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[239] Because he’d been sworn to secrecy, Green doesn’t tell Lenz that Charlotte Treat had shared with Green that her adoptive father had been one-time Chair of the Northeast Regional Board of Dental Anesthesiologists, and had been pretty liberal with the use of the old N₂O and thiopental sodium around the Treats’ Revere MA household, for personal and extremely unsavory reasons.

[241] Popular corporate-hard-rock bands, though it shows where Bruce Green’s psychic decline really started that, except for TBA₅, these bands were all truly big two or three years past, and are now slightly passe, with Choosy Mothers having split up entirely by now to explore individual creative directions.

[242] This is one reason why he consents to be hung way out into space from Schtitt’s transom for filming all-court play, held only by some prorector with a firm grip on the back of his lock’s vest, which the players looking up at Mario’s forward ski-jump posture off the crow’s nest find incredibly terrifying and audacious and ballsy, and Avril won’t even leave HmH during all-court filmings.

[243] This though Avril’s never come right out and articulated her worry about his P.M. safety to Mario, not wanting to seem as though she’s making a special issue of his deficits and vulnerability or to seem inconsistent when she lets Hal go off nightly wherever he likes or just basically in any way to inhibit Mario’s sense of autonomy and freedom by causing him to worry about her worrying — which he does, rather a lot, worry about Avril’s worrying about him. If that makes sense.

[244] Mario, like his maternal uncle Charles Tavis, has a dislike of fluorescent lighting.

[245] ‘Is that supposed to mean something? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. Literally nothing.’

[246] A depressing new Sober Club in Somerville’s Davis Square where AAs and NAs — mostly new and young — get heartbreakingly dolled up and dance stiffly and tremble with sober sexual anxiety and they stand around with Cokes and M.F.s telling each other how great it is to be in an intensely social venue with all your self-conscious inhibitions unmedicated and screaming in your head. The smiles alone in these places are excruciating to see.

[247] A Restriction means just no Overnight that week and an extra Chore; a House Restriction means you have to be back an hour after work and nightly meetings; Full House is no leaving the House except for work and meetings, and 15 minutes to get back, and no even leaving to buy smokes or a paper, or even to go out in the lawn for oxygen, and one violation means a Discharge: F.H.R. is Ennet’s version of the Hole, and it’s dreaded.