The bottom: locked out, St. Mel's detox and the D.T. mice, the taxicab to Ennet House

pivotal · ~late Oct – early Nov YDAU

• When: early November YDAU (the cab ride; ~2 weeks after entering St. Mel's detox)
• What: Ewell's bottom: returning home just before dawn from "an extremely important get-together with potential clients," he found his wife had changed the locks, filed a restraining order, and would communicate only by notes through the mail-slot — leaving one incongruous white scuff on his size-6 Florsheim wingtip from kicking the door. His two-week detox at St. Mel's Hospital included the D.T.s: after 24 abstinent hours he began seeing mice ooze from the electrical outlets, ran hunched pounding at them with a Florsheim heel, and traded his shoes for Librium and green smiley-faced foam "Happy Slippers" (staff term: "pisscatchers"). Insurance-paid, he is driven the straight-line East Watertown easement — the district he grew up in and normally detours to avoid — to Unit #6 of the Enfield Marine complex, watched over by a custodial-whites staffer and (at St. Mel's) a roommate who spends all day raptly watching an air-conditioner "as a person who's being thoroughly entertained." Physically: tiny, "an elf-sized U.S. male," feet barely reaching the cab floor, jacket-and-tie that don't quite go together, white goatee and a violent flush — "a radically downscaled Burl Ives... an impossible bearded child." Asked by the cabbie if he's sick, he answers with the whole scene's keynote of dry class-fastidiousness.