Pages 747–751
Directly continuing pp. 729–736: Marathe rolls into the Ennet House Office for his intake interview — and discovers that the limping, listing woman he'd filed as a desperate addict is the authority herself. You've known her since pp. 176–181: Pat Montesian, claw hand, uneven legs, two dogs on the office floor. The scene is an interview conducted in two languages of damage at once — Pat running an honest first-step intake, "Henri" the Swiss addict running a legend — with Marathe's professional attention working every second underneath the talk.
Terms, in order of appearance
- subaltern (p. 747) — a subordinate; what the clipboard woman turns out to be.
- O.I.N.S. (p. 748) — endnote 311: the trilateral North American immigration bureaucracy; Marathe's papers were arranged "in the long past" by the late M. DuPlessis (pp. 55–60).
- Chit Chat Farms (p. 749) — real, famous Pennsylvania rehab; the A.F.R.'s Montreal liaison will fax the records.
- triangle within a circle (p. 749) — the real AA recovery symbol, decorating the office door Marathe is appraising for locks.
- 10.525 GHz (p. 749) — the actual frequency of standard microwave motion alarms; he checks for the nozzle and finds none.
- "from somewhere blue" (p. 750) — Steeply's "out of the blue," surviving translation imperfectly.
- Y.E.T. (p. 750) — endnote 312: "You're Eligible Too," Boston AA's denial-buster — worth the flip.
- Caisse de Dépôt et Placement (p. 751) — real Québec pension institution; endnote 313, on whose name Marathe signs and why, is quietly load-bearing — flip.
After you read: three things
1. The House scrambles a professional's instruments. "Marathe very seldom misjudged persons or their roles" (p. 747) — and just did. Pat's warmth is discipline, not softness: the phone call refusing a relapse ("Promises don't matter... just enabling her") while she stops a sob with the back of her wrist; "I declared up and down I was too disabled to kneel and pray" (p. 749); and, receiving his fabricated overdose-and-gangrene story: "This is your story. This is your first step" (p. 751). She also does what Fortier said at p. 723 America cannot do — takes the veil and the chair without one flicker of solicitude.
2. The quietest detonation in this stretch of the book happens inside a charity cabinet. While casing the office mid-recitation (cheap lock, no alarm nozzle, bay windows "the optimal office's entry if required"), Marathe sees, among donated tennis-drill cartridges, "two cases of plain brown plastic, blank, except... maybe for tiny round faces of embossed smiles" (pp. 749–750). You watched what such a cartridge did at pp. 724–725 — though Marathe himself notes they could be the blank F.L.Q. jokes of p. 722. Either way: possibly the deadliest object in North America, filed above a teleputer in a halfway house.
3. Every fact he gathers has two possible buyers. Pat mentions "a U.H.I.D. member in early residency right now" (p. 750) — the performer both his masters are hunting, located without being seen; you can hear the click. Marathe weighs it in the open: "the cartridges to Fortier and the veiled girl to Steeply, or oppositely" (p. 751). And as he signs a dead pension administrator's name, Pat asks the intake question — "what lengths he believed he was willing to go to" — in a book where his cell measures willingness in self-sawed digits (p. 727).
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.