The Pemulis interrogation: deLint's laughing window-dressing

pivotal · 17 Nov YDAU

• When: 17 Nov YDAU, in the Dean of Academic Affairs' Office, after the soundproof doors shut at 1435h.
• What: At the plot-hinge of the Pemulis expulsion thread — the reckoning over John Wayne's dosed on-air meltdown — "It was Pemulis, deLint, Nwangi, and Watson in the Dean of Academic Affairs' Office," and officially "Nwangi and Watson were window-dressing. This was A. deLint's show." But where Watson is inert, Nwangi is the show's laughing chorus. At first he only bares his teeth — "Nwangi showed almost blinding 3rd-World teeth but was saying nothing." Then he warms to it: when deLint reads out the broadcast's insults, Nwangi supplies the exact wording — "'I believe the expression was "a palsied twit," ' Nwangi said to deLint" — and when deLint reaches Wayne's on-air description of Nwangi himself as the sort of fellow who won't share or trade food in a Chinese restaurant, his whole response is a beaming gloss: "'Meaning mean-spirited.' Nwangi threw his head back and beamed like he was blind." His laughter becomes the scene's soundtrack — "Nwangi's laugh was high and had the slight teakettle-wheeze to it of the laughs of large black men the world over" — as he relays the administration's taunts ("Nwangi got out through laughter: 'And that the administrative office doorknobs have been rubberized and grounded, the administrative files all recryptographilated, everyone's room's mirrors reanodized and sealed with Plastic Wood, Mrs. Inc said to tell you.'"), crumples knee-slapping at Pemulis's WhataBurger question ("Nwangi crumpled and slapped his knee. His face literally looked like a very dark hatchet."), and closes the scene rocking and wheezing while deLint delivers the coup de grâce. His fullest appearance, and it is mostly mirth at a cornered kid.