Gately's residency: 'But he did'
Don Gately had cried in front of nonrelatives for the first time in his life. He now denies that he actually did cry, saying something about candle-fumes in his eye. But he did.
Context
The abstract cake-of-analogy becomes a literal frosted cake with one candle on Gately's first sober anniversary, and the un-hip, corny, Hallmark gesture breaks him open — he cries for the first time in his adult life. The register-drama is in the last three words. Gately does exactly what irony always does with an exposed sincerity: he retroactively deflects it, blames "candle-fumes." And the narration, in the flattest possible single-entendre rebuttal, refuses the deflection: "But he did." Three words of plain assertion overrule the whole machinery of ironic self-protection. The book itself takes sincerity's side against its own character's embarrassment — the corniest gesture produced the realest feeling, and no amount of candle-fume disavowal is allowed to unmake it.