the opaque channel and the static it triggers
Hal never liked talking on the phone after he'd gotten high in secret down in the Pump Room. Even if there was water or liquid handy to keep the cotton at bay. He didn't know why this was so. It just made him uneasy.
Context
The brothers' phone call runs on performance from both ends, Hal lying recreationally, and the one moment he glimpses that the channel might be symmetric, that Orin could be doing to him exactly what he does to Orin, it does not open the line but seals it: the thought spirals into involuted marijuana-thinking that turns him inward onto his own intelligence and away from the call entirely. Even the medium leaves him uneasy for reasons he can't locate, the telephone after a secret high a source of static he cannot name.