Page 958
Two short paragraphs, one page — the book's shortest kind of scene. Joelle, released from the interview you've just read, catches one of the last T trains before the storm closes the line and walks from Comm. Ave. down to Enfield Marine through the blizzard, in clogs and skirt. Third person, close to her; nobody else on the page until its final image. Nothing tricky in the register — the whole scene is one held breath between the interrogation room and the House, and it rewards being read slowly exactly once.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Comm. Ave. (p. 958) — real: Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.
- the Shed (p. 958) — outbuilding on the Enfield Marine grounds; on the map since the shootout night (pp. 601–19).
- Middlesex County (p. 958) — real Massachusetts county; the sheriff's jurisdiction whose car this is.
After you read: three things
1. "She went home. She went to the House." She has already figured out that "they'd let her loose just to see where she'd go" — and goes anyway. Measure those two short sentences against where "home" used to point: the Brighton apartment, and the bathroom at Molly Notkin's party where she meant to die (pp. 227–40). The book doesn't underline the distance; the word "home" does all the work.
2. Three kinds of being-watched, in one page. Released as bait; then the snowmelt soaks the veil until it adheres — "a linen-pale version of what she really looked like," the hiding apparatus turned into a cast of exactly what it hides, with "no one about in the snow" to see; then, past the Shed, a car with its lights going, idling at the foot of the ramp. The paragraph is built so each watcher replaces the last.
3. Her plan takes the warning seriously — and so can you. Quarantine with Clenette and Yolanda (the two protected witnesses from that same shootout night, pp. 601–19), "not let in no law," and — the strange item — tell Pat about the wheelchairs and "try to convince her to dismantle the ramp." You've sat with a wheelchaired man in Ennet House's own waiting room (pp. 729–36) and read the assassins' 19-November plans (pp. 845–46); Joelle's oddest-sounding request is the best-informed thing on the page.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.