the expulsion hearing: brass-mask-faced
Pemulis got very cool and brass-mask-faced. He was breathing very clearly through his nose, and the office air seemed mentholated. Everything got very cool and formal inside and glycerine-clear.
Context
The affect-mask returns on the same face Hal admired in 155, now under maximum pressure. Facing expulsion, Pemulis goes "brass-mask-faced" — the manufactured-composure he wears the way Gately wears his fight-calm, an engineered sincerity of unbothered ease. The mask holds through the whole humiliation, and its final proof is the close: breathing "with terrible ease," expelled and out-maneuvered, "Pemulis… found their good humor almost infectious." The brass mask is affect deployed instrumentally against his own panic — the ironist's last competence, keeping the surface glycerine-clear while the "Shit Fairy" riffles overhead. It's the exact image the 155 dialogue named as almost-frightening: performed equanimity so total it's unreadable, here worn by the man being destroyed, refusing to give the room the one true thing (his fear) it wants to see.