ATDTDA (17): You want work, you tell them yes, 462-468 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

By way of contrast, the Hotel Noctambulo is characterised by the free-&-easy
relations between its inhabitants: "... strangers acted for the most part
like neighbours, everybody free to roam each others' units". This is the
return of Frank the observer, making sense of what goes on round him. Before
the saloon, "where once only horses had been tied" (463): personal
experience allowed him to describe the changes in Nochecita, but here the
point made is a general one, relating to streets before saloons everywhere.
This moment is followed by the appearance of Zoltan, and Frank's misplaced
attempt to be helpful: "Heard that suggestion a number of times, and real
obliged ..." etc. In Nochecita he thought he might be "his own ghost" (461);
here his suggestion echoes, inadvertently, that made many times already.

Going for breakfast he realises "that Stray had been right upstairs all
along" (464). In the previous section he seemed to occupy a parallel
existence, Stray on "the other side of whatever it was separating them"
(461). Here he notes "her bearing, her hair, for Lord sakes, was enough to
divide a fellow into two" (464); and shortly afterwards he finds himself
"gazing, ... for what must already be a long time, at the crotch of Vang's
pants", much to the amusement of "waitergals crowding the area". Frank
starts out studying, so to speak, the "motoring outfit, black, spare,
undamageable"; and then gives the impression he is more interested in the
contents of said item of clothing. For her part, Stray hardly seems to have
noticed his existence and certainly doesn't acknowledge him: he is one of
many "well-wishers attentive as any string of train-watching cowboys down to
the depot" for whom her departure is a performance, an event.