Where We're At: Parts 3.4-3.5: Bilocations

Deuce and Lake

• Return to his hometown, Egypt, Illinois. His sister Hope and her husband Levi are there. Deuce feels trapped.
• Since they got married Deuce no longer feels alone. Guilt re Webb eats him; he keeps finding ways (and things for which) to beg Lake's forgiveness; he doesn't realize how little it matters any more to Lake. Lake knows he killed Webb but hasn't acknowledged knowing to Deuce. She goads him; he claims he was just hired help: "They would've hired anybody" but can't quite talk about it.
• Deuce is afraid of ghosts and is waiting for Webb to find him.
• "Back in the mountains, right up till the day the Owners turned and came after him, he had felt not so much working on one side of the Law or the other as protected from the choice itself." (p 476)
• They arrive in Wall o'Death, Missouri, built around remains of a carnival inspired by the Chicago Expo. Only the Wall of Death itself remains intact; it's visited by motorcycling pilgrims. The sheriff, Eugene Boilster, takes them for an expected deputy peace officer and his wife; they take the role and the job.
• Happy La Foam is the local pharmacist.
• As deputy, Deuce is not so much looking after day to day stuff as protection against some some abstract emergency.
• The telegraph brings news from Mexico, reported by officer C. Marin, that Sloat Fresno has been killed and the killer escaped.
  
• Deuce realizes someone might be after him, too. He runs off to Texas to take revenge..
• Tace Boilster, wife of the sheriff, is Lake's friend. Lake tells Tace the whole story.
• Lake dreams about Mayva.
• A week or so later Deuce returns; he never came close to finding Frank.
• They finally discuss Webb when it's clear that he knows that she knows. He begs her for forgiveness. This is power for her.

Neville and Nigel, and Yashmeen

• Neville and Nigel are at Cambridge and are lusting for Yashmeen Halfcourt. She's interested in Cyprian Latewood, scion of the patent wallpaper Latewoods, who they know to be gay.They've spied on Yasmeen and her girlfriends swimming nude.
• Cyprian Latewood and his friend Reginald "Ratty" McHugh ("tyring without notable success to mope themselves back into the lilies-and-lassitude humour of the '90s" [p. 491])--Cyprian thinks he's in love with Yashmeen; Ratty claims she's a lesbian.
• Yashmeen's friends are Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun. They call her Pinky.
• Ratty introduces Cyprian to Professor Renfrew. Renfrew is keeping dossiers on everyone. He calls his room with file cabinets full of dossiers his Map of the World. Ratty is one of Renfrew's favorites and while he has a louche reputation, he's involved with his work. Cyprian has noticed that Renfrew pays particular attention to Yashmeen.
• Term ends, Yashmeen returns to London. She's becoming impatient with TWIT's "protection" which amounts to surveillance. Lew Basnight is around but otherwise involved professionally. She studies Gottingen professor Riemann's Zeta function.
• Neville and Nigel develop an opium habit. Cyprian takes off for Berlin for vacation.
• Fall term. (Cyprian is getting religion--Christ conquered death.)
• Yashmeen remains obsessed with Riemann's Zeta function.She dumps Cyprian (?) to take off for Gottingen?.
• Renfrew, when he learns that Yashmeen is off to Gottingen, tries to get her to seduce Werfner? Spy on him? Distract him? He sends her a Snazzbury's Silent Frock, which doesn't rustle like normal dresses do. With the dress is a note that her appointment has been made and she's to wear the dress and bring her friends. The friends get fitted for frocks, as well.
• The Silent Frocks have military implications and are being bought up.
• Yashmeen daydreams about the Riemann problem and hits on the beginnings of a roulette system which will later make her rich.

page 504.