Joelle's first AA meeting: the raffle-break exchange with Gately — Miracle over Grace, the subjunctive demolition

timeline_event

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU, ~2000h+

When: YDAU (2009), Sunday evening 8 Nov (White Flag Group, Provident Nursing Home)
What: Veiled Joelle attends her first AA meeting with the Ennet residents, "still pretty much cynical and repelled"; she prefers even "Miracle" to "the Grace of God," which recalls her upbringing among serpent-handling fiberboard churches. At the raffle-break she dismantles "Here But For the Grace of God" as a senseless indicative transposition of a subjunctive — instancing "But For the Grace of God I would have died on Molly Notkin's bathroom floor" — leaving Gately blank and panicked, her voice facelessly familiar to him.