Dinner: poaching Hal's plate

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 1810h

• When: 11 November YDAU, 1810h — supper at the best table
• What: At the upperclassmen's table Struck eats with both elbows planted and utensils clenched in his fists "like a parody of a man eating," Sox cap tipped so the bill shadows half his face, the bread unkind to his braces. He spears a cherry tomato out of Hal's salad with a savage fork-gesture (Hal makes no comment), and when Hal gets up to go greet the newly returned, crutched Ingersoll, Struck trades his own clean plate for Hal's untouched fortification-structured dinner, uttering truisms about wasting food and global hunger through a full mouth. The narration also files him among the table's members who have had sex, and who have patronized the Combat Zone with Pemulis.