Best-table dinner: the colposcope, the pet theory, the bland needle at Hal

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 1810h

• When: 11 November YDAU, 1810h, E.T.A. dining hall, the best table
• What: The corpus's richest Freer block. He eats intently at the top upperclassmen's table, makes a snoring noise at Stice's family stories, jabs at Troeltsch inside the powdered-milk argument ("You can't even taste, Troeltsch, if you got a real cold"), and strolls with Wayne to the front of the Seconds line, cutting in — an 18-A's free buttinski. The narration uses the scene to catalog him: the vest, the looks InterLace would favor, the Phoneless-Cord money, the "second-rank junior player" verdict, the souvenir colposcope where a pin-up would have been, and the pet theory about E.T.A.'s females — with the U.S.S. Millicent Kent as his standing illustrative example. His one dramatic beat is a needle: he "remarks blandly on how Hal seems like he's feeling sort of punk this evening, checking Stice for a reaction" — probing, in front of the boy who nearly beat Hal that day, for a crack in the Academy's prodigy.