Stealing deLint's spot: the friendly gambit and a conspicuous interchange

texture · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, the set break of the Hal-Stice exhibition and its evening debrief.
• What: When deLint clatters down to have a word with Stice at the break, "deLint's place up next to Helen Steeply was taken by female prorector Thierry Poutrincourt" — she had, in the earlier scene's phrasing, "stole[n] his spot on the bleacher." Her opening moves are all disarmament. Asked about the boy muttering into his fist behind them: "'James Troeltsch of Philadelphia is better to leave alone to play the broadcaster to himself. He is a strange and unhappy.'" Then the gambit — "'When we hear you are the journalist for shiny perfumed magazines of fad and trend we are told be unfriendly, but me, I think I am friendly.'" (her smile "rictal," with "confused teeth") — capped by an unprompted intimacy about Steeply's bulk: "'My family's loved ones also are large of size. It is difficult to be large.'" None of it escapes the staff: in deLint's later debrief with Hal, nobody mentions "the big lady's long interchange with Poutrincourt, which had been conspicuous."