"Québecer triple-operative": the endnote's flat label, inside Steeply's head

texture · 11 Nov YDAU (apparatus)

• When: 11 Nov YDAU — the endnote hangs off Steeply watching the Hal-Stice exhibition match at E.T.A.
• What: While Steeply watches Hal play, a stray observation about left-handedness carries the book's bluntest loyalty-label for Luria: "Both A.F.R. turncoat Rémy Marathe and Québecer triple-operative Luria P———were southpaws, though Steeply realized that this could hardly be called significant." Two attestations ride in the aside. First the label: "triple-operative" — printed flat, in the same breath that calls Marathe a "turncoat," with no explanation of whom she triples for or against; but the sentence is Steeply-focalized ("Steeply realized"), so the label is best read as how Unspecified Services carries her on its books, not as the narrator's adjudication. Second the hand: named Luria is a southpaw — and the Phoenix hand-model of scene 113 "is left-handed" (event 6); the note's own dry hedge (left-handedness "could hardly be called significant") sits right on top of the convergence. Both data carried exactly as printed; the label adjudicated nowhere, the left-hand convergence recorded as convergence and nothing more.