The Avril–Wayne liaison, per Hal's private reckoning

pivotal · YDAU (from ~two months after arrival); reconstructed 20 Nov

• When: the liaison "since roughly the second month after his arrival" (i.e. from early in Wayne's YDAU tenure); Hal's reflection is 20 Nov YDAU
• What: In a long floor-lying reverie Hal states plainly what the tableau (event 13) only implied: "John Wayne had been involved with the Moms sexually since roughly the second month after his arrival. They were both expatriates." Hal cannot locate a strong feeling about it "nor about Wayne himself, except for admiring his talent and total focus," does not know whether Mario knows, "to say nothing of poor C.T." His imagined tableau of the two is deliberately un-erotic, "stilted, as if composed" — Avril reclined and staring upward, Wayne "slim and brown-limbed... his blank narrow face between her breasts, his eyes unblinking and his thin tongue outthrust like a stunned lizard's." The liaison is given entirely from Hal's POV and reconstruction; Wayne never speaks to it.