The street fracas: Gately is shot defending Lenz; Joelle takes command

pivotal · night of Wed 11 - Thurs 12 Nov YDAU (2009), 2300-0010h

• When: night of 11-12 Nov YDAU (2009), 2300h to a little past 0010h (curfew 2330h; "it's 0004h." at the car-move)
• What: The catastrophe, and the House's turning point. During the nightly 0000h curfew car-move, three Canadians in flowered shirts — one covering the residents with a customized .44 Bulldog Special — arrive hunting Lenz to avenge the dog. Lenz uses live-in Staffer Gately as a shield; Gately — declaring himself "responsible for these people on these private grounds tonight" whether he wants to be or not — calm and almost jolly, twice says he doesn't want to fight, then puts both big Nucks down with terrible old expertise and takes a .44 round in the right shoulder ("SHOT IN SOBRIETY"), saved from a second by Green's half-nelson on the shooter. The residents pitch in as a collective — kicks, stomps, Nell Gunther's boot — and by the end two of the attackers are, in a resident's awed coinage, "desisted" ("You mean deceased," another corrects; whether they died stays open — see Dating notes). Refusing an ambulance because he is Supervised and a gunshot means jail, Gately lies bleeding in the street while veiled Joelle climbs down from the 5-Woman's balcony, staunches the wound, and takes charge — the scene's authority passing to her — and Gately places her voice as Madame Psychosis from the FM; the residents drag him inside the legally protected House before the Finest arrive (ev22). See the Gately timeline for the wound's biographical weight.