Cross-witness: Matty watches a spectral Poor Tony pass the window

texture · 14 Nov YDAU

• When: 14 Nov YDAU, from Matty's seat at the Man o' War (continuous with event 5)
• What: From his window seat Matty sees Poor Tony Krause make his queenly way past on Prospect St., trailing two underweight interracial girls, and at first fails to recognize his "old former crewmate" — Poor Tony looks "godawful: sucked-out, hollow-eyed, past ill, grave-ready," identifiable only by the boa, the red leather coat, and the throat-clutching walk that Equus Reese always likened to old-film starlets. The reciprocal scene stamps the shock from Poor Tony's side: Matty sits "aghast in recognition of what Poor Tony has come through the corridor to resemble" — while Poor Tony, wrapped in his post-seizure fog and intent on the girls' purses, never sees him back. The moment establishes Matty as a fixed member of the Cambridge street network and serves the novel as an outside confirmation of Poor Tony's spectral decline. (Poor-Tony-altitude beats — the seizure, the discharge, and the two girls, who are Kate Gompert and Ruth van Cleve — are covered in Poor Tony's timeline (events 8-12) and are cross-refs, not duplicated. The reciprocal glimpse, Poor Tony naming Matty "a sure source of compassion," is Poor Tony's timeline (event 10).)