IJ study archive

Scene 137: eta evening montage

Scene
137
Pages
700–701
When
? Nov YDAU; internal evidence places it the evening of Wed 11 Nov YDAU (Schtitt 'off after confections,' scene 132 p. 686)
Where
E.T.A. montage — Troeltsch's room, Subdorm B hallway, the weight room, W. Commonwealth downhill toward Newton Center, the Headmaster's House phonein: E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) · E.T.A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) › E.T.A. subdormitories (also)
POV
narrator (3rd person omniscient montage: Troeltsch / Pemulis / Lyle / Schtitt & Mario / Avril)

Characters present

Themes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 6)

Summary

A five-shot simultaneity montage of E.T.A. lives in parallel: Troeltsch, vaporizer chugging, dons his tackiest sportcoat and wet-combs his hair toupee-smooth to "call the action" of a pro-wrestling cartridge from his bunk, roommates long since fled. Pemulis, on tiptoe in Subdorm B's curved hallway with an inverted racquet-handle, gently lifts a drop-ceiling panel and shifts its lie from square to diamond on the aluminum strut. Lyle hovers cross-legged a couple millimeters above the towel dispenser in the unlit weight room, eyes rolled white, lips moving soundlessly. Schtitt and Mario tear-ass downhill on the old BMW toward Evangeline's Low-Temperature Confections at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill, white scarf whipping Mario's face in the sidecar, Mario preparing to whoop at the bottom-out. And Avril — seeming to have three or four cigarettes going at once — secures from Information the phone and e-mail numbers of a journalistic business address on East Tucson AZ's Blasted Expanse Blvd. and begins to dial, stabbing the console with the stern of a blue felt pen.

What to notice

Every one of the five shots is cut off in the instant before its sound: Troeltsch is still only preparing to call the action, Pemulis is easing a panel he must not drop, Lyle's lips move while "making no sound", Mario is "preparing to whoop when they bottom out", Avril "begins to dial" — a montage made entirely of wind-up, every release withheld. The form is camouflage: two shots are pure campus comedy, but the same deadpan sentence-shape carries a stash-check that will detonate the expulsion plot, a mother opening a counter-espionage file, and a man floating in the dark stated as flatly as a wet-combed hairdo — the montage's equality of tone is what lets the loaded shots pass as texture. And the one unguarded soul in it is Mario, leaning into the downhill with a scarf whipping his face: the only shot aimed at pleasure rather than performance, concealment, or verification.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 700: Troeltsch's broadcast rig — vaporizer weeping the windows, pro-wrestling cartridge in the TP, the toupeeish wet-comb, Seldane bottles and two-ply tissue; "His roommates have long since seen what was coming, and screwed."
  • p. 700: Pemulis at the ceiling panel — the absent zip-unzip of the racquet cover, the panel eased from square to diamond on its strut, "being careful not to let it fall."
  • p. 700: Lyle levitating in the dark weight room, "a couple mm." off the towel dispenser, eyes rolled up white, soundless.
  • pp. 700-701: Schtitt and Mario's confection run — leaning like a skier into the Heartbreak Hill downhill, scarf whipping, Mario leaning into the flight, "preparing to whoop when they bottom out."
  • p. 701: Avril, multiply lit cigarettes, gets the numbers for "a journalistic business address on East Tucson AZ's Blasted Expanse Blvd." from Information and starts dialing with a felt pen's stern.

Themes in this scene

  • Surveillance and Disguise: the montage's sting — Avril is running her own check on "Helen Steeply's" Moment cover via the Tucson office; the watcher of E.T.A. is herself being verified by the Black Hole of Human Attention.
  • The Body and Tennis: kept honest — Lyle's millimeters of levitation over the weight-room dispenser is the campus's quiet transcendent-body emblem, set among bodies hurtling (Schtitt/Mario), sneaking (Pemulis on tiptoe), and performing (Troeltsch's imaginary booth).

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Dating: deLint tells Hal that Schtitt "has gone off on the cycle somewhere after confections" in scene 132 (p. 686, 11 Nov) — this montage's Schtitt/Mario shot is that errand, pinning the whole montage to the same 11 Nov evening despite the catalog's "?".
  • Avril's Tucson call: "Helen Steeply's" Moment employer (Moment magazine; the soft-profile cover of scenes 077ff) is headquartered in Tucson — where Avril is dialing — while Orin lives and is being seduced in Phoenix; her vetting parallels Steeply's own n.274 file-pull on Poutrincourt this same week and the C.T. stonewalling of scene 130.

Forward

  • Pemulis's ceiling-panel stash-check: his established hiding practice for contraband (the DMZ lozenges bartered from Antitoi, pp. 481-482, are inferred to live up there); the habit's bitter payoff — finding the stash seized — lands in the expulsion sequence (cf. scene n332 and n.321's DMZ thread at scene n321).
  • Troeltsch's fist-broadcasting at the Hal–Stice match (scene 130, pp. 677-678) is here given its private dress-rehearsal form; his Seldane habit and announcer ambitions run back to pp. 60-61 and forward to the WETA aspirations around n.332.
  • Lyle's weight-room hovering joins his sweat-guru sessions (pp. 126-128, 387-390) — and JOI "met and bonded with" Lyle at the Northwest spa (scene 138, p. 706), this stretch's other Lyle datum.

Notable passages (4)
  • p. 700: "His roommates have long since seen what was coming, and screwed." — montage comedy; Troeltsch's solipsistic broadcast booth.
  • p. 700: Pemulis "gently raising one of the panels in the drop-ceiling... changing its lie on the strut from square-shaped to diamond-shaped" — the stash gesture, load-bearing for the expulsion plot.
  • p. 700: "Lyle hovers cross-legged just a couple mm. above the top of the towel dispenser" — flat narratorial confirmation of Lyle's levitation; ghosts-wraiths-adjacent physics stated as fact.
  • p. 701: Avril "seeming somehow to have three or four cigarettes all going at once" dialing Blasted Expanse Blvd. — the Moms in counter-surveillance mode.

What links here Timeline events here (7) · Connected from (2) · Passages quoted here (14) · Motifs (2)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs