Marathe at Ennet House: the ironic divan

Reflex-irony as the House's default social armor, aimed unknowing at a disguised assassin's overcooked earnestness. Day — "the plump one who had been ironic toward Marathe" — greets Marathe's desperately earnest cover-lines ("Good night, I am addicted and deformed, seeking residential treatment for addiction, desperately") with a sarcastic "How extraordinarily nice for you," then holds court on the ironic divan with pedantic word-games (jot-and-tittling over "portable," correcting "potable"). The resident-ironist's needling runs on pure register-reflex, and the scene's joke is that it's pointed at a man whose performed sincerity is a fiction covering a machine pistol — irony fired at an earnestness that is, this once, actually a lie. (Marathe's disguise/op is surveillance-disguise's; the register is Day's irony vs. the overcooked earnest lines.)