Pages 719–721

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.

Same Saturday night, same block of Prospect Street, third camera: the purse-snatch you watched from inside Kate Gompert's concussion at pp. 714–716 now runs from inside the snatcher. Poor Tony Krause sprints north with both purses tucked football-style, and Ruth van Cleve — whom he perceives only as "the Creature," "the Thing" — stays millimeters off his collar for block after block. He is post-seizure, in Withdrawal, and hasn't eaten in days; the destination he's steering for is the alley behind Antitoi Entertainment. Everything you need to feel about that destination, you already know.

Terms, in order of appearance

veronica (p. 719) — bullfighting: the cape pass where the matador pivots gracefully in place; here performed by a man in a car coat dodging the chase.
Donegal cap (p. 719) — real Irish tweed cap; the first piece of the ensemble to go, "not mourned."
Harvard Square crews (p. 720) — Poor Tony's old street world (the pp. 128–135 milieu); source of the counter-shouting "ancient trade-device."
zuckungzuckungzuckung (p. 721) — German Zuckung: twitch, spasm; his heartbeat transcribed.
Aigners (p. 721) — Etienne Aigner, real shoe brand; the pursuing shoes lack the fine strappy uppers that are shredding his feet.
ON PARLE LE PORTUGAIS ICI (p. 721) — French for "Portuguese spoken here": a Little Lisbon storefront advertising one language in a second on behalf of a third.
chignon (p. 721) — a knot of hair worn at the nape; the wig he's holding on with one hand.

After you read: three things

1. Expertise is the scene's pathos. It opens on a trade secret — "The secret to sprinting in high heels... was to run on one's toes" — and then spends three pages watching the tradecraft fail piece by piece: the flummoxing counter-shout of "Help!", the sacrificed boa (mourned mid-stride), the fruit-display feint that the Creature takes "discouragingly deft[ly]." He "had not banked on victim-pursuit" (p. 719). The professional knowledge keeps arriving exactly one step behind the body's collapse.

2. His father keeps breaking in. Twice, unannounced, mid-stride: a father who "struck himself about the head and shoulders as he grieved for his symbolically dead son" (pp. 719–720), and the Watertown obstetrician home from a day of cesareans, scratching where the mask's strings dug in (p. 721). The chase never pauses for them; grief just fires alongside adrenaline. The scene offers no comment — the intrusions are the inner story.

3. You know what's behind the "hopefully unlocked" door. He's running for "basic human kindly refuge" at the Antitois' back exit — and the paragraph directly before this scene (p. 719) told you who is in that shop now, turning all the stones; you've known since pp. 480–489. Even the street seems in on it: he hurdles "a queerly placed cardboard display for something wheelchaired" (p. 721). And when he silently begs for help, the alley answers through a derelict's lifted head: "Go."

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