Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (p. 829)
In the dream it’s the figure of a very tall sunken-chested man in black-frame glasses and a sweatshirt with old stained chinos, leaning back sort of casually or else morosely slumped, resting its tailbone against the window sill’s ventilator’s whispering grille, with its long arms hanging at its sides and its ankles casually crossed so that Gately can even see the detail that the ghostly chinos aren’t long enough for its height, they’re the kind kids used to call ‘Highwaters’ in Gately’s childhood […] The ghostly figure shrugged its thin shoulders and said But no, it was nothing of the sort, it was just a plain old wraith, one without any sort of grudge or agenda, just a generic garden-variety wraith. Gately sarcastically in the dream thought that Oh well then if it was just a garden-variety wraith, is all, geez what a fucking relief.
Context
The book's ghost finally stands still long enough to be seen, and names its own genre: JOI — never identified by name in the scene — as a tall, sunken-chested, Highwater-chinoed "generic garden-variety wraith." Gately first guesses a bullied violin-kid come for payback; the deadpan self-introduction and Gately's sarcasm set the whole visitation's tone. Every moving bed and bent ball since p. 394 gets its face here.