Pre-gala locker room: the towel-hood, the coin on the knuckles, Joni Mitchell

texture · 20 Nov YDAU

• When: 20 Nov YDAU, the blizzard-day pre-match locker room, before the relocated M.I.T. gala vs. the Québec Jr. team
• What: A last quiet in-range portrait: "John Wayne hunched as always on the bench before his locker with his towel like a hood over his head, running a coin back and forth over the backs of his fingers"; a thin oval of his face visible under the towel "like an almond on its end"; Joni Mitchell playing low in his locker's disk-player, "which nobody ever minded." The day's event is the End-of-Fiscal-Year gala match against Québec's junior team — moved, in a blizzard, into the M.I.T. Student Union via Avril's alumni favors — the exile once more set to play his homeland for the patrons.