Hal's affectless knowledge of the Avril/John Wayne liaison; Wayne in the doorway

texture · 20 Nov YDAU

• When: 20 Nov YDAU (present)
• What: John Wayne pauses in the doorway and silently looks down at Hal on the floor (notably without "the gathering tension of a person deciding whether or not to speak"). This triggers Hal's knowledge of the family's hidden liaison: he knows "John Wayne had been involved with the Moms sexually since roughly the second month after his arrival," that Avril made little attempt to disguise her attachment, and that he doesn't know whether Mario or C.T. knows. Characteristically, "I hadn't yet been able to identify a strong feeling one way or the other about the liaison, nor about Wayne himself" — his anhedonia flattening even a major family revelation. He constructs a stilted, non-erotic mental tableau of the two, and imagines Avril/C.T. sex likewise; he wonders whether Mario spent the most time with Himself and why none of them pressed Mario about it.