BEg2 chapter 17 Impressionistic summary

[Michael Bailey]

Maxine’s extra diligence takes her beyond her remit.

We see her emotionally moved to tears by a country song, particularly the
pedal steel, but also the lyrics about a woman who loves a faithless man.

“No man is a hero to his valet,” or to his contractors. Especially when
they don’t get paid. All of these pickup driving gun toting hard workers
perforce have access to the private spaces of every mogul.

Pirates used to bury a lot of their crew along with their treasure and
Ice’s ilk suffer from the same impulse, of which their contractors are not
unaware.

Ice’s house - the connection between the spiderweb of techno-wealth and the
latest instantiation of an ancient war machine nightmare runs from Ice’s
wine cellar.

Maxine’s dream:
Not-quite-Manhattan where if you go far enough out any Avenue it begins
mingling with suburbs
- seems to me like the trip to the Hamptons

Shopping mall theme of battle aftermath
- this reflects both Ziggy and Fiona’s play in the toy mall, and the actual
state of affairs in the world after 100+ years of war. She “understand[s]
it’s been deliberately designed” to look that way, carrying forward GR
themes about the market forces in which war takes place. Presumably the
Elect sipping fancy drinks are all the happier about their status amid the
ruins.

“She’s supposed to be meeting Heidi there” as more of the oblivious
consumers, but the scene changes and she’s confronted with the smell of
burning from the scene of Epperdew’s venery.
- this might be positioning Heidi as her link to normality, and revealing
the impact of her day’s work, more impactful than even the many familiar
fraud cases she already has seen.

No neighbors concerned, no sirens - strong noir implications: where are the
authorities when you need them?

Lester Traipse imperiled - as in waking life

“ She wakes with this feeling of urgency, knowing she has to do something,
but can’t see what…”
- a deeper implication of noir themes: her defrocked status means she has
less recourse to a book to go by, fewer reliable forces of order to
escalate to; as Sam Spade, Doc Sportello, and Philip Marlowe did, she will
have to rely on her wits and personal code of honor to achieve even an
ambiguous victory.

Heidi, with her good appetite, nudges Maxine back towards critical thinking
rather than regale her with more disturbing tangents - sometimes she is the
saner one of the two.