Orin at B.U.; punting; Joelle (pp. 298–299)
The resemblance to the Moms’s housekeeping he finds a bit creepy. Except Joelle doesn’t mind a mess or give anybody the creeps worrying about hiding that she minds it so nobody’s feelings will be hurt.
Context
The book's first quiet sketch of Joelle as the Incandenza system's control-group. Orin notices that his girlfriend keeps the apartment as sterile as his mother keeps HmH — same fiend-level order, the mess just vanishing overnight "like elves" — and it creeps him out until he can locate the difference. Avril's cleanliness comes wrapped in anxious concealment, the effortful hiding of how much the mess bothers her "so nobody's feelings will be hurt"; Joelle's just happens, without the performance of not-minding. It's the same surface with the politeness-roulette engine removed, and the fact that Orin can only define his mother's pathology by finding a woman who mirrors it minus the machinery is the mirror-family method in embryo.