Page 199
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Montreal shifts the conversation from abstract social talk toward Marie's personal heaviness, recasting the room as a place of diagnosis rather than loose hanging out.
The move is abrupt but effective. He claims to perceive a burden in Marie, and that claim rearranges everyone else's posture, giving the gathering a ceremonial focus it did not have before.
Animal keeps spinning his metaphor - the rich have 'no offices; just tombs to lead the advertiser's through,' feeding them from 'the green tainted silver spoon' - and Montreal needles back, 'The frog just bit your big toe,' prompting 'Green on gold, not green on silver.' But Montreal twists it toward the macabre ('married on the death of the child?'), and when Animal dismisses it as 'To abstract,' he cuts through the fencing: 'I am hear because I have just meet Marie, and she carries a heavy load.' The room physically reorganizes around that claim - Montreal seated 'directly oppisite Marie,' Joe perched with 'elbow on his knee, with chin in palm' - turning loose hanging-out into something like a diagnosis centered on Marie. This reading remains provisional because a lower handwritten correction near Joe's chair posture is unresolved.