Says what he wants: the dress-code enforcer, knuckles in the gallery

texture · 5-6 Nov YDAU

• When: 5 Nov (Hal's phone account) and 6 Nov (the Port Washington away match).
• What: Telling Orin about a credentialed authority figure who refused to say what he wanted, Hal reaches for E.T.A.'s staff as the honest contrast — "Flottman, Chawaf, Prickett, Nwangi, Fentress, Lingley, Pettijohn, Ogilvie, Leith, even the Moms in her way: they tell you on the very first day of class what they want from you." What Nwangi wants is compliance, and the next day's match scene shows the enforcement record: "Ortho Stice used to drill in cut-off black jeans until Schtitt had Tony Nwangi go over and scream at him about it," and even the gear-freedom Pemulis's entrepreneurial vim has earned him stops at Nwangi's desk — he is "barred by deLint and Nwangi from shirts that mention the Sinn Fein or that extol Allston MA in any way, in competition." The same match supplies the book's one glimpse of Nwangi's investment in the players he polices: when John Wayne caroms into the hanging tarp mid-point, "In the gallery, Tavis and Nwangi bite their knuckles and deLint squashes his nose flat against the glass in anxiety."