The Swiss hand-model: the seduction that is the trap

pivotal · 7 Nov YDAU

• When: 7 November YDAU, Phoenix hotel suites (two consecutive assignations; also the simultaneity-montage, scene 126)
• What: A "putatively Swiss" left-handed hand-model appears — unbidden, unStrategized — as Orin stands at Sky Harbor after driving Steeply to her flight, and asks him to autograph a Cardinal football for her toddler son. Orin reads her as fate reaching out "to pluck him from the rim of the abyss," and beds her; the narration renders the full Excitement-Hope-Acquisition-Contempt anatomy of his seduction (event 26) and the "lost We" (event 19) inside it. She (not Swiss; an A.F.R. asset) is the bait: during the encounter she lies armed under the covers, and the "survey"-man (event 33) knocks. Orin registers only afterward that the wheelchaired stalker shared her accent. The trap works by inverting his whole pattern: per n307 this is "one of only two total times Orin has perceived himself as the approachee" — the other being Joelle (event 12).