IJ study archive

Fackelmann's scam; the wraith returns — "Plus this dreadful time of weak…"

quote

Plus this dreadful time of weak gray late-day light is the time, was the time when the sad and nerdily dressed wraith appeared yesterday. Assuming that was yesterday. Assuming it was a real wraith. […] Then bubbling up out of nowhere again he suddenly confronts deep-focus memories of Gene Fackelmann’s final demise and Gately and Pamela Hoffman-Jeep’s involvement in Fackelmann’s demise.

Context

Two memory-events in one paragraph, opposite in kind: first the recent past wobbles — fever unfixing both the date and the reality-status of what he remembers — then the deep past arrives unbidden, "bubbling up out of nowhere," the book's signature verb-family for sobriety's involuntary return. He'll spend the rest of the scene steering what he didn't summon.

In anthology