Hal mourns the debunking of Rickey's "magic" vest-trick

texture · UNDATED (childhood, Weston)

• When: early childhood in Weston MA; the debunking "years later"
• What: E.T.A.'s architect A.Y. ("Vector-Field") Rickey, Avril's dear friend, "used to wow Hal and Mario in Weston by taking off his vest without removing his suit jacket." When Pemulis "years later exposed [it] as a cheap parlor-trick-exploitation of certain basic features of continuous functions," Hal "mourned [it] in a Santa's-not-real type of secret way" (while Mario chose to keep seeing it as magic). A small childhood beat contrasting Hal's disenchantable rationalism with Mario's faith.