the Kodiak and the wastecan
chewing Kodiak and spitting directly into an unlined wastebasket, his expression neutral, watching some cartridges of his late father’s entertainments. Anyone else looking at him in there tonight would call Hal depressed.
Context
The secret cold-quit showing through the surrogate: Hal chews Kodiak and spits into the wastecan, a substitute oral compulsion slotted where the pump-room pot used to be, and he keeps the can close because he might throw up — a nausea he pointedly attributes to anything but the withdrawal it plainly is. "Anyone else looking at him would call Hal depressed"; the disavowal ("has nothing to do with") is the tell, the quitter's insistence that the body's rebellion is unrelated to the thing he's quitting. The disease and the denial run in him exactly as they ran in the father onscreen.