Orin's first call
Mario didn’t drill and couldn’t play, and needed all the sleep he could get. […] Mario thrashed and sat up in bed, a small hunched shape with a big head against the gray light of the window.
Context
Mario's first appearance in the novel, pre-dawn, seconds before Orin's "My head is filled with things to say" call: the book introduces him entirely through his body — what it can't do, and its silhouette — a full 285 pages before scene 071 explains any of it. A page later the same scene adds that it took four pillows to support the oversized skull.