IJ study archive

Scene 125: hal stice match begins

Scene
125
Pages
651–654
When
11 Nov YDAU (2009), afternoon (cold noon cloud-cover clearing into 'blue autumn glory'); match ordered post-run, attended like an exhibition
Where
E.T.A., Show Court #6 (best of the east Show Courts) and its ten-level bleachers; Schtitt's crow's nest on the transom abovein: E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) › E.T.A. courts & Eschaton grounds
POV
3rd person, drifting between Hal's camp and Steeply's bleacher vantage (catalog: */Hal/Steeply)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Endnotes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 12)

Summary

Some unnamed higher-up dispatches Mary Esther Thode on her yellow Vespa to order a Hal-vs.-Stice match — not a ladder challenge (they're in different age divisions), more an exhibition, and by the second set it's attended like one. Helen Steeply of Moment, "possessed of a certain thuggish allure but hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like," watches from the bleachers with deLint, who is under explicit orders to keep the profiler in direct sight at all times; Tavis still won't let her near Hal. On Show Court 6 — site of the Eschaton's worst carnage — the all-black Stice, a born net-man with a rigid Egyptian-frieze service motion, plays brace-ankled Hal dead even, and the bleachers fill as word spreads that The Darkness is hanging with 18's A-2 in something Schtitt actually dispatched a scooter to order. The set's showpiece point — Hal's anti-book inside-out forehand wrong-footing Stice off a floater half-volley — draws applause off thirty hands, while Mario films the whole first set from the transom, the crow's nest's monolithic shadow wheeling over the courts and giving spectators the fantods.

What to notice

The prose watches the match the way E.T.A. does: through instruments. The showpiece point is narrated live and archived in the same breath — "One of very few total inspired points from Incandenza, deLint's chart would show" — a future-tense citation of a document "Schtitt won't ever let anyone look at": play becomes data at the instant of play, and the data is sealed. The narration keeps flickering into present tense around it ("it looks a little like bad animation"), as if spoken from some later vantage where these are standing truths — worth holding onto when you ask who is telling this. Spectation here is frankly telepathic: the crowd "could feel Hal feel Stice letting the point go" — feeling nested three deep, the bleachers inside Hal inside Stice — which is the book's claim about what watching tennis at this level is. Notice the two-word paragraph-stub "The match." — the prose stopping to point as an errand becomes an event. Even the light behaves like equipment, the sun "seeming to flutter as if poorly wired". And the seventh game hands you an emblem: The Darkness, in all black, is swallowed whole by the transom's shadow every time he follows a serve in, while "There was no indication Hal even saw it" — the hooded, brooding paternal presence over the court visible to everyone but the son.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 651: 11 NOVEMBER header; Thode's Vespa intercepts Stice and Wayne clearing the Hammond golf course, Hal half a km back with "galumphers Kornspan and Kahn"; Schtitt inscrutable about the whole thing.
  • pp. 651-652: not a ladder-challenge — different age-divisions — "more like maybe an exhibition," and attended like one by the second set; Helen Steeply sat through the whole thing, deLint beside her for the first set "before Thierry Poutrincourt stole his spot"; her first high-caliber junior tennis ever, she says.
  • p. 652: Court #6, also the Eschaton-carnage site; conditioning-heavy day, light match schedule; smoke burping from Schtitt's crow's nest, his pointer tapping the transom; down on #10 two Girls' 14's baseliners loft loogy-arc parabolas; Shaw and Axford warm up far out on #23; Mario films the first set leaning over the transom railing, Watson gripping his vest from behind, his police-lock's "weird needly shadow" slanting across Court 9.
  • p. 652: deLint's notoriously bad smile ("crescents and shards, wholly without cheer"); orders "explicit and emphatic" to keep the mammoth soft-profiler in direct sight; he fills in performance charts Schtitt never lets anyone see.
  • p. 652: cold first set under a pale sun "seeming to flutter as if poorly wired"; no stretching after the run; Stice in all-black, Hal in E.T.A. sweats, left shoe bulging around the AirStirrup brace; Stice "a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace," shorter but better-built, southpaw — and Hal's left-handed too, "which complicated strategy and percentages hideously."
  • pp. 652-653: the anatomized point — Stice's McEnroe-Esconja frieze serve pulls Hal wide; Hal's lucky chip return forces a squishy two-handed half-volley ("Axiom: the man who has to hit up from the net is going to get passed"); "a moment of total mentation as the ball hung there"; the crowd "could feel Hal feel Stice letting the point go"; instead of the book cross-court or his beloved humiliating lob, Hal goes inside-out flat to the deuce sideline, wrong-footing Stice — faultless, imaginative, anti-book; "One of very few total inspired points from Incandenza, deLint's chart would show."
  • p. 653: the ten-level R.A.S.U. (n.265: Reinforced Aluminum Spectation Unit) fills as word reaches the locker rooms; E.T.A.s hunched with hands warmed between hamstring and calf; Mario allows himself reaction-shots; the profiler "who allegedly came to see Hal only about Orin but whom Charles Tavis won't let see Hal yet, even chaperoned"; fuchsia ski cap with rooster-comb top, her weight bowing the bleacher and inclining deLint toward her; players "waffle-cut by the chain-link fencing."
  • p. 654: the Show Courts loved (players love being watched) and hated — the transom's crow's-nested shadow "like some giant hooded shadowed moving presence, brooding"; sometimes the mere shadow of Schtitt's head makes a younger kid clutch and freeze; by game seven the monolithic shadow "black as ink" gives everyone the fantods, completely obscuring Stice when he follows a serve in; "There was no indication Hal even saw it."
  • p. 654: Stice overhits, nets a second serve, purses his lips into the net's shadow; deLint enters "a pejorative hieroglyphic in a box on his chart marked STICE."

Themes in this scene

  • The Body and Tennis: a full match-anatomy — service mechanics as frieze and bad animation, the passing-shot axiom, charts and a./d.f. discipline, the body's cold-management; Hal playing through the bulging ankle brace, and the first hints (one inspired point, otherwise book) of the form-vs.-inspiration question scene 130 will press.
  • Surveillance and Disguise: a U.S.O.U.S. operative in fuchsia ski cap embedded in the bleachers, under counter-surveillance by deLint on explicit orders, watching a boy she's forbidden to approach — three layers of watching before the ball's even in play.
  • Film and Optics: Mario films the set from the crow's nest at Schtitt's direction — the match exists simultaneously as play, as chart-data, and as footage; the transom's camera-platform casts the brooding shadow that terrorizes the watched players below.

Connections — backward & forward

Forward

  • The match order's source is left pointedly vague ("Apparently some higher-up") — Schtitt "inscrutable"; given Steeply's presence and Tavis's anxieties, the exhibition reads as staged display of Hal for the journalist who can't interview him; scene 127 (deLint's running commentary aimed at her) and scene 130 (Steeply still there, probing Poutrincourt) continue the same afternoon continuously.
  • Court 6 as Eschaton-carnage site (p. 652) ties back to scene 073 (pp. 321-342); the punitive cleanup detail running concurrently underground is scene 129, whose Tunnel Clubbers consequently miss this match (p. 667 area).
  • "hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like" — Orin's lethal-attractiveness reports from the Phoenix interviews (scenes 115, 119; n.234 at scenes/scene n234); Tavis's refusal to produce Hal extends his two-hour stonewall (scene 102 waiting-room orbit; deLint describes the Yes-No-corner technique in scene 127).
  • Hal vs. Stice has history: Stice's objects-moving bed and Lyle consultation (scene 084, pp. 394-395) and the wraith's coming poltergeist escalation make The Darkness the wraith's apparent favorite; this match (Stice takes the first set to 6-5 before Hal "barely takes" it, per scenes 127/129) begins the Stice surge that culminates in the late-book Stice-Hal rematch talk and the frozen-forehead window episode.
  • Mario filming from the transom recalls his designated filmic function (scene 015) and Schtitt's use of him (scene 026); the footage joins the E.T.A. archive of JOI-inherited optics (tunnels' editing facilities, scene 129 p. 666).
  • Simultaneity: scene 126 is a clock-synchronized montage of where everyone else is during exactly this match; scene 129 runs 26 meters straight down.
  • n.265 (p. 1046): "Reinforced Aluminum Spectation Unit" — the bleachers themselves bear a Spectation brand name; digested here.

Notable passages (4)
  • p. 652: "possessed of a certain thuggish allure but hardly the pericardium-piercer that Orin had made her sound like, to Hal" — Hal's dry read of Orin's infatuation; surveillance comedy.
  • p. 652: "a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace" — Stice's essence in one image; anchor passage for the-body-tennis.
  • pp. 652-653: the full inside-out-pass point ("a moment of total mentation as the ball hung there... Hal Incandenza does not fuck up passes off floater half-volleys") — match-play cognition rendered beat by beat; the crowd feeling Hal feel Stice.
  • p. 654: "like some giant hooded shadowed moving presence, brooding" — the transom shadow as E.T.A.'s resident dark god of spectation; pairs with deLint's seeing-vs-being-seen sermon (scene 127) and the ghost-father shadow over the whole grounds.

What links here Timeline events here (18) · Connected from (7) · Passages quoted here (35) · Motifs (5)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs