duties, meds locker to women's floor to basement pay phone, with the residents (Kate Gompert, Doony Glynn, Wade McDade, a brand-new intake named Ruth van Cleve) surfacing as items on the rounds. Twice the catalog cracks open into something else; both moments are flagged below.

Terms, in order of appearance

picayune (p. 593) — real word: trifling, small-time; the scene's organizing adjective, paired throughout with "unpleasant."
Sylvia Plate (p. 593) — Sylvia Plath, the real poet; the spelling is Gately's. What Kate has been reading for three days.
diverticulitis (p. 593) — real intestinal inflammation; Glynn's recurrent attack.
endnote 245 (p. 594) — Kate's "possible sideways comment," verbatim; flip for it, it's three lines.
Suicide Contract (p. 594) — real clinical device: a resident's written agreement about self-harm and telling Staff first.
5-East (p. 594) — the psychiatric unit at St. Elizabeth's; its number lives on a red card in Pat's Rolodex.
Gratitude List (p. 596) — standard recovery exercise; McDade's is in progress.
eat cheese (p. 596) — House slang: inform on another resident.

After you read: three things

1. You're inside the window now. Mario's walk ended looking in at "a wide square-headed boy" writing at the black desk; these pages are that boy's shift from his side of the glass. The neighborhood clock is running in one piece tonight: Lenz's knife a few blocks off (pp. 586–88), Mario on the lawn, Gately at the Log — and the made-up woman who clicked up the ramp past Mario fits neatly with the brand-new intake being oriented here (p. 595).

2. The meatloaf has a "secret admirer." Gately checks the fridge and finds "another big rectangle cut out of the leftovers" (pp. 595–96) and reads it as flattery. You've now twice watched what that meatloaf is actually for (pp. 543–44, 586–87). Then read the closing rumor list slowly — a knife, a beeper, code on the pay phone (p. 596): you can put a name to more than one item that Gately files under picayune.

3. Don't skim the Gompert paragraph. Kate has been in bed three days with "Sylvia Plate," and her sideways comment (endnote 245 has the exact words) trips the House's whole ideation machinery — Suicide Contract, House Manager, the red card (p. 594). You've known since pp. 68–78 precisely how she talks about this. The procedures exist, the scene notes, because of a heating pipe in the basement.

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