The Dilaudid binge (Memory and Forgetting)
The phrase ‘More tattoos than teeth’ also kept going through Gately’s head as it bobbed (the head), even though he had no idea where the phrase came from or who it was supposed to refer to. He hadn’t been to Billerica Minimum yet; he was on bail that Whitey Sorkin had bonded.
Context
A stowaway from the wrong era: a phrase loops through binge-Gately's head that he has no source for yet. The remembered self is carrying a memory it cannot have, which means the YDAU rememberer is leaking into his own flashback — the retrospect is being assembled in the remembering head, not replayed from a clean tape. Contaminated memory caught in the act, one page before the bus-knot makes it total.