Port Washington meet: nose to the glass, shirt bans, and the roots of the Pemulis grudge

texture · 6 Nov YDAU

• When: 6 November YDAU
• What: At the mammoth annual E.T.A.-vs-P.W.T.A. meet on Long Island, deLint watches from the spectators' gallery, and when John Wayne crashes into the backdrop tarp after a winner he presses his nose flat against the glass in anxiety while everyone else applauds — a small involuntary beat of staff care for the players' bodies. The same scene carries his fussier registers: Pemulis is barred by deLint and Nwangi from competition shirts that mention the Sinn Fein or extol Allston. BACKGROUND carried here (per the queue order): the grudge that detonates in event 9 predates the November window — Pemulis knows deLint has been laying for him ever since an earlier incident in which a P.W.T.A. player apparently dosed by Pemulis began to wobble and then rant; that incident is narrated only retrospectively in n332 and is distinct from anything on-page in 065.