Atdtda30: Not a question he lost much recreational time over, 862-863

[Paul Nightingale]

Back in Nice the foregoing action has been transformed into gossip, "reports
of a shootout near the Arsenale, between what might've been ... and what
might've been ...". This recalls what happened on 857-858 Reef visited the
bar for information; and Theign's interrogation of Vlado also renders action
as text (861).

By way of contrast, Yashmeen offers "the Law of Deterministic Insufficiency"
(862). However, this law is hardly scientific, and Yashmeen is hardly
disinterested: "Her own way of saying ..." etc. On 858 Reef finds Yashmeen
asleep, wakening her with hardly a kiss; here, Yashmeen's story ("It is thus
obvious from the foregoing ...", 863) deprives Reef ("the thud of [his] head
on the table") of consciousness, but opens him, maybe, to "light hypnosis".

In this section their relationship has developed a routine ("At first, when
she talked like this ..." etc, 862), one that juxtaposes different kinds of
thought. Reef is hardly an instinctual gambler: ("... if you've been
counting 'em careful enough"), but he does appear to acknowledge "the
expectations of chance" (863). Yashmeen's "educational advice" cannot be
alluded to, as though that would break the spell; and mathematical discourse
is here inseparable from sexual desire, another law of chance ("that desire
always fades") being confounded. On 862 we have Reef's "baffled smile" and a
lack of communication; by the end of the section "[h]er irresistibility
fill[s] the day, leaving little time for thought" (863).