Fortune-keyed volatility — the silent loss, the irrepressible win

texture · early Nov YDAU (and the prior year's P.W.T.A. meet)

• When: the annual early-November E.T.A.–P.W.T.A. meet (prior year's loss recalled) and the YDAU meet's aftermath
• What: Tavis's mood tracks the Academy's fortunes with childlike transparency. After E.T.A. lost the prior year's Port Washington meet 57–51, "Charles Tavis didn't say one word on the bus-ride home and used the lavatory several times"; there is also a private, unknown "embarrassing transaction... between the two schools' Headmasters" that losing entails (scene 065). Winning inverts him: on the victory bus "Charles Tavis was irrepressible," doing a Pierre Trudeau impersonation and beaming and talking nonstop in hushed tones at John Wayne, then standing the three busloads to a Denny's Mega-breakfast at 0030 (scene 067; cf. the two chartered buses he lays on for the P.W. trip, scene 057).