Dinner: the mangled fork, the medicine ritual, the powdered-milk deflation

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 1810h

• When: 11 November YDAU, 1810h — supper at the best table
• What: At the top upperclassmen's table — where he and Struck, side by side, "bite in sync and chew" — Schacht announces he will refuse to eat one more thing with a disposal-mangled utensil, taps carminative capsules onto his palm from his own amber bottle (the narration here counts "about eight amber bottles of various medicines for his Crohn's Disease, and a whole ritual of administration"), and dryly deflates Troeltsch's powdered-milk conspiracy: Tavis can't even regrout locker-room tile without a committee, let alone run secret 0300 milk-switches. He and Tall Paul Shaw had at lunch gone over the north wall where the phantom squeegees appeared and found neither nails nor holes from nails. The narration also files him among the table's members who have had sexual intercourse.