The "professional conversationalist" alleges an Incandenza-family liaison with DuPlessis

texture · 1 April YTMP

• When: 1 April YTMP (the conversationalist session; Hal is ten)
• What: Years before the YDAU present, the self-styled "professional conversationalist" grills ten-year-old Hal about "your family's sordid liaison with the pan-Canadian Resistance's notorious M. DuPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensis-cum-operative, Luria P———" — and claims that photos of that liaison, leaked to Der Spiegel, "resulted in the bizarre deaths of both an Ottawan paparazzo and a Bavarian international-affairs editor, of an alpenstock through the abdomen and an ill-swallowed cocktail onion, respectively." Hal flatly rejects the premise ("I'm not even up to J yet, in the condensed O.E.D., much less Québec or malevolent Lurias") and questions the speaker's condition ("Listen, are you okay?"). The scene is dialogue-only, the speaker's identity and reliability are put in doubt inside the scene itself, and no other attestation corroborates a family-DuPlessis liaison in these terms. Recorded as claims, not facts — though the claims' vocabulary (DuPlessis + Luria + an Incandenza connection) eerily anticipates the conjecture of event 6. Nothing resolved.