BEg2 chapter 12 investigative spadework

[Michael Bailey]

Joseph Tracy wrote:

“She meets Tallis in  upper east side in enormous house after passing
through boring rooms with expensive but uniterestingly collected art.
Tallis says Gabe has weird demands, and they got to know each other at
Carnegie Mellon when he was using her room’s computer as refuge from
bagpiper, but they get along. Tallis says she and her mother hate each
other, and she hated fighting between her parents. She tells how March
is accusing Gabriel Ice of financial misbehavior larger than Iran
Contra. Tallis  either is or is playing the ditz and doesn’t really
want to know if finances at hashslingerz are clean Gabe Ice is evasive
about it.”


He probably graduated to using her room’s computer, but he was at first
using ones in the common rooms of various dorms.

“the sound was enough to drive Gabe out to the computer cluster, which
still wasn’t far enough. Soon he was out gazing at student-lounge
television screens or using the facilities at other dorms, including
Tallis’s….”

Also, I don’t think he was just studying comp sci,

“…he quickly slipped into a tubelit clustergeek existence, often unsure if
he was awake or dreaming in REM, which might have accounted for his early
conversations with Tallis, which she remembers nowadays as “unusual.” She
was his dream girl, literally. Her image became conflated with those of
Heather Locklear, Linda Evans, and Morgan Fairchild, among others.”

Which squares with libido expectations for a future mogul?



CMU bagpipes major:
https://www.cmu.edu/cfa/music/news/2009/carnegie-mellon-is-home-to-nations-only-graduating-bagpipe-major.html

“The tradition of bagpipes at Carnegie Mellon dates to founder Andrew
Carnegie, who employed his own personal piper, said Alasdair Gillies,
director of Carnegie Mellon’s piping program and a world-renowned bagpiper
himself.

Mr. Carnegie’s Scottish roots are apparent throughout Carnegie Mellon, from
the school’s mascot, the Scottish terrier, to the student newspaper, The
Tartan, to the traditional Scottish dress worn by members of the school’s
“Kiltie” marching band. In 1990, the school instituted the world’s first
bagpipe degree, a major — complete with a designated need-based scholarship
— focusing on both studio performance and the history and culture behind
bagpiping. Mr. Hudson is just the third bagpipe major to graduate from
Carnegie Mellon since the establishment of the program, though there are
two other majors now enrolled behind him.”


https://www.alexcooper.com/blog/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-cy-twombly
Hey, he was named after Cy Young!


“There is a Bösendorfer Imperial in the corner, at which generations of
hired piano players have provided hours of Kander & Ebb, Rodgers &
Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber medleys while Gabe and Tallis and assorted
henchfolks work the room, gently thinning the checkbooks of East Side
aristos on behalf of various causes, many of them trivial by West Side
standards.”

Kander & Ebb? Who they?

https://www.theatretrip.com/musicals-by-kander-and-ebb/
Cabaret was by them!

Generations of hired piano players? Seems like either hyperbole - or, the
piano predates the Ices with the connotation that prior to them it was
providing background music for some other 1% couples shaking down the
aristos for charity. For whom “Ice” would be an ok metonymy, denoting their
diamonds and the probable temperatures of their hearts…

Or maybe just the varying ages of the pianists for the different
engagements. They came from different generations but played the same piano?

Also - “gently thinning the checkbooks of East Side aristos on behalf of
various causes, many of them trivial by West Side standards.”

So at least for Maxine, there’s a palpable difference between Upper East
and Upper West? Earlier in the chapter we get,

 “ Maxine is no stranger to the Upper East Side, though it still makes her
uncomfortable.As a kid she went to Julia Richman High—

well, she could’ve been on the natch once or twice—“

[ where else would you get this joke, with this verbiage, “the natch,”
reminiscent of the rebooted Mucho Maas in _Vineland_?]

“…over on East 67th, rode crosstown buses five days a week, never got used
to it. Deep hairband country. Visiting over here is always like stepping
into a planned midgets’ community, everything scaled down, blocks shorter,
avenues less time to walk across, you expect any minute to be approached by
a tiny official greeter going, “As mayor of the Munch-kin City . . .”

Hairband country?