Mario's handshake saves Barry Loach; Loach "all but kisses his ring"

pivotal · ~his 14th year; the saga told 20 Nov YDAU

• When: UNDATED; Mario "alone and only fourteen" (best-guess ~YTSDB-YPW, 2004-2005). The saga is told 20 Nov YDAU.
• What: In the E.T.A. Loach saga, a depressed seminarian brother challenges Barry Loach to stand at Park Street Station looking derelict and ask passersby only to touch his hand; for nine months no respectable citizen will. It ends when Mario — dashing from a Back Bay shoot where Himself was filming actors as God and the Devil playing poker with Tarot cards (subway tokens as ante) for the soul of Cosgrove Watt, sent to fetch more tokens, diverted to Park Street by a dumpster fire — too clueless about anti-stem strategy to refuse, "extended his clawlike hand and touched and heartily shaken Loach's own fuliginous hand." The convoluted result: Loach's Asst. Trainer job at E.T.A. Ever after, Loach "all but kisses the kid's ring" (n.118: oddly, Mario and the blue-collar/halfway-house staff "never have much to say to each other").