The Ennet House living room: Day and Gately — "Watching Burt F. Smith smoke a…"
Watching Burt F. Smith smoke a Benson & Hedges by holding it between his stumps with his elbows out like a guy with pruning shears is an adventure in fucking pathos as far as Gately’s concerned. And Geoffrey Day cracks wise about There But for Grace. And forget about what it’s like trying to watch Burt F. Smith try and light a match.
Context
Gately's morning scan of the House: the apparatus first (Velcro bands, the sawing, the pruning-shears cigarette grip), then the history that produced it — the Xmas Eve mugging that was, per the adopted loop-closure, C and yrstruly's work back in scene 040, victim and perpetrators now threaded through the same recovery world. And the full spectrum of the able gaze in three sentences: Gately's helpless pathos, Day's ironic one-liner, the unwatchable match left to the imagination.