Scene 126: simultaneity montage

• pp. 654-655: Gately asleep in his little basement staff room, snores rattling the deinsulated ceiling pipes — the calm before scene 120's catastrophe later this same night.
• p. 655: Poor Tony in the Armenian Foundation Library men's room near the onion-domed Watertown Arsenal, ghastly suspenders and purloined cap, face in hands, "getting a whole new perspective on time and the various passages and personae of time" — deep in Withdrawal's time-horror, three days before the seizure and the purse-snatching relapse (pp. 719ff).
• p. 655: Pemulis and Struck, wet-haired after P.M. runs, past the B.U. Pharmacy library attendant and into Reference — Pemulis researching (transparently) the DMZ he means to administer, yachting cap pushed back "to accommodate his rising eyebrows."
• p. 655: one sentence — H. Steeply's green sedan with its "neuralgiac full-front Nunhagen ad" parked Authorized Guest at E.T.A.: the operative is officially on the grounds.
• p. 655: Tavis between appointments (n.266), west windows yielding no view of the match, head mashed against the sofa's seat-rail, arm sweeping under the ruffle for his hidden bathroom scale — compulsive self-measurement mid-crisis.
• p. 655: "Avril Incandenza's whereabouts on the grounds were throughout this interval unknown." — a single flat sentence, the montage's black box.
• p. 655: Phoenix, M.S.T. — Orin "once again" embracing the 'Swiss' hand-model halfway up "a different tall hotel (from before)"; fiery windowlight, stunned sagging cityscape, sprinting pedestrians below; the embrace "not like a hug," no talking, breath "somehow coded"; his linen knee in "the deltoid fork" of her legs; she hops and forks her legs over his shoulders, "and he supported her like that, the left hand horned with old callus at the small of her satiny back, and bore her."
• n.266 digest (pp. 1046-1047): the morning's context — upscale parental autos in the lot (textbook tire-pressure, cellular antennae, no dust-smiles); Tavis "interfacing" with parents of the Eschaton-injured; Lateral Alice Moore listening on her headphones for a treat, Struck and Pemulis blarneying her into two minutes on the intercom speaker; Tavis "a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact" — parents leave weeping, pumping his hands, "practically begging him to accept both their thanks and their apologies" — and drive slowly off before recalling "they'd forgotten to pop in on their injured kid, sign his cast, feel his forehead, say Hey."

Backward

• Gately asleep: his last untroubled hours before the Lenz-triggered firefight of scene 120 (pp. 601-619, night of 11-12 Nov) — the montage's dramatic irony hinges on the reader's having already seen what tonight does to him (and scene 124, two nights later, shows the House reeling).

Forward

• The montage interrupts the Hal/Stice match between scenes 125 and 127 — Wallace's cinematic cutaway while the first set proceeds; scene 129 adds the sub-court tunnel layer to the same synchronized instant.
• Poor Tony: sits mid-Withdrawal, three days before the seizure of scene 069 (pp. 299-307), and points forward to the Ruth van Cleve purse-snatch (pp. 719ff); his "new perspective on time" echoes the seizure's time-becoming-flesh horror.
• Pemulis at the Pharmacy library: due diligence on the DMZ scored in scene 050 (pp. 169-171) and shown off in scene 057 (pp. 211-219); the research thread runs to n.321's tutoring scene and the locker-room reckonings (scenes/n321, n324, n332 digests).
• The 'Swiss' hand-model continues scene 119 (pp. 596-601, Orin + hand-model + the wheelchaired 'survey' man = Fortier); her A.F.R. role is confirmed by Orin's capture (pp. 971-972, with Luria P. — the 'Swiss' identity dissolving into the operative); cf. n.110's Helen-Steeply-directed questions Orin relays to Hal (scenes/scene n110).
• "Avril's whereabouts unknown" rhymes with her other unaccounted intervals (the Wayne liaison exposed in n.324; the John-Wayne-in-football-gear tableau, scene 108, pp. 550-553) — the narrator declining to locate her is itself characterization.
• Tavis's hidden bathroom scale joins his height/insecurity dossier (scene 102's waiting-room anatomy, pp. 508-527); n.266's parent-charming is the practical demonstration of deLint's advice to back Tavis into a Yes-No corner, scene 127 (p. 660).
• Steeply's Nunhagen-aspirin sedan: the cover vehicle Marathe's file already knows (scene 035, p. 107), first on E.T.A. grounds during Eschaton (scene 073, pp. 327-341, 8 Nov); its Authorized Guest spot formalizes the infiltration deLint is chaperoning in scenes 125/127.

• p. 655: "getting a whole new perspective on time and the various passages and personae of time" — Poor Tony's destroyed-clock interiority in one clause; anchor passage for addiction-recovery's bottom.
• p. 655: "Avril Incandenza's whereabouts on the grounds were throughout this interval unknown." — the montage's most loaded sentence; family-hamlet by omission.
• p. 655: the Orin panel ("The embrace was not like a hug... their breath became somehow coded... the left hand horned with old callus at the small of her satiny back, and bore her") — the seduction-as-code image, lethal in retrospect.
• n.266, p. 1047: "a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact" — Tavis's essence; and the parents forgetting to "pop in on their injured kid... say Hey" — E.T.A.'s parental economy in a single exit shot.