the straight-line easement and "So it would seem" — "Tiny Ewell had said, ‘So it…"

The whole intake trajectory drawn as geography — bottom to detox to halfway house along one insurance-funded cab route — and then, at the cabbie's "sick or something?", the first hairline crack in the denial the House will spend chapters splitting open. "So it would seem" is a man conceding, barely, that the thing might be true of him, the smallest possible first step.