Hal, Mario, Coyle; the Weston memories (pp. 957–958)
I wondered about some hazy connection between this passion for hiddenness and the fact that Himself had made so many films titled Cage, and that the amateur player he became so attached to was the veiled girl, Orin’s love.
Context
Trying to picture his mother's sexuality, Hal produces not one lover but a roster — Wayne, Bain, grammatical colleagues, fight-choreographers, the Islamic M.D. Himself "found so especially torturing" — and lands on the system's signature: after each encounter comes "her need to be sure the encounter was hidden." From that he reaches toward the frame, wondering at a "passion for hiddenness" that links Avril's secrecy, Himself's obsessive Cage films, and his attachment to the veiled Joelle. The insight is that concealment is the family's native medium, shared across the marriage — the mother who must hide her affairs and the father who titles film after film Cage and falls for a girl behind a veil. And it comes wrapped in the annular Tavis: Hal imagines sex between Avril and C.T. as the uncle "talking around and around whatever was taking place," the usurper circling even in bed.