IJ study archive

Scene 050: pemulis scores dmz

Scene
50
Pages
169–171
When
4 Nov YDAU (2009), ~lunchtime ('most of them are still at lunch,' p. 171; Carlisle concurs)
Where
Boston (Inman Sq. → Central → Davis → Park St. counter-surveillance loop; Comm. Ave. drive) → E.T.A.: Pemulis's triple in subdorm B; Hal in his and Mario's room in Comm.-Ad.in: Inman Square / "Little Lisbon", Cambridge · E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) › E.T.A. subdormitories (also)
POV
3rd person, Pemulis-tracking, swinging to Hal at the phone

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Endnotes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 14)

Summary

Post-transaction and mildly 'drined, Pemulis rides a deliberately pointless bus loop out of Inman Square to shake any tail, retrieves the communal tow truck at Park St., and drives back up to Enfield with the lining of his Mr. Howell yachting cap packed with the incredibly potent DMZ. An expository block classes the drug: nominally a para-methoxylated amphetamine but closer to an anticholinergic-deliriant, its effects "temporally-cerebral and almost ontological" (nn. 56-57 supply the muscimole comparison and the lithographer who felt himself plowing through time itself); synthesized from fitviavi, a mold that grows on other molds, by the same Sandoz chemist who stumbled on LSD, it carries the reputation of "the single grimmest thing ever conceived in a tube," and in metro Boston chemical circles it's nicknamed Madame Psychosis, after the WYYY radio personality Mario and Otis P. Lord revere. Back at E.T.A., Pemulis phones Hal, who has staged himself in elaborately casual readiness with the Riverside Hamlet he's promised to help Mario adapt; the call opens with the code "The turd emergeth" and Hal's entrapment-protocol reply, "Please commit a crime."

What to notice

The prose gets dosed along with the dealer: right after "Having indulged in 150 mg. of very mild 'drines, post-transaction." the narration slips into fragments and a dangled modifier — "Wearing also gray-and-blue saddle oxfords w/o socks, it's such a mild autumn day." — the grammar going pleasantly speedy in sympathy. Notice how gorgeous the city is made on exactly this errand: "The sky is pilot-light blue", the suede smell of new leaves, the garage echoes savored as "pleasantly complex" — the book's loveliest weather report escorts its most feared molecule home, dread smuggled inside lyric the way the drug rides inside a detachable hat lining. And at Hal's end of the call, watch one word strike twice in a single sentence — "waiting very casually" narrowing to "waiting in a very casual posture" — repetition as tell: casualness this carefully worded is a rehearsal, right down to the props distributed on the carpet.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 169: Section heading 4 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U.; Pemulis, "nobody's fool at all," rides one necessary and one unnecessary bus plus a doubling-back train purely against "the slightest possible chance of pursuit"; the Mr. Howell hat's detachable contraband lining; 150 mg of mild 'drines, post-transaction.
  • p. 170: The drive up Commonwealth Ave. to Enfield; the inflatable Lung's winter nacelle visible from lower Allston; the DMZ monograph-digest: less visual than LSD, more "temporally-cerebral," euphoric alteration of one's relation to the flow of time (n.56: chemical kin list, "the way an F-18 resembles a Piper Cub"; n.57: the Italian lithographer "plowing at high knottage through time itself").
  • p. 170: Provenance lore — fitviavi mold-on-mold; the Sandoz chemist retired into "serious unblinking wall-watching"; hardest compound to acquire in North America after raw Vietnamese opium; street name Madame Psychosis from M.I.T.'s WYYY-109, "Largest Whole Prime on the FM Band."
  • p. 170-171: The Ennet House day-shift kid at the gate booth has twice approached Pemulis about transacting; Pemulis's rigid policy against dealing with the Court-Ordered, randomly-Urined "low-rent" employees from down the hill — "why tempt fate."
  • p. 171: Pemulis home over the Dining Hall (East Courts empty, "most of them are still at lunch"); phones Hal, who waits in windowlight with the Riverside Hamlet, AminoPal bar, SAT-prep folios, the spine-shot 1937 Tilden On Spin, keys on the floor by his shoe, letting it ring three times "like a girl at home on Saturday night" — his chair "partly under an old print of a detail from the minor and soft-core Alexandrian mosaic Consummation of the Levirates": a levirate marries his brother's widow, i.e. Claudius-and-Gertrude hang on the wall over the boy holding Hamlet (Carlisle gloss).
  • p. 171: "Mmyellow." / "The turd emergeth." / "Please commit a crime." Pemulis de-Velcros the hat lining as he talks.

Themes in this scene

  • Addiction and Recovery: the acquisition scene proper — E.T.A.'s drug economy operating with professional tradecraft, and the drug itself defined by an ominous potency that exceeds recreational categories.
  • Family and Hamlet: Hal waits with the Riverside Hamlet for Mario's "conceptual film-type project," the ghost-father play literally in his lap while he waits for drugs; keys kept on the floor (per scene 051, a habit trained by Himself) and the Consummation of the Levirates print (brother-marries-brother's-widow) frame the same tableau.
  • Surveillance and Disguise: pure tradecraft — the deliberately pointless bus/train loop against "the slightest possible chance of pursuit," the contraband hat-lining, the coded "turd emergeth"/"commit a crime" entrapment protocol; the dealer-student as practiced counter-surveillant.
  • Time and Perception: what makes DMZ dreadful is temporal — "temporally-cerebral and almost ontological," a euphoric alteration of one's relation to time's flow (p. 170), with n.57's lithographer "plowing at high knottage through time itself" as the case history; the hat-lining is carrying, specifically, a drug that acts on the clock.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • The Sandoz chemist retired into "serious unblinking wall-watching" — the drug's origin story already mimics the Entertainment's effect on the attaché and his viewers (scenes 007/011 ff.).
  • n.56's muscimole, DMZ's nearest chemical kin, echoes the Big Buddy fly-agaric story (pp. 66-67, scene 022; Carlisle cf.).
  • "Please commit a crime" is the protocol established with n.55 in scene 048 (p. 156), where Hal privately corrects "entrapment" to "suborned."
  • Hal's staged "very casual" waiting posture is the E.T.A. edition of Erdedy splayed between phone and buzzer (scene 004) — drug-anticipation as choreography (Carlisle rhyme).

Forward

  • DMZ was first named in the Pump Room drug taxonomy (scene 013, n.8 range); this scene begins the thread that runs through the show-and-tell and dosing plan of scene 057 (pp. 211-219), the Antitoi shop's stock (the AFR raid, pp. 480s; the eighteen-lozenge barter pp. 481-482, see the archive's Bertraund Antitoi entry for the 13-vs-18 count tension), Pemulis's stash-discovery catastrophe (November YDAU), and the standing reader theory that DMZ explains scene 001's Year of Glad Hal. The drug's full technical brief — fitviavi derivation, G.C./M.S.-invisibility, Pemulis's "the tu-sais-qué" — lives in n.321 (scene n321); point there, don't duplicate.
  • The nickname Madame Psychosis fuses the drug to Joelle van Dyne three scenes before her show is dramatized (scene 053) and three days before her veiled walk to suicide (scenes 058/060) — drug, radio voice, and the Entertainment's star are one name.
  • The Ennet House gate kid is another hinge between the hill's two institutions (cf. scene 048's dumpster-emptying residents; scene 054's hillside shortcut), and Pemulis's refusal to transact downhill is dramatic irony given where the book's two worlds are headed.
  • The Riverside Hamlet and Mario's project seed scene 051 immediately following. (The all-caps "TENNIS AND THE FERAL PRODIGY..." title block on p. 171 belongs to scene 051 and is digested there.)

Notable passages (6)
  • p. 169: "Michael Pemulis, nobody's fool at all" — the counter-surveillance loop; tradecraft as characterization.
  • p. 170: "more like temporally-cerebral and almost ontological" — DMZ's effect described in the very terms of Hal's eventual interior catastrophe; key pull-quote.
  • p. 170: "the single grimmest thing ever conceived in a tube" — the lay-chemical-underground verdict; sets the dread.
  • p. 171: "like a girl at home on Saturday night" — Hal's staged casualness about drugs; secrecy-attachment (cf. scene 013) in one simile.
  • p. 170: "early retirement and serious unblinking wall-watching" — the discoverer as the drug's first casualty; proto-Entertainment posture.
  • n.57 (p. 995-996): the Italian lithographer "plowing at high knottage through time itself… with time coming off him like water in sprays and wakes" — DMZ's time-effect in its most quotable form.

What links here Manuscript differences (1) · Timeline events here (12) · Connected from (9) · Passages quoted here (17) · Motifs (3)

Manuscript differences

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs