The urine reprieve: "played like a fine instrument" vs. the Avril blackmail — disputed

pivotal · 10-11 Nov YDAU

• When: the confrontation 10 Nov; recounted by Hal to Mario the night of 11 Nov
• What: Pemulis extracts a thirty-day reprieve from the O.N.A.N.T.A. urologist: no samples are taken, "we got to hold on to our urine," and after the Fundraiser, the WhataBurger, and Thanksgiving Break, Pemulis/Axford/Hal will give samples before a G.C./M.S. scan. TWO ACCOUNTS of why, cite both as written. (a) Per Hal's admiring telling (scene 155): "Pemulis showed some serious brass under pressure, standing there over that urinal. He played the O.N.A.N.T.A. man like a fine instrument," projecting "a kind of weary pragmatism the urologist found impossible to discount," his face "a brass mask." (b) Per the narration (n324): "he and Inc'd escaped on-spot urinalysis only because Pemulis implied to Mrs. Incandenza that he'd tell the Incster about Avril having some sort of major-sport interlude with John Wayne" (event 16). And Pemulis himself later insists, cryptically, "Blarney wasn't why we got it, Inc, is the thing" (scene 172, event 21) — pointing at the leverage, not the performance. Per Hal's later confession to Mario (scene 157), the thirty days "is really for Hal," whose fat-soluble marijuana is the vulnerable trace — Pemulis, by contrast, "could pass a urine test hanging upside down in a high wind." At the 11 Nov supper Pemulis is conspicuously unworried ("'Not a chance, brother'"), and when the urologist's van first appeared "Pemulis and his supply of lab-ready Visine bottles were nowhere to be found" (scene 122). The confrontation is public knowledge by rumor — Van Vleck reports having "saw Pemulis and Hal coming out of Tavis's office with the Association urine-guy holding them both by the ear" (scene 154). The reprieve buys the 11/20-21 DMZ window. [The machinery by which the DMZ plan survives; the reason left disputed.]