JULIAN

I was perfectly polite.

I want to account for this with the specific and honest attention of a man who knows the difference between polite and perfectly polite, who understands that the performance of perfect politeness has a different quality than the particular and natural quality of ordinary politeness, that it has an edge to it, a specific and constructed quality, the politeness of a man who is being polite because he has decided to be polite and is bringing to the decision the full and particular resources of a man who did not do things approximately.

I was perfectly polite.

I asked about the shelter. The specific and...