The White Flag AA meeting — "It had come clear to Gately…"
It had come clear to Gately that Boston AA had the planet’s most remorselessly hard-ass and efficient sergeant at arms. Gately lay there, overhanging all four sides of his bunk, his broad square forehead beaded with revelation: Boston AA’s Sergeant at Arms stood outside the orderly meeting halls, in that much-invoked Out There where exciting clubs full of good cheer throbbed gaily below lit signs with neon bottles endlessly pouring. AA’s patient enforcer was always and everywhere Out There […] In the home of a snot-strangled Canadian VIP and the office of an implacable Revere A.D.A. whose wife has opted for dentures at thirty-five. AA’s disciplinarian looked damn good and smelled even better and dressed to impress and his blank black-on-yellow smile never faltered as he sincerely urged you to have a nice day. Just one more last nice day. Just one.
Context
The dream decoded on waking — Gately still in his bunk, "forehead beaded with revelation," unpacking the epiphany the glass-basement dream carried: the enforcer nobody could point to inside the meetings stands outside the glass, everywhere Out There. The Out There catalogue quietly routes through Gately's own unprosecuted catastrophes (the "snot-strangled Canadian VIP" is DuPlessis; the Revere A.D.A. is the toothbrush prank) — his dream's angler already knows his address. The lowercase "sergeant at arms" capitalizing into "Sergeant at Arms" mid-passage is exact, the title crystallizing as the revelation lands.