supper at the E.T.A. dining hall (pp. 633–634)
Orin kept a record of Subjects that was sort of a cross between a chart and a journal. He used to come home and leave it out just pleading to be read.
Context
One image for what it's like to want to be seen inside a family that doesn't read each other. Orin, in his conquest phase, kept a chart-slash-journal of his Subjects and "used to come home and leave it out just pleading to be read" — the transgression laid out in the open as a bid for someone, anyone in the house, to notice him, react, engage. In a family where Hal's mind goes blank at the thought of his relatives and Avril's care arrives as strenuous non-intrusion, leaving the evidence out is Orin's version of a cry across the void, and the pleading is the tell. The chart wants an audit the family will never perform; the exhibitionism is really a request for the attention the Black Hole absorbs but doesn't return.