Orin and Hal on the phone (p. 1009)
'He never even got his stick up. Right in the left socket. It made a sound like a champagne cork. […] He was walking around in diminishing circles like he'd been hit with a mallet.'
Context
The same injury retold, now with the exact recurring figure: "diminishing circles" — the decaying orbit as concussion image, same phrase as Millicent Kent's path at p. 124.