The demapping: Bobby C's crew and the sewn-open eyes

pivotal · Fackelmann finale (~4 yrs before YDAU)

• When: dawn onward, the morning after the binge collapse
• What: Bobby C climbed the tree to the window, smashed in, pistol-whipped and groin-kicked Gately, and returned with an entourage — DesMonts and Pointgravè, Oriental toughs carrying a compound-fractured Pamela (she'd fallen from the tree), transvestites, the eczematic pharmacist's assistant, and a grim "librarianish" woman. A cartridge-portrait of Sorkin mid-cluster-headache presided from the wall (scene 185: "presiding over the gathering") — Sorkin's signal that he wasn't coming and had given C "free rain." C told Gately quietly that Whitey knew he was no part of Fax's score and shouldn't let "19th-century notions of defending the weak" drag him in, then had Gately shot full of pharm-grade "Sunshine" (Canadian Talwin-PX). The crew gave Fackelmann Narcan so he'd feel it, seated him in Gately's Demerol-chair, and the little gray woman "was sewing Fackelmann's eyelids open to the skin above his eyebrows" while a bland man dropped fluid into the sewn-open eye — "sewing poor old Count Faxula's eyes open" — as Fax screamed. Gately's last sight before blacking out was his own reflection in a mirror-square held by a departing thug. (Gately-altitude: Gately's timeline (event 22). Fackelmann's actual death is left off the page — see Dating notes.)