the professional conversationalist (pp. 31–32)

The disguise is prosthetic and physical — a rented office, a rented "face," a false nose, a stuck-on mustache — and it collapses exactly the way every disguise in this book collapses: not because the target sees through the whole apparatus but because one overlooked detail gives it up. Hal watches the mustache go "askew," the "whole face" begin "running," the fake "nose pointing at your lap," and finally makes the operative by his wardrobe: Himself's own Interdependence-Day argyle sweater-vest, worn under the rented face, carrying the veal-marsala stain Hal was there for. The concealment fails at the seam the wearer forgot to control. It is the first run of the running joke the desert will play on Steeply's sliding wig and cock-eyed breasts — the apparatus always melts, the operative is always one uncontrolled tell from being named.