Marathe in the Ennet House waiting room
Rémy Marathe sat veiled and blanket-lapped in the much crowded living room evening of this Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, the last demi-maison on his portion of the list for this day. […] A damaged woman, also in a fauteuil de rollent like Marathe, slumped inutile next to the cartridge’s viewer, while a male person of advanced pallor mimed the kicks and thrusts of martial arts at her motionless head, trying to force the woman to twitch or cry out. Also a man without hands and feet trying to negotiate the stairway.
Context
The theme's densest single room: Marathe, casing Ennet House for the A.F.R., is himself veiled and wheelchaired, and the catalogue he takes in — the inutile woman in her own fauteuil (Mrs. Lopate), the man without hands and feet on the stairway (Burt F. Smith) — is the halfway house rendered as a ward of damaged bodies where the assassin's disguise is just one more body among them. The pale man miming kicks at the paralyzed woman's head is the room's cruelty-to-bodies note, played as furniture.