Matty Pemulis's birthday soup
Poor Tony Krause looked godawful: sucked-out, hollow-eyed, past ill, grave-ready, his face’s skin the greenish white of extreme-depth marine life, looking less alive than undead, identifiable as poor old Poor Tony only by the boa and red leather coat and the certain way he held his hand to his throat’s hollow as he walked […] Krause never so much walking as making an infinite series of grand entrances into pocket after pocket of space, a queenly hauteur now both sickening and awesome given Krause’s spectral mien, passing across the Grille’s window
Context
Matty Pemulis, eating soup alone at the Man o' War Grille on his twenty-third birthday, watches Poor Tony Krause pass the front window a few seconds behind two underweight girls (Kate Gompert and Ruth van Cleve, unnamed). "Grave-ready," "less alive than undead," "spectral mien": the narration turns PT into a walking revenant here, one window-panel before Kate perceives him as "the apparition" outright.