The mugging: the purse-snatch and Kate Gompert whip-swung into the lightpost

pivotal · 14 Nov YDAU, ~2215h

• When: 14 Nov YDAU, ~2215h, Prospect St. just south of Inman Square, Cambridge
• What: Post-seizure, starving, still Withdrawn, and needing "liquid assets" to arrive at the Antitois "more almost a social call than a contemptible Withdrawn snivel," Poor Tony trails two Ennet House residents whose thin purse-straps and "demoralized lassitude" seem to promise "a minimum of protest or pursuit" — the psychotically depressed Kate Gompert and the nonstop-talking Ruth van Cleve. He crashes between them and snatches both purses; Ruth's vinyl strap gives at once, but Kate's densely macraméd strap holds, and his momentum whip-swings the slight Kate around in a wide arc into a "rust-pocked curbside lightpost" — concussing her, her eye swelling shut, everything "tinged in violet" (she is then set upon by a reeking "witness" bum). Kate flees afterward to Ryle's; the archive's Kate Gompert record covers this from her side (its event 15), including the night's sequel with Marathe.