The "whole new chemical-free Hal" — Hal has secretly quit dope for the urine test; near-loss to Stice

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: 11 Nov YDAU — the afternoon exhibition match, recounted at 1810h supper
• What: The central reveal of the November slide's mechanism: Hal has secretly stopped smoking marijuana. "It's now a whole new Hal, a Hal who does not get high, or hide, a Hal who in 29 days is going to hand his own personal urine over to authority figures with a wide smile and exemplary posture and not a secretive thought in his head." Only Pemulis and Axford know. The on-court cost: Hal, who no one but Wayne can beat, was taken to 7-5 in the third by 16-year-old Ortho Stice in a Schtitt-ordered exhibition — a match "a whole new and chemical-free Hal... should by all rights have lost." Stice (from his POV) reads Hal as playing "with the wide-eyed but unfocused look of a tennis player right on the verge of falling apart out there, and yet strangely affectless." Early marijuana withdrawal, framed against the looming O.N.A.N.T.A. drug test.