Atdtda26: But as it turned out, 746

[Paul Nightingale]

The opening words: "They might have imagined ..." etc, followed by "... but
as it turned out ..." etc. The previous section juxtaposed backward glances
and some kind of anticipation of what the future has in store; the new
section begins with anticipation confounded.

In leaving, Reef has come up with a revisionist account of his own: "You
never wanted in on that deal ..." etc. Kit is silent, "hoping he'd heard
wrong", ie continuing to anticipate difference over repetition. Rejecting
Kit, Reef returns to the role he occupied previously, that of his father's
avenger. In these pages he has been unsettled at the way Scarsdale Vibe,
some kind of personal possession, was taken away from him. In the previous
section he wondered "when we'll get another shot" and "how long we're
supposed to keep doing this" (745): Tancredi's death transformed into a
personal frustration. However, as the current section ends, Reef is deprived
of individuality, "absorbed into a mobility of hundreds of separate futures,
whose destiny could not be told in any but a statistical way" (746). Back,
then, to the writing of macro/micro levels of perception (not to mention
Kit's "forces of History", 739).