Scene 176: steeply accosts joelle
Characters present
Characters referenced
Open questions this scene bears on
Connects to
- Scene 012: orin phoenix morning
- Scene 113: orin swiss hand model
- Scene 115: orin wheelchairs return
- Scene 119: orin survey wheelchair man
- Scene 149: marathe ennet waiting room
- Scene 151: marathe pat intake cartridges
- Scene 153: marathe quadruple calculus
- Scene 166: joelle visits gately abiding
- Scene 175: fackelmann scam wraith returns
- Scene 177: dilaudid binge
- Scene 178: joelle q interview master
- Scene n234: orin steeply interview
- Scene n269: marlon bain letters
Summary
A two-paragraph splice: coming out of the St. E.'s doors and turning right for the quick walk back up to Ennet House, Joelle is grabbed at the elbow by "a grotesquely huge woman whose hose bulged with stubble," with a face and head four times larger than any woman's Joelle has ever seen — Steeply in his Helen drag — who says she's sorry to be the one to tell her, but that unbeknownst to her she is in almost mind-boggling danger. Joelle looks her up and down for rather a while: "This is supposed to be news?"
What to notice
The craft is all in the grammar of the two paragraphs: the entire ambush — years of Helen cover-work arriving at its target — is packed into a single retrospective past-perfect sentence, an operation already over by the time it is narrated, while Joelle's reply gets a paragraph to itself. Steeply is never named; the reader recognizes the drag, but through Joelle's eyes he is only an enormous anonymous woman, so the book's most elaborate disguise finally meets the one character who sees through it at a glance and cannot be read back — she surveys him openly while the veil gives him nothing to survey. And the deadpan is built in prose rhythm: "It took rather a while for Joelle to look her up and down." measures the comic beat out in full before the puncture lands.
Beats
- p. 934: the doors, the right turn toward Ennet; the elbow-grab; the stubbled hose and quadruple-sized head; "unbeknownst to her she was in almost mind-boggling danger"; the long look up and down; "This is supposed to be news?"
Themes in this scene
- Surveillance and Disguise: Unspecified Services finally makes contact with the Entertainment's performer — through a disguise so bad Joelle's deadpan registers it instantly; the grab marks the U.S. side closing the same distance the A.F.R. is closing on Ennet House.
- Entertainment and the Self: the "mind-boggling danger" is being the face (or non-face) inside the samizdat — Joelle as the living artifact both governments want; her unimpressed reply is a woman whose whole life has been the danger.
Connections
Backward
- Joelle's St. E.'s visiting (the photo-album/snapshots visit, scene 166, p. 861; Gately's doubt about it, scene 175 pp. 921-922) supplies the doorway this ambush waits outside of.
Forward
- Continues into the Q-format interview of scene 178 (pp. 938-941) — same contact, with scene 177's Gately material spliced between; treated as its own scene.
- Steeply's "Helen" operation: the Moment soft-profile cover (proposed in Orin's scene 012, p. 48; pursued through scenes 113/115/119; n.234 — see scene n234; n.269 Bain letters) has been working toward Joelle/Madame Psychosis all along; Marathe, meanwhile, has located her from the other side inside Ennet House itself (his residency scenes 149/151/153, pp. 729-755 — he glimpses the veiled resident but never makes contact) — both services converge on the same woman in the same week.
- Her unshockability calls back to the U.H.I.D. doctrine and the "lethally beautiful" joke she anatomizes in scene 178 (p. 941) — danger as her permanent address since the acid and before.
Notable passages
- p. 934: "a grotesquely huge woman whose hose bulged with stubble" — Steeply's drag at maximum grotesquerie, through Joelle's eyes.
- p. 934: "'This is supposed to be news?'" — Joelle's entire characterization in one line.
What links here
- Steeply accosts Joelle outside St. E.'s
- Steeply intercepts and interviews Joelle — the hunt's edge; fate and outcome left open
- The Joelle interview — locating the performer; the Master's grave named
- The Steeply Q-interview: Joelle debriefed on her role and JOI's death
- Fackelmann's scam and the wraith's return
- Fackelmann's scam and the wraith's return — "He dreams he’s with a very…"
- Fackelmann's scam and the wraith's return — "the sad kid is trying to…"
- Fackelmann's scam, the wraith returns (p. 934)
- Fackelmann's scam; the wraith returns (p. 934)
- Gately's fever-memories, the buried-head dream (pp. 933–934)
- Steeply accosts Joelle
- Steeply accosts Joelle (Surveillance and Disguise)
- Steeply accosts Joelle (p. 934)
- The Dilaudid binge
- The Fackelmann scam and the wraith's return (p. 934)
- The Fackelmann scam and the wraith's return (pp. 933–934)
- The Fackelmann scam; the wraith returns
- the dream-kid whose mouth opens on nothing
- the dream-kid whose mouth opens on nothing — "the sad kid holds something terrible…"