Hal supine, Pemulis wants to interface (p. 910)
The funeral had been held on 5 or 6 April in St. Adalbert, a small town built around spud-storage facilities fewer than five clicks west of the Great Concavity. […] What happened at the funeral service itself was simply that a circling gull scored a direct white hit on the shoulder of C.T.’s blue blazer, and that when he opened his mouth in shock at the direct hit, a large blue-bodied fly flew right into his mouth and was hard to extract. Several persons laughed. It was no huge or dramatic thing. The Moms probably laughed hardest of anyone.
Context
Hal's one direct memory of his father's funeral: the book's central suicide gets its memorial rendered as deadpan slapstick — gull, fly, laughter — with the grief nowhere on the page. The affectless narration is the Incandenza grief-style itself (Avril laughing hardest), and the void where mourning should be is what Hal has been circling flat on this floor.