Scene 119: orin survey wheelchair man

• p. 596: The post-coital anatomy: "Rarely a feeling of outright unalloyed sadness as such, afterward—just an abrupt loss of hope"; Orin "can only give, not receive, pleasure," which makes Subjects think him a dream-lover, "and this fuels the contempt" he must belie with gentleness, "since this would pretty clearly detract from the Subject's pleasure" — which pleasure "has become his food."
• pp. 596-597: The hand-model's confidences (the big pink Swiss husband's gorged-predator smirk, "not like the punter"); her S.O.P. panic — "no one must ever know, she could lose her children" — and Orin's "standard assurances"; his stated #2 favorite: the "post-seminal interval of clingy vulnerability... and gentle intimate care on his own."
• p. 597: The knock as "a further grace" (she'd begun asking about his family); Orin's revulsion-fantasy about the smoke in her nose; her hand "moving like a blind spider and sucking things up under the blankets"; his mood at the door "extraordinarily fine" — "Swiss cuckolds, furtive near-Eastern medical attachés, zaftig print-journalists: he felt ready for anything" (p. 598).
• p. 598: The man revealed below peephole-range: wheelchair, string tie, clipboard held "with a curled and motherly arm," totally legless; "Survey," joggled like an infant; the cycling cover identities ("Scholarly academic study... Government study. Ad council demographic assessment. Sweeps. Random anonymity."); Orin's camp acquiescences ("Goody." "Bully." "I'm clearing my mind to be of maximum help"); the "unbearably touching" bald spot; the opening question — "What do you miss, please?" — and demographic preliminaries (U.S.A. citizen; "Age is twenty-six"; "Over twenty-five?").
• pp. 598-599: Orin awaits the autograph pen-ruse, idly recalling from Mario's childhood how long under blankets before one smothers; "Please list lifestyle elements of your U.S.A. lifetime you recall, and/or at present lack, and miss" — the clipboard glossary: "Pine, yearn, winsome, nostalgia. Lump of throat... Wistful, as well."
• p. 599: First answers: cocoa with half-melted marshmallows in a checker-tiled kitchen; the vanished "omnissent" sliding doors ("Where did those doors go?"); behind Orin, the flat reveal — "the non-Swiss woman lay very calmly and patiently on her side, breathing silently into the portable O2-mask w/ canister from the purse beside her, one hand in the purse on the Schmeisser GBF miniature machine pistol."
• pp. 599-600: "I miss TV": commercials louder than programs, "Order before midnight tonight," "filmed before a live studio audience," late-night anthems and flags and the litter-weeping Indian chief, "Sermonette" and "Evensong" and test patterns; "I miss sneering at something I love" — the family gathered at the boxy Sony to sneer at broadcast vapidity; low-denominator predictability ("Emotions of mastery and control and superiority. And pleasure," the man notates); summer reruns, strike reruns, "Jeannie, Samantha, Sam and Diane, Gilligan, Hawkeye, Hazel, Jed, all the syndicated airwave-haunters... I miss seeing the same things over and over again."
• p. 600: Two muffled sneezes from the bed go unacknowledged; the man's counter — you can view entertainments "again and again without surcease" on TelEntertainment disks — and Orin's key reply: "But not the same. The choice, see. It ruins it somehow. With television you were subjected to repetition. The familiarity was inflicted. Different now."
• pp. 600-601: " 'Inflicted.' " / "I don't think I exactly know," Orin suddenly "dimly stunned and sad inside. The terrible sense as in dreams of something vital you've forgotten to do"; the pivot to "Things to tell me you do not miss" ("For symmetry." / "Balance of opinion." / "Plus or minus").
• p. 601: The retrospective assembly of oddities: eyes "not shy or indirect or even the eyes of someone in any way disabled"; the Swiss accent; no signature-ruse; the Subject's patience and "the absence of gasping when O. pulled the covers abruptly back, later"; the man's deliberate glance past Orin at the "pantyless floor and humped covers" — meant to be seen; "Can return at later time which we specify. You are, comme on dit, engaged?"; Orin's smile "wasn't as cool as he thought."

Backward

• Companion to scene 115 (pp. 574-575): same afternoon, narrated there in compressed retrospect from the car; the sandwich placement (Boston scenes 116-118 intervene) makes the reader hold the door-knock unresolved for twenty pages.
• The seduction-cycle anatomy extends scene 012 (pp. 42-49, early Orin timeline per that digest's rulings) and n.110's Subject-pumping (scenes/scene n110).
• The deflected family question (she "starting to ask him to tell her things about his own family" just before the knock) plays the same evasion Steeply's profile keeps hitting (n.234; scenes/scene n234).
• "I miss seeing the same things over and over again" and inflicted familiarity theorize the medical attaché's terminal loop-viewing (scenes 007ff) and the Entertainment's recursive pull — repetition restored, choice obliterated.

Forward

• The honeytrap thread: the hand-model's O2 mask and Schmeisser mark her as the A.F.R. plant; the operation culminates in Orin's capture and torture under the glass tumbler with the "Swiss hand-model" present — "Do it to her!" (pp. 971-972). Catalog identifies the wheelchair surveyor as M. Fortier, A.F.R. commander after Marathe's defection-in-progress.
• "What do you miss" is the A.F.R.'s diagnostic question about U.S. appetite (cf. Marathe/Steeply on choosing one's master, scenes 077ff); Steeply's own father's broadcast-era MAS*H obsession (pp. 638-648) is U.S.O.U.S.'s mirror version of this very survey.
• Orin's readiness for "furtive near-Eastern medical attachés" (p. 598) winks at the attaché thread (scenes 007ff): the favored (but deliberately undecidable) reading has Orin mailing the fatal cartridge to the attaché — the Moms-connected first victim — making his blitheness at the door doubly loaded (cf. n.110's hints and the late revelations).

• p. 596: "Rarely a feeling of outright unalloyed sadness as such, afterward—just an abrupt loss of hope." — Orin's anhedonic seduction economy in one line.
• p. 597: "It gave him real pleasure to give the impression of care and intimacy" — the performed-sincerity knot; anchor passage for communication-solipsism.
• p. 599: "the non-Swiss woman lay very calmly and patiently on her side, breathing silently into the portable O2-mask... one hand in the purse on the Schmeisser GBF miniature machine pistol." — the trap shown whole in a single sentence while Orin reminisces about cocoa.
• pp. 599-600: "I miss sneering at something I love. How we used to love to gather in the checker-tiled kitchen... and sneer at the commercial vapidity of broadcast stuff." — irony as family ritual; essential irony-sincerity extraction.
• p. 600: "With television you were subjected to repetition. The familiarity was inflicted. Different now." — the book's media thesis from its least reflective character; essential entertainment-self extraction.
• p. 601: "They were not shy or indirect or even the eyes of someone in any way disabled, was what struck Orin later as odd" — the assembled tells; surveillance-disguise anchor.