IJ study archive

Scene 144: poor tony chase

Scene
144
Pages
719–721
When
night of 14 Nov YDAU (2009), c. 2215-2225h (same event as scene 141, thief's POV)
Where
Prospect St. northbound, Cambridge, toward the parking alley behind Antitoi Entertainment, Inman Squarein: Inman Square / "Little Lisbon", Cambridge · Inman Square / "Little Lisbon", Cambridge › Antitoi Entertainment (also)
POV
Poor Tony Krause (3rd person limited)

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 9)

Summary

The purse-snatch of scene 141 from inside the snatcher: Poor Tony Krause, wigged, heeled, and hours out of his post-seizure discharge, sprints up Prospect St. with both purses tucked football-style, pursued with terrifying implacability by Ruth van Cleve, whose clutching hand stays millimeters off his collar for block after block. His tradecraft fails him one piece at a time — the counter-shouting of "Help!" to flummox citizens, the sacrificed boa, the fruit-display feint — while his starved, infirm body runs out of everything but momentum, and memories of his father's grief intrude mid-stride. His goal is the dumpster-lined alley behind Antitoi Entertainment, where he hopes to duck through the brothers' "hopefully unlocked" back door for "basic human kindly refuge" — not knowing the shop now belongs to Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents. He breaks a heel cutting into the alley, gains a few steps, and flies west "on his bloody toes" as a supine derelict lifts its head to counter the alley's echoing "Stop Motherfucking Stop!" with the scene's last word: "Go."

What to notice

The pronouns do the moral work: the narration honors Tony's own grammar — the sprinter's trade-secret is staying "well up on her toes" — granting him, mid-crime, the feminine the world refuses him, while his pursuer gets demoted to "Creature", "Thing", "It". Watch how the father-memories enter: not through white space but on somatic rhyme — the meaty sound of Kate against the pole summons the father striking his own head in grief, and fingers twining into his wig summon the father scratching "where his mask's green strings had dug into the head" — trauma filed under sensation and retrieved by touch. As the body fails, the syntax fails with it: the last page dissolves into semicolon-strung clauses gasped one at a time, the heartbeat rendered as "zuckungzuckungzuckung". And the refuge he is bleeding to reach — "basic human kindly refuge" behind the Antitois' back door — is the book's cruelest wrong door, because the reader already knows who holds that shop now.

Beats — page-by-page
  • p. 719: dateline 14 NOVEMBER; the trade-secret of sprinting in heels (stay up on the toes); purses tucked "like a football in U.S. football"; his odor precedes him "like a shock-wave" — a man in a car coat does "an artful veronica" to let them pass.
  • pp. 719-720: "He had not banked on victim-pursuit"; the Donegal cap flies off "and was not mourned"; first father-intrusion — "His own father had struck himself about the head and shoulders as he grieved for his symbolically dead son."
  • p. 720: the Harvard Square crews' "ancient trade-device" — countering her "Stop The Bitch" with his own "Help! For God's Sake Stop Her"; the boa unlooped "with a flourish" and sacrificed; mid-flight grief that the Creature has doubtless tossed it in the gutter; FRESH-KILLED CHICKEN and COMPLETE DESTRUCTION signs flash past; the route plotted — Antitoi Ent.'s "discreet back door," the alley dumpsters (in one of which he has slept) within underhand-toss of the Canadians' rear exit.
  • pp. 720-721: the nightmare figured literally — "one of those simply horrid dreams where something unimaginable is chasing you... except this... scenario went on and on"; the bodega fruit-display feint fails ("Its stutter-step around two cardboard tiers of Cape cranberries was discouragingly deft").
  • p. 721: the body's ledger — post-seizure, "not to mention Withdrawn," no food since the library men's room stall; floating black specks that are "tiny rings with opaque centers"; heartbeat "zuckungzuckungzuckung"; he hurdles "a queerly placed cardboard display for something wheelchaired" (the A.F.R. theme winking from the set-dressing); an elderly person stiff-armed down; ON PARLE LE PORTUGAIS ICI; second father-intrusion — the obstetrician home at 412 Mount Auburn Street, Watertown, scratching where the surgical mask's strings dug in.
  • p. 721: her fingers reach the chignon-wig; the hard right into the alley breaks a heel but gains steps; he flies west over broken glass and "the homeless supine," her tight-echoed "Stop Motherfucking Stop!" behind; a supine person lifts a decayed head and counters his vaulting passage with: "Go."

Themes in this scene

  • Addiction and Recovery: Withdrawal as the engine of the whole crime — the seizure-wracked, unfed body sprinting on pure need; the purse money is already spent on relief.
  • Fathers and Sons: the two unbidden flashes of his father (beating his own head in grief for the "symbolically dead son"; the exhausted surgeon in the darkening kitchen) — Poor Tony's femininity mourned by the father as a death, surfacing precisely when his body is failing.
  • Disability and Deformity: Tony's drag presentation read by the street as "Creature"-vs.-creature grotesquerie; the wheelchair display he hurdles and the wheelchaired killers waiting where he's headed; bodies broken, bleeding, supine throughout.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • His seizure and the wig/chignon, the Aigner heels, the stolen-purse trade continue from scene 069 (pp. 299-307) and the yrstruly Xmas-Eve thread (scene 040); his father's grief expands the Krause-family material from Tony's decline sequence (pp. 575ff).
  • Ruth van Cleve's "street-tough" implacability glosses her introduction walking with Kate (pp. 698-700, scene 136).

Forward

  • Same minutes as scene 141 (Kate's POV — the "meaty sound" of her impact that made Tony shudder, p. 719) and audible in scene 148 (p. 728: the "tiny crash" Lenz hears is "actually Poor Tony Krause rolling the steel waste-barrel that tripped up Ruth van Cleve" — the chase's resolution, given only in that aside).
  • Massive dramatic irony: the refuge he's running toward is the A.F.R.-occupied Antitoi shop (scenes 143/145/147), whose teams are at this hour out "acquiring additional Subjects" who must be "passively undefended" (p. 728) — the narrative leaves Tony sprinting straight into the Entertainment's test-lab orbit.
  • The closing "Go." grammatically counters the pursuer's "Stop Motherfucking Stop!" (Stop/Go); heard against Tony's serial "Help!" from blocks earlier, it also reads as the figurant-city refusing the connection AA's "ask for help" depends on — cf. communication failures across scenes 141/149.

Notable passages (4)
  • p. 719: "The secret to sprinting in high heels, Poor Tony Krause knew, was to run on one's toes..." — bravura opening; expertise as pathos.
  • pp. 719-720: "His own father had struck himself about the head and shoulders as he grieved for his symbolically dead son." — the father material erupting mid-chase.
  • pp. 720-721: the dream-that-doesn't-end sentence ("...went on and on, storefront and curb and leaping pedestrians all melting together") — nightmare logic made municipal.
  • p. 721: "...a supine person Krause vaulted lifting a decayed head from the alley floor to counter with: Go." — the scene's last word, countering the pursuer's "Stop"; hearable too as the city's answer to "Help."

What links here Timeline events here (6) · Connected from (6) · Passages quoted here (22) · Motifs (3)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs