Gately's dreams: Mrs. Waite, and Death — "It looks like somebody, Joelle’s face…"
It looks like somebody, Joelle’s face, but Gately can’t for the life of him place who, and it’s not just the distraction of the inhumanly gorgeous naked bod below, because the dream is not like a sex-dream.
Context
Inside the Death-dream, the recall-block idiom's fourth firing: a face that is almost placeable, the block itself signifying — the maternal/Death composite his memory can't or won't resolve. Recognition failure as the dream's engine.