Atdtda35: From one old flame to another, 995-997

[Paul Nightingale]

We begin with Zhao the joker, whose approach is to mock the examination that
Frank must go through. His mock-diagnosis on 996 (‘How long have you been
pregnant?’) addresses interpretation, the relationship between
symptom/signifier and condition/meaning; it also draws attention to his own
status as practitioner, pre-empting any cry of incompetence. The appearance
here of Wren sees Frank incapacitated by Zhao’s treatment, even intoxicated:
‘But what was kicking in instead ...’ etc. Cf his reverie on 993-994.

Wren is described as ‘a young woman in one of those dark velvet chapeaux
that were showing up all over town’ (996). At first we are unaware of her
identity, so the ‘young woman’ might well be a native of Denver seduced by
the latest fashions, as opposed to an outsider whose own arrival has simply
replicated that of the fashionable. And note, down the page, Frank’s
‘strange town busybody reflex’: ‘strange’, perhaps, because he finds it odd
to be thinking that way, but also a mode that positions him with the
natives. We should recall that, on 275, and also in Denver, Wren is
introduced as ‘a girl anthropologist’; and then later reintroduced, on 922,
as Frank’s ‘favorite back-east girl anthropologist’. In each case, then, her
occupational status is emphasised (with the qualifier that such work is
typically done by men). Here, she is straightaway the object of the male
gaze with, courtesy of Zhao the deliberate mis-reader, ‘a fiancé’ (996)
before being identified by name. Down the page she behaves ‘exactly like a
helpless feminine victim of Fate’, a phrase that follows the linking of
‘bluestocking awkwardness’ with ‘characters in books’. Cf the scene in
Jennie Rogers’s House of Mirrors on 276-277: ‘If he was expecting a blush
from her he didn’t get one. Instead she looked boldly back, eye to eye.’
(276) Or: ‘... you’ve simply ruined me for everyday bourgeois sexuality’
(277). 

Then her account, via Frank’s pov, of ‘the plutes ... at it again’ confirms
that Frank’s narrative has exchanged one kind of warfare for another: ‘...
since November the Trinidad field had been under a state of martial law’
(996-997). This summary allows Willis to be introduced, implicitly as a
co-narrator of the story Frank hears, a passage updating Frank on Stray. The
‘informal plexus’ (997) takes us back to the start of the previous chapter.
The absence of any kind of monetary or non-monetary reward recalls Frank’s
‘amazement’ at the ‘nice piece of change in [his] account’ (995), even
though he is here reminded of Mexico.