Pages 700–701

E.T.A., Ennet House, and the A.F.R., cross-cut · first-time reader guide · all scenes

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

Back at E.T.A. for a page and a half: five short shots separated by section breaks, one per person, all happening at the same moment on the same November evening — Jim Troeltsch in his room, Michael Pemulis in a Subdorm B hallway, Lyle in the unlit weight room, Schtitt and Mario on the motorcycle, Avril at a phone console. Nobody is new; nothing is explained. A dating anchor if you want one: Schtitt's confection run is the errand deLint mentioned back at p. 686, which puts this montage on the same evening Hal is down in the viewing room with his father's films.

Terms, in order of appearance

Seldane (p. 700) — real 1990s prescription antihistamine; standard equipment for Troeltsch, the academy's dedicated rhinovirus sufferer since pp. 60–61.
Lyle (p. 700) — the guru who lives in the weight room and subsists on athletes' sweat, first met around pp. 127–128.
Evangeline's Low-Temperature Confections (p. 700) — the Newton Center ice-cream destination; Schtitt's motorcycle-and-sidecar sweet-tooth runs with Mario are established habit.
Heartbreak Hill (pp. 700–701) — real Newton hill on Commonwealth Ave., famous from the Boston Marathon's course; here taken downhill at speed.
Blasted Expanse Blvd., East Tucson AZ (p. 701) — the "journalistic business address" Avril gets from directory assistance; Tucson is the desert-meeting city of pp. 87–93.

After you read: three things

1. The form is the content: five private acts, zero explanation. Troeltsch wet-combs his hair toupee-smooth to "call the action" of a wrestling cartridge to an empty room — "His roommates have long since seen what was coming, and screwed" (p. 700). Pemulis, on tiptoe, silently shifts a drop-ceiling panel from square to diamond on its strut. The montage's game is that each person, unobserved, is exactly themselves; it hands you the behavior and withholds the caption. Let the shots stay strange.

2. The narrator flatly states that Lyle floats. "Lyle hovers cross-legged just a couple mm. above the top of the towel dispenser... eyes rolled up white" (p. 700). One sentence, no witness, no character's fancy to blame it on — the book's own voice putting small-scale levitation on the record as fact, in the middle of an otherwise mundane montage. Notice how little fuss it makes.

3. Avril is dialing Tucson, and it sounds like checking-up. Three or four cigarettes going at once, stabbing the keys with a felt pen (p. 701): agitation rendered in props. The scene never says whom she's calling — but the one journalist in E.T.A.'s orbit right now is Moment's Helen Steeply, and a call to a journalistic business address sounds a lot like someone verifying credentials. That's noticing, not narration; the page leaves it to you.

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