E.T.A. infiltration as "Helen": the Hal–Stice match, deLint and Poutrincourt

pivotal · 11 November YDAU

• When: 11 November YDAU, Enfield Tennis Academy
• What: Steeply — green sedan with a full-front Nunhagen ad parked in the E.T.A. lot, dining at the prorectors' table as the "enormous peasant-skirted Moment soft-profiler" — attends the specially ordered Hal-vs-Stice exhibition under journalist cover, working prorector Aubrey deLint and the Québecer prorector Thierry Poutrincourt for family background on the punter, while Charles Tavis blocks any direct interview of Hal ("My guess is you don't," deLint tells her). Steeply pushes the cover ("a soft inoffensive profile on his brother"), takes Gregg shorthand, and privately measures the academy against Marathe's aphorisms about American body language. The Poutrincourt interface cuts both ways, per the endnotes: her Nuck idiom réflechis marks her as "the real Canadian McCoy," and "it is for certain that a certain 'journalist' will be e-mailing Falls Church VA on the U.S.O.'s Clipper-proof line for the unexpurgated files on one 'Poutrincourt, Thierry T.'" (n274 p. 1052); meanwhile her use of the doom-connoting vulgate transperçant is the slip indicating "that Poutrincourt's figured out that Steeply is neither a civilian soft-profiler nor even a female" — probably known "ever since Steeply'd lit his Flanderfume with the elbow of his lighter-arm out instead of in, which only males and radically butch lesbians ever do," which with the electrolysis-rash "comprises the only real chink in the operative's distaff persona" (n276 pp. 1052-1053).