The correspondence opens: "Fire away." and the letter of Qs

timeline_event

pivotal · Nov YDAU

When: November YDAU (all three letters dated only "November Y.D.A.U.")
What: Bain's principal appearance is three documents with no narration. "Helen Steeply" — Contributing Editor, Moment Magazine, per the letterhead — writes from Tucson: having met "your adolescent friend, Mr. Orin J. Incandenza" in Phoenix, she proposes a profile of the Incandenza family — sports plus "independent film circa metropolitan Boston" — and asks for written answers, "as I am informed by Mr. Orin Incandenza you dislike to meet people outside your home and office." Bain's entire reply, on Saprogenic stationery, misaddressed to "Ms. Helen Steepley" over the salutation "And So On": "Fire away." — valediction "V.D., MK Bain" Steeply's second letter is rendered wholly as structured Qs, its content recoverable only from Bain's answers (event 15's endnote). An intelligence operation on the auteur's family thus goes fully epistolary, through a man who professionally pre-packages emotion.