Still in the gauze wrap: rumor-runner for the Stice-window disaster

pivotal · 20 Nov YDAU, morning

• When: 20 Nov YDAU, morning, during the campus commotion over Stice's forehead-flesh left on the hall window.
• What: Nine days after the Eschaton beating and a week-plus after the footnote denied the bruise, McKenna is still in costume: "Kieran McKenna's little porcine snout appeared in a gap under Freer's arm. He still wore his stupid full-head gauze wrap for his supposed bruised skull." At the doorway of the viewing room where Hal lies wallowing, he arrives as pure transmission — did they get to see The Darkness; "Gopnik said he looks like a piece of cheese pizza where somebody tore the cheese off. Gopnik said Troeltsch is charging two bucks a look." Then he is gone: "He ran off toward the stairwell without waiting for a reply, his pocket jingling madly." The jingle goes unexplained (see Dating notes). The book's last sight of him — still in motion, still relaying, still wrapped.