the sober self no one at the table can read
No one except Pemulis and Axford know it’s a whole new and chemical-free Hal who should by all rights have lost to a 16-year-old out there in public
Context
Hal sits at the roaring best table walled in behind an "intricate fortification-structure of his food," newly and miserably substance-free, and the whole transformation is invisible: a completely different person occupies his chair and only two people in the building can see it. His misery has no outward signal anyone can read; the change that is remaking him registers on no channel the table can receive, so he grieves and white-knuckles in plain sight, unread. It is the admissions-interview gap rehearsed in reverse — not garbled output but a self so sealed that even a total inner upheaval transmits nothing at all.