ATDTDA (19): All about nothing more than potentially failed mayonnaise, 545-547

[Paul Nightingale]

The Mayonnaise Works is off the beaten track: "... seldom, if ever,
mentioned in guidebooks, receiving, in consequence, few visitors". At night
invisible, "this cheerfully rational example of twentieth-century
engineering dissolved into more precarious shadows". Ah, progress: "this
cheerfully rational example" and subsequent reference to "enormous batteries
of Italian hens" is another reminder of the Chicago Stockyards on 10.

At the casino, Ranesh Gao disappeared following a rational application of
mathematical principles, emerging "with his foot in a tub of mayonnaise"
(539). Subsequently, Pleiade disappeared, leaving behind her dressing-gown
(542). At the works Kit is struck firstly by the absence of shift-workers
(546); although this comes after the clucking hens, who work "day and night
apparently".

In keeping with his personal trajectory, Kit has turned up wearing "a
borrowed lounge suit and some nifty razor-toed congress shoes". His
near-drowning recalls Reef's experience on 365, "the soul smiting roar,
quick as that, grown to fill the day ..." etc; and Rocco and Pino refer to
him, after Eugenie, as "il cowboy" (547).