Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "Gately lets himself wonder what it…"
Gately lets himself wonder what it would be like, able to quantum off anyplace instantly and stand on ceilings and probably burgle like no burglar’d ever dreamed of, but not able to really affect anything or interface with anybody, having nobody know you’re there, having people’s normal rushed daily lives look like the movements of planets and suns, having to sit patiently very still in one place for a long time even to have some poor addled son of a bitch even be willing to entertain your maybe being there. It’d be real free-seeming, but incredibly lonely, he imagines. Gately knows a thing or two about loneliness, he feels. Does wraith mean like a ghost, as in dead? Is this a message from a Higher Power about sobriety and death?
Context
Gately imagines wraith-existence from the inside — cased, characteristically, as the ultimate burglary rig — and lands on the theme's emotional thesis: being dead is the book's terminal case of not being able to interface, "free-seeming, but incredibly lonely." His artless "Does wraith mean like a ghost, as in dead?" is the only time anyone in the scene asks the genre question straight.