the ironist's first sincere prayer
His prayer not to be recognized by a regressive Kevin Bain is the first really desperate and sincere prayer Hal can remember offering since he’d stopped wearing pajamas with feet in them.
Context
Irony cracking under the withdrawal's pressure: the boy who narrates his own life at a curated distance finds himself, wretched and cornered, offering his first genuine prayer in years — comically, to not be seen. The faculty he'll need if he ever works a program, the sincere unironic plea, surfaces here by accident, aimed at concealment; the machinery of surrender turning over once, in the wrong direction.