Page 916
One paragraph, one point of view you haven't had in a while: Michael Pemulis himself, third person, rounding the curve of Subdormitory B's hallway — twitchy-eyed, checking both ways behind him — with a stick, a little stool, and a penlight, bound for his drop-ceiling stash. That's the entire scene; give its single image your full attention before the book jumps elsewhere.
Terms, in order of appearance
- entrepôt (p. 916) — French: a depot or warehouse; Pemulis's "time-tested" ceiling cache above Subdorm B, established on p. 216.
- frustum (p. 916) — real geometry: a cone or pyramid with the top sliced off; the shape of his dedicated stool.
After you read: three things
1. What's missing. At least eight drop-ceiling panels have "somehow fallen out of their aluminum struts," the relevant panel included — and "No old sneaker is in evidence." The old sneaker, per p. 216, is where the pharmacopoeia lives, deep in the toe — which since pp. 211–219 has included the DMZ. The stash is gone.
2. Who took it, the paragraph refuses to say. No agency, no note, no sign beyond broken panels — and nothing earlier in the book settles it either. Sit with the not-knowing; the scene is built to leave the question standing.
3. Read the ritual against the last scene. The rehearsed furtiveness and the dedicated tools — stick, stool, "incredibly potent" penlight in the teeth — are an addict's stash-check ritual in one sentence, arriving at the stash-check nightmare. And the twitchy eye is the same one that begged Hal, pages ago, for someplace discreet to "really interface" (pp. 906–909); whether this discovery is what he needed to talk about or its confirmation, the two scenes share a nervous system.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.