4 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
From Cambridge’s Latinate Inman Square, Michael Pemulis, nobody’s fool at all, rides one necessary bus to Central Square and then an unnecessary bus to Davis Square and a train back to Central. This is to throw off the slightest possible chance of pursuit. At Central he catches the Red Line to Park St. Station, where he’s parked the tow truck in an underground lot he can more than afford. The day is autumnal and mild, the east breeze smelling of urban commerce and the vague suede smell of new-fallen leaves. The sky is pilot-light blue; sunlight reflects complexly off the smoked-glass sides of tall centers of commerce all around Park St. downtown. Pemulis wears button-fly chinos and an E.T.A. shirt beneath a snazzy blue Brioni sport-coat, plus the bright-white yachting cap that Mario Incandenza calls his Mr. Howell hat. The hat looks rakish even when turned around, and it has a detachable lining. Inside the lining can be kept portable quantities of just about anything. Having indulged in 150 nig. of very mild ‘drines, post-transaction. Wearing also gray-and-blue saddle oxfords w/o socks, it’s such a mild autumn day. The streets literally
bustle. Vendors with carts instead of tubs sell hot pretzels and tonics and those underboiled franks Pemulis likes to have them put the works on. You can see the State House and Common and Courthouse and Public Gardens, and beyond all that the cool smooth facades of Back Bay brownstones. The echoes in the underground Park PL garage — PARK — are pleasantly complex. Traffic westward on Commonwealth Avenue is light (meaning things can move) all the way through Ken-more Square and past Boston U. and up the long slow hill into Allston and Enfield. When Tavis and Schtitt and the players and ground crew and Testar and ATHSCME teams inflate the all-weather Lung for the winter over Courts 16–32, the domed Lung’s nacelle is visible against the horizon all the way down by the Brighton Ave.-Comm. Ave. split in lower Allston.