Ennet House: missing her as a fatigue-signal, and the gold-helmet fantasy in Pat's office

texture · 14 Nov YDAU

• When: 14 Nov YDAU (Marathe's infiltration of Ennet House in the "Henri the Swiss" addict cover)
• What: Undercover inside Ennet House hunting the veiled performer, Marathe cases Pat Montesian's office — and the narration drops its small tell: "Marathe felt himself missing his wife intensely, which always signalled his deep fatigue." In the calculation scene that follows, Gertraude is the pictured payoff of every branch: if he casts his lot with O.N.A.N., Steeply's Office would hide the family and he imagines "conveying his restenotic wife and entertainment-hungry children down from St.-Remi d'Amherst's Convexity-ravaged wastes to live with him... demanding hidden protection from Steeply and high-income medical care for the heart- and head-difficulties of beloved Gertraude"; if the A.F.R. triumph, their victory "would ensure Marathe's valuable welcome by Gentle and his wife's beloved treatments for the ventricle and lack of skull." Between the branches sits the page's one image of her healed: "Marathe pictured Gertraude with a helmet and hook of gold, breathing easily through expensive tubes." Either way the fantasy runs through her — the calculus is only over which buyer funds the helmet. [Attribution note: narrated, Marathe-focalized; the gold-helmet image is explicitly his imagining.]