Scene 061: steeply putative cv

• p. 227: Title line gives the cover identity's full specs: name (Helen P. Steeply), age 36, the comically un-feminine height/weight, and degrees (A.B., M.J.A.).
• p. 227: The CV proper: 1 yr Time (graduate intern, 'Newsmakers'); 16 mo. at Decade ('Hottest and Nottest' trends column) until the magazine folded; 5 yrs Southwest Annual (human-interest, geriatric-medical, personality and tourism); 5 mo. Newsweek (11 small features on trends and entertainment), leaving with an Executive Editor "she" was in love with; 1 yr Ladies Day ("personality and medical-cosmetic features — some research first-hand," the legend's driest joke given Steeply's electrolysis-and-prosthesis regimen), ending when the editor reconciled with his wife and H.P.S. was mugged on W. 62nd and vowed never to live in Manhattan again; 15 months-present at Moment, Southwest Bureau, Erythema AZ — medical, soft sports, personality, and home-entertainment-trends reporting, masthead byline, contributing-editor status.

Backward

• "Her" first actual Moment byline already ran: the 10 Aug YDAU Jarvik-heart/wheelchair-assassins piece read aloud in scene 045 — the legend was publishing before we met the man inside it. And the CV's "15 months" at Moment back-dates the assignment to ~Aug YDPAH, before the DuPlessis death (scene 016) — U.S.O.U.S. was building Helen before its stated casus belli (Carlisle's computation, recorded).

Forward

• Directly services the Marathe/Steeply mountainside serial (begun p. 87 ff., scene 029), where Steeply is already in the Helen costume, and the "soft profile" pretext Orin describes to Hal in the very next phone-call scene (064, pp. 245-246, scene 064: "somebody from Moment fucking magazine").
• The Erythema AZ / Southwest Bureau detail aligns the cover with Steeply's actual operational theater (Tucson, the mountainside, Orin in Phoenix).
• "Home-entertainment-trends reporting" is a sly in-legend license to ask questions about the Entertainment — the real object of U.S.O.U.S. interest in the Incandenza family.
• Foreshadows Steeply-as-Helen's eventual penetration of E.T.A. itself (profiling "the punter's brother," watching Hal play, pp. 654 ff., scene 125).
• The persona's paper trail runs through the correspondence files: n.234 (the Orin "interview" answers) and n.269 (Marlon Bain's letters to "Ms. Helen Steepley" — the first of n.269's systematic misnamings, authorial, as printed).
• Chapter-level rhyme: the CV is this stretch's other veil — a constructed concealment sitting between Joelle's U.H.I.D. walk (058/060) and her unveiling overdose (062); Carlisle's Ch. 17 reading ("veiled veils") lists Helen among the chapter's women, two of whom are veils worn by something else.

• p. 227: "PUTATIVE CURRICULUM VITAE OF HELEN P. STEEPLY, 36, 1.93 M., 104 KG…" — "putative" plus the linebacker-sized vitals lets the reader see through the legend at a glance; the comedy of the disguise is in the specs.
• p. 227: "vowed never again to live in Manhattan" — the legend includes invented heartbreak and trauma; Unspecified Services builds personae with inner lives.