The Eschaton disciplinary scene — the quiet, looming Tavis

texture · 10 Nov YDAU

• When: 10 November YDAU (2009)
• What: Summoned over the Interdependence-Day Eschaton fiasco (injured juniors), Hal, Pemulis, Kittenplan and Axford wait ~48 hours in Tavis's cloud-wallpapered blue waiting room, then are ushered sideways in by Lateral Alice Moore (the "there's shame" tell) to find Tavis "pulsing with swollen proximity in his seagrass swivel-chair," Rusk and the O.N.A.N.T.A. urologist present — the composed, dopplering-in, "not to be fucked with" Tavis of a threatened tiller. His between-appointments texture: head mashed against the sofa, arm sweeping under the ruffle for the hidden bathroom scale (scene 126). The same aftermath shows the other face of the crisis-Tavis: he spends a morning "interfacing with parents" of the injured kids, and Struck and Pemulis — who blarney Lateral Alice Moore into putting the exchanges on her intercom speaker — rate him "a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact" (Pemulis: the man's "missed a genuine calling in sales"); the placated parents leave weeping, pumping his hands, and get all the way down the brick drive "before they even recall they'd forgotten to pop in on their injured kid" (n266 pp. 1046-1047).