Silent behind the Chief: the operative trying not to fidget

texture · ? Nov YDAU (c. mid-Nov cue)

• When: ? Nov YDAU, a morning in the eighth-floor conference room of the State House Annex, Beacon and Joy Sts., Boston, as the Public Gardens' pond is drained below.
• What: As "U.S. Office of Unspecified Services Chief Rodney Tine stands at the unclean window for much of the morning, ruminative," the room behind him holds his silent staff — "A stenographer and an aide and a Deputy Mayor and the Director of the Massachusetts Division for Substance Abuse Services, and Unspecified Services Regional Operatives Rodney Tine Jr. [n.257] and Hugh Steeply [n.258] all sit silently in the conference room behind him, the stenographer’s Gregg pen poised in mid-dictation." The endnote hung on Jr's name fixes his whole posture toward his father in one clause: NNE Region, "trying hard not to irritate Tine Sr. by fidgeting." He does and says nothing; the restlessness being suppressed here is the same tic that surfaces as ruler-tapping in event 3 — in this same room.