The Ennet House living room: Gately, Day, Lenz
Gately remembers his first six months here straight: he’d felt the sharp edge of every second that went by. And the freakshow dreams. Nightmares beyond the worst D.T.s you’d ever heard about.
Context
Lenz has just asked the time for the third time in half an hour, and Gately — reciting "Patience, tolerance, compassion, self-discipline, restraint" to himself — reaches back to his own newcomer days for why he doesn't punt anybody. The second with a sharp edge is the theme's phenomenological core: the same edge Poor Tony's withdrawal will sharpen to a knife thirty pages later (069), remembered here from the far side, already survivable.