The recorded counsel session; Clipperton kills himself

pivotal · YW (2002), high noon, Subdorm C of East House

• When: YW (2002), immediately following event 12 (same day, "at high noon")
• What: Clipperton and the two Incandenzas climb to an unused top-floor room in Subdorm C of East House for a "psycho-existential CPR-session." Dolores Rusk is beeped and canceled; Lyle is summoned from the weight-room/sauna. To shield E.T.A. from O.N.A.N.T.A.'s Kafkaesque rules on counsel to unregistered players, Incandenza requires Mario's borrowed head-clamped Bolex H128 to record the whole conversation. With Lyle still in transit, Clipperton pulls from his coat an altered NAJT ranking report, a sepia'd wedding snapshot of a whey-faced Midwestern couple, and the Glock — and, even as both Incandenzas reach for the sky, places it to his right (not left) temple, "as in with his good right stick-hand," and blows his legitimated brains out for real. The Incandenzas stagger out red-mist-stained just as Lyle and L. A. Moore reach the hallway; snapshots preserve them looking like grisly coal miners. Mario has never told anyone (not Hal, not the Moms) what he sat in on.