Scene 105: lenz demaps animals

• pp. 538-539: the framing rumor; Lenz's bored-out Duster he never drives; the toupee/mustache/topcoat disguise; compass-and-napkin rituals to stay maximally north in carpool cars; he always walks home; the near-curfew Wednesday and the racket on the stairs.
• pp. 539-540: redflagged as relapse-risk at All-Staff, but his E.M.I.T.s come back clean; Gately lets him be — "Some newcomers' Higher Power is like Nature... who knows."
• p. 540: Lenz abroad, scanning before he knows for what [n.224: the William James line on "unconscious preparation" that later snaps him to what he's up to]; the first conscious kill — two rats at a half-eaten wiener behind the Svelte Nail Co., the kilo chunk of tar-shot concrete.
• pp. 540-541: the kill in clinical detail (the "tomato thrown at a wall"/"pocketwatch... hammer" sound); the discovered word: "There."
• pp. 541-542: vermin go ho-hum; Hefty bags [n.225 — ®Mobil Chemical] = "Irish Luggage"; rolled baggies of Food-Bank tuna; the bagged cat's "wide variety of changing shapes... as the agitated cat got lower on air"; the connoisseur's hierarchy of cats; SteelSaks [n.226] = "Irish Guccis," bought through Treat and Thrale.
• pp. 542-543: the 2216-2226h interval; the Brighton Best Savings Bank rooftop Time/Temp display (EST and Greenwich Mean); Glynn's B.S.-1989 grid-sky story — weeks under a flat Euclidian sky with DOW ticker and decimal Temp, Haldol [n.227] and tapioca at Metropolitan State — which Lenz thought "sounded wicked nice"; ATHSCME fans down for de-linting; "No middle distance with sirens."
• p. 543: Glynn's crossed eyes ("stand in the middle of the week and see both Sundays," per the veiled girl); Lenz's secret coke use — the stash razor-bladed into Bill James's large-print Principles of Psychology and The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion; the self-pardoning logic ("he knows he's sober"); how to beat an E.M.I.T. (lemon juice, bleach on the fingertips, the embarrassing Texas catheter).
• p. 544: doubled SteelSaks swung against signposts ("the melony sound of hard impact"); kills moved into owners' yards for "a Catharsis of resolving"; oil-can for squeaky gates; Raid-laced tuna; the kerosene period — the flaming cat that chased him over fences down Sumner Blake Rd., his "only really close call."
• pp. 544-545: that night's lines prove an "un-unwinder"; the mute writhing-mouthed night in the 3-Man room, every siren "meant for him," Day threatening to fetch Gately.
• p. 545: the Browning X444 Serrated (shoulder holster, honed serrations tested by dry-shaving his forearm); dogs via Gately's cornflake meatloaf — the second topcoat and third pair of slacks; Day's recovery paperback line: the more Powerless an individual feels, the more propensity for violent acting-out — "Lenz found the observation to be sound."
• pp. 545-546: near Halloween, the street drunk urinating behind Blanchard's Liquors — Lenz "envisualizes the old guy both cut and on fire... but that's as close as Lenz comes"; a few days off his psychic feed.
• pp. 546-547: Bruce Green attaches himself after the White Flag; Lenz's bind — Green is the perfect listener ("low affirmatives and 'No shit's"), a "non-rat," yet his presence blocks the interval; the rage of being unable to stop worrying about how to ditch him diplomatically; House cats too risky, Pat's Retrievers "tattlemount to legal suicide"; the fallen baby bird down the kitchen garbage disposal — "still felt largely impotent and unresolved."

Backward

• Day's paperback Powerlessness/violence thesis (p. 545) is the scene's own thesis stated inside it — and Day rooms with the proof.

Forward

• Direct setup for scenes 109/111 (the coked walk with Green, Wed 11 Nov) and for the catastrophe of scene 116 (pp. 575-589): Lenz's blocked "resolution" need + Green's presence → the Nucks' dog, the chase, and Gately's gunfight (pp. 601ff).
• Gately's "Higher Power is like Nature" benefit-of-the-doubt (p. 540) is the tragic Staff misread whose price Gately personally pays; cf. his Staff instincts in scenes 095 and 112.
• "Demapping" is this scene's own coinage (p. 541), and "eliminating his map" is the idiom printed straight elsewhere (scene 104, p. 532, "eliminating his map right there, out of payback"; scene 109's "eliminating the saliva guy's map") — the dialect original is yrstruly's "elemonade… map for keeps" (scene 040), and the narration's own "yrstruly" slip lands at scene 111, p. 561.
• Glynn's grid-sky drug was "The Madame" (p. 542) — street name of DMZ = 'Madame Psychosis' (n.321 ruling); his weeks under the grid are the book's other preview of DMZ-class aftermath (cf. Hal's late-book interior).
• The flaming-cat and burnt-animal material rhymes with the burnt hillside cats the E.T.A. 16's pin on Kornspan (n.324 ~p. 1070) — urban-animal cruelty as ambient YDAU dread.
• The bagged-cat shapes and "lower on air" anticipate the asphyxiation imagery around Gately's hospital intubation dreams and the "ceiling breathing" (pp. 809, scene 161ff).

• p. 538: "It is starting to get quietly around Ennet House that Randy Lenz has found his own dark way to deal with the well-known Rage and Powerlessness issues..." — the ironized clinical framing.
• pp. 540-541: the first rat kill ("some aural combination of a tomato thrown at a wall and a pocketwatch getting clocked with a hammer... 'There.'") — the discovered ritual word.
• p. 542: "the agitated cat got lower on air" — Wallace's most chilling euphemism in the scene.
• pp. 542-543: Glynn's grid-sky paragraph — self-contained masterpiece; map-vs-territory and drug-aftermath in one image.
• p. 543: "he accepts his monthly chips with a clear conscience and a head unmuddled by doubting: he knows he's sober" — textbook Denial, the AA concept dramatized from inside.
• p. 543: "No middle distance with sirens, Lenz reflects" — paranoia's acoustics; recurs p. 545 ("each siren abroad out there... meant for him").
• p. 547: the baby bird down the garbage disposal, "still felt largely impotent and unresolved" — the escalation's dead end pointing at scene 114.