Matty Pemulis at the Man o' War Grille
His father outside the little room Matt and Micky slept in, late at night, the cat’s-eye sliver of lit hallway through the crack in the door Da’d opened, the door on well-oiled hinges opening with the implacable slowness of a rising moon, Da’s shadow lengthening across the floor and then the man his very self weaving in behind it, crossing the moonlit floor in darned socks
Context
The catalogued Light & halation sighting (both catalogues): the abuse memory arrives as a worked light-composition — the "cat's-eye sliver" of lit hallway through the cracked door, the door's swing timed to "the implacable slowness of a rising moon," the Da entering behind his own lengthening shadow across a "moonlit floor." There's no lens or screen anywhere in the scene; the optics is entirely this geometry of light and shadow, which is presumably why both catalogues file it under H. The figure recurs at the memory's turn — "the event was laid out before the first slim line of doorlight broadened" (pp. 684-685) — the light-sliver as the fixed first frame of something already determined. "Matt and Micky" quoted as written (see Flags). The scene's two film similes are seen-and-left below.