IJ study archive

The White Flag AA meeting (p. 365)

quote

It is the first time he realizes that Joelle’s voice—crisp and rich and oddly empty, her accent just barely Southern and with a strange and it turns out Kentuckian lapse in the pronunciation of all apicals except s—is familiar in a faraway way that both makes it familiar and yet lets Gately be sure he’s never once met her before, Out There.

Context

The narration introduces Joelle's voice in working phonetics — "apicals" is a linguist's term, conspicuously not Gately's — right at the moment the voice is about to reveal a grammarian's mind behind the veil. It's also the Madame Psychosis recognition Gately keeps missing: the voice is characterized with radio-professional precision because it is, unbeknownst to him, a radio professional's.

In anthology