Gately staff snippets: corn-plain speech

Against Day's cleverness, Gately runs entirely on corn-plain speech — "okey-doke," "it ain't ratting," "I appreciate," "try and relax a little, kid," and to the woman fed a predatory sponsor's line, "I'd cross a broad street to avoid an AA like this guy." That flat single-entendre register is literally the House's operating system: recovery is conducted in the plainest possible language, and its plainness is not a deficit of sophistication but the working sincerity Day's paradoxes can only sabotage. Gately's un-clever speech is load-bearing — the sincerity that runs the House while the wit tries to break it.