IJ study archive

Scene 142: lenz stalks chinese women

Scene
142
Pages
716–719
When
14 Nov YDAU (2009), c. 2212-2214h — 'smack in the middle of the former Interval of Issues-Resolution'
Where
Mass. Ave. / Bishop Allen Dr. / Prospect St., Cambridge, between Central and Inman Squares ('Little Lisbon')in: Inman Square / "Little Lisbon", Cambridge
POV
Randy Lenz (3rd person limited, saturated with his idiom)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 10)

Summary

Days after his ejection from Ennet House, Randy Lenz — frozen-sinused on nasal cocaine, sleepless, forgetting to eat — stalks two tiny Chinese women lugging enormous shopping bags through Little Lisbon, convinced by racist folk-deduction that "Orientoid types" carry their life savings in such bags. His disguise is a demented pastiche assembled by snatch-and-sprint: fluorescent snowpants, tuxedo coat, sombrero, auto-darkening glasses, and a mannequin's mustache Krazy-Glued to his lip — camouflage that makes him pass for one of Boston's walking mad, given the wide berth he confuses with invisibility. His paranoia has inverted into grandiosity: having "shaken" the women twice, he's satisfied that he is the surveillant now, in "total control of this situation." He carries his razored-out William James volume (its cocaine receptacle dangerously near empty) and his Browning knife, closing the gap with what he believes is nonchalant stealth, the Frightful Hog stirring with the thrill of the hunt.

What to notice

The narration hands itself to Lenz's decaying language and lets the errors do the diagnosing: "amonymous streets", "he'd had success at successfully shaking", "speedened", "The Star-Spanned Banner" — malaprop and redundancy as cocaine damage, audible in every clause. The scene's emblem is the rat-suited man shooting a suction-cup arrow and then chalking a target around wherever it sticks — "as in a what's the word" — and the word Lenz can't find arrives at the end as his own verdict on the hunt: "Bull's-eye." The book is diagramming his epistemology, which likewise fires first and draws circles after (religion prohibits banks, therefore the bags hold life savings). And notice the two madmen shaking heads at each other in identical pity — "Look at this poor son of an urban bitch I'm on the same street with" — the scene's one moment of perfect mutual understanding, shared between men who each believe only the other is visible.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 716: dateline 14 NOVEMBER YDAU; the cocaine physics lesson — past the euphoric crest into "regions of almost interstellar cold"; sinuses "hung with crystal frost," legs ending at the knees, heart like a shoe in the Ennet House basement dryer; the women "scuttle with a kind of insectile rapidity"; time fixed c. 2212:30-40h, "smack in the middle of the former Interval of Issues-Resolution."
  • pp. 716-717: paranoid prelude — he'd first assumed they were following him (front-tailing with temple-mirrors, Command Center cellulars, helicopters whose rotor-chop is disguised as your own heartbeat); Geoffrey D. invoked as the authority; after twice "shaking" them he settles "his conviction about who was trailing who."
  • p. 717: the ejection reframed — "the kiss of a death sentence... turned out to maybe be just the thing"; he'd "tried the Straight On Narrow" and been "sent Away, Alone, and at least now could openly hide"; the disguise inventory (snowpants, tux coat, sombrero with wooden balls, auto-darkening tortoise-shells, the mannequin mustache from Lechmere's); "he passes easily for one of metro Boston's homeless and wandering mad... given a wide berth by all comers."
  • pp. 717-718: tradecraft of the mad — never sleep, never eat, "alert in all six directions"; the Browning X444 Serrated holstered in his sock; the James Principles of the Gifford Lectures "its razored-out receptacled heart now quite a bit closer to empty than Lenz would be comfortable thinking about directly."
  • p. 718: closing the gap — glasses darkening under every streetlight (two of his "vital sensory street-senses" disoriented); "He had no clue how he really looked. Like many of the itinerant mad of metro Boston, he tended to confuse a wide berth with invisibility"; the squatting gray-faced woman between dumpsters; the rat-suited man shooting a suction-cup arrow at a For Lease wall and chalking concentric circles around it "as in a what's the word."
  • pp. 718-719: mutual contempt — bowman and Lenz shake heads at each other ("Look at this poor son of an urban bitch I'm on the same street with"); a window produces "The Star-Spanned Banner."
  • p. 719: the "deduction" that Orientoid religion prohibits banks; heartrate "speedened to a steady warming gallop," feet returning; "The Frightful Hog was not and never numb"; the surveillance inversion completed — "He was in total control of this situation. And they did not even know there was a situation. Bull's-eye." — and the "tiny little Yellow-Brick-Road stutter-skip of pure controlling glee, his adrenaline invisible for all to see."

Themes in this scene

  • Addiction and Recovery: relapse anatomy — cocaine paranoia curdling into omnipotence; the emptying receptacle he can't think about "directly" is the scene's real clock; his Issues-Resolution compulsion has graduated from animals to people.
  • Surveillance and Disguise: a parody of the book's professional spies — Lenz runs counter-surveillance doctrine (front-tails, rotor-chop, six directions) while dressed like a hallucination; "openly hide" / "hiding in bright-lit and public plain sight" is Steeply's and the A.F.R.'s own method, debased.
  • Communication and Solipsism: total interpretive enclosure — every datum (helicopters, monkey-language, wide berths) confirms his centrality; he literally cannot know how he looks to others.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • Lenz's ejection: his dog-killing witnessed by Green (scene 116, pp. 575-589) triggered the 11 Nov brawl in which Gately was shot (pp. 601-619); "several-odd days back" he fled Enfield Overground. The hollowed William James volume and the Issues-Resolution interval (2216h) continue from his nighttime-walks sequence (pp. 538-589).
  • "The well-read Geoffrey D." — Day's surveillance erudition, cf. Day's Ennet House discourses (scene 066 etc.) and his A.F.R. article (n.304 chain).

Forward

  • The robbery itself and its aftermath: scene 148 (pp. 728-729). Concurrent with Poor Tony's purse-snatch a few blocks away (scenes 141/144) — two predators working the same district at the same minutes.
  • The district is the A.F.R.'s: four wheelchair teams are at this hour rolling these same alleys "for the purpose of acquiring additional Subjects" (scene 147, p. 728) — Lenz, sleepless, conspicuous, and carrying valuables, is prime acquisition material — and the convergence fires at scene 163 (pp. 845-846), where Broullîme's newly acquired test-subjects are Lenz (white wig, bags "filled of foreign cookware and extremely small-in-size ladies' undergarments") and Poor Tony.
  • Day appears in person across town in scene 149 (pp. 731-732), philosophizing about "portable."
  • Lenz's sombrero resurfaces at scene 169 (pp. 883-896), where visiting residents report him "sombrero w/ balls," officially relapsed and back Out There; the neighborhood-sweep payoff is the A.F.R. acquisition at scene 163 (pp. 845-846).

Notable passages (4)
  • p. 716: "it takes you into regions of almost interstellar cold and nasal numbness" — clinical-comic cocaine phenomenology; anchor passage for addiction.
  • p. 717: "sent Away, Alone, and at least now could openly hide" — the addict's exile rewritten as espionage promotion; AA's capital-letter idiom ("Straight On Narrow") repurposed for denial.
  • p. 718: "he tended to confuse a wide berth with invisibility" — the narrator's one cold step outside Lenz's head; the book's definition of solipsism-by-repulsion.
  • p. 719: "He was in total control of this situation. And they did not even know there was a situation." — controlling glee as terminal symptom; "his adrenaline invisible for all to see" closes the scene on a perfectly self-canceling sentence.

What links here Timeline events here (5) · Connected from (4) · Passages quoted here (24) · Motifs (3)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs