Orin's survey from the wheelchair man
The man in the hall at the door was handicapped, challenged, in a wheelchair, looking up at him from well below peephole-range, bushy-haired and mostly nose and looking up into the swell of Orin’s pectorals, making no attempt to see around him into the room. One of the disabled. Orin looked down and felt both let down and almost touched. […] No shins or extremities, however withery, extended below the wheelchair’s blanket’s hem. The guy was like totally legless. Orin’s rising heart went out.
Context
7 November: the knock on Orin's hotel-room door mid-tryst, and Fortier himself below the peephole with a clipboard and a fake survey. The stacked euphemisms — handicapped, challenged, "One of the disabled" — are Orin's free-indirect gaze, and his instant melt ("Orin's rising heart went out") is the exact U.S. solicitude the A.F.R. has decided to weaponize. The trap works because pity can't imagine its object as a threat. ("[W]ithery" sic.)