The Arizona interview and Hal's collapse: the 2-D martinet kneels

pivotal · late Nov YG

• When: late November, Year of Glad — one year after the YDAU cluster (ordering ruled as inference; see Dating notes)
• What: deLint travels to Tucson for Hal's University of Arizona recruitment interview — back at his own alma mater — attending as "Academy prorector Mr. A. deLint," and is shown to the door with C.T. when the Deans want Hal alone. When Hal's attempt to speak detonates the interview and the Composition Director wrestles him to the bathroom floor, deLint is the first voice through the door — "Let him up!" — physically trying to restrain the Director's restraint of Hal while the tennis coach restrains deLint. And at the ambulance comes the book's one unguarded beat from him: the same Aubrey deLint Hal had dismissed for years as a 2-D martinet kneels gurneyside to squeeze Hal's strapped hand and tell him to hang in there, Buckaroo, before moving back into the administrative fray. The clipboard man's single moment of visible tenderness, and the pivot of Hal's revised view.