the glass-walled basement dream: AA's Sergeant at Arms is Out There — "Boston AA’s Sergeant at Arms stood…"
Boston AA’s Sergeant at Arms stood outside the orderly meeting halls, in that much-invoked Out There where exciting clubs full of good cheer throbbed gaily below lit signs with neon bottles endlessly pouring. AA’s patient enforcer was always and everywhere Out There
Context
The book's most compact image of the Disease's patience, and the answer to Gately's long puzzlement about where AA's discipline comes from. The meetings need no internal enforcer because the enforcement waits Out There: a suave, smily-faced figure trolling a shepherd's crook, hooking anyone who stands up from the kneeling assembly and stops. The genius of the image is the mask — the Disease wears the corporate "have a nice day" smile precisely because it means to catch and keep, "an angler who you know isn’t going to throw back anything he catches." Sobriety's real sergeant-at-arms is death-and-relapse itself, casually checking its cuticles in every pharmacy and after-hours club, promising just one more nice day.