Hal Incandenza knocks at the Ennet House door

pivotal · Tue 17 Nov YDAU (2009), just after 0830h

• When: Tuesday 17 Nov YDAU (2009), just after 0830h
• What: The E.T.A.-Ennet cross made literal, and one of the novel's quiet hinge-moments. With Gately hospitalized, Johnette Foltz — five straight night shifts on Dream Duty — is writing up the Log when an upscale kid (unnamed, but plainly Hal: showered half-frozen hair, ironed jeans, a woolly-white jacket "with A.T.E. in red up one sleeve and in gray up the other") knocks at the door only a stranger would knock at, since it stands open to all but the Law from 0801. Johnette's first fear is institutional — another suit come "to depose more residents as witnesses on the Lenz-and-Gately-and-Canadian fuck-up," and she readies to hide the residents with legal exposure upstairs (the fracas's aftermath still lapping at the door, event 22). Instead he asks, in the burbly oversalivated speech of someone just off the pipe, to borrow and Xerox a schedule of local Substance Anonymous meetings — the "roundabout Denial shit" Johnette knows well. The class gulf is total; the boy seems too depleted even to condescend. The scene closes on foreboding: much later Johnette would recall the melting frozen hair, the "whom," and the saliva he fought not to swallow.