S. begins to fade out of consciousness after the cloth is put over his mouth. Repetition emphasizes darkness: “Then, as the last ember of his consciousness is extinguishing itself in this dark corner if this dark bar on this dark night in this dark city, he glimpses the larger man’s face and is struck by familiarity; it resembles a face that his mind pictures as his own, only with scars running down the center of the forehead.” S. associates  the smell of holiday cakes from his childhood with the face of this man. Moments when S. is able to grasp some memory or familiarity, his perception is obscured,  by lack of consciousness and by the darkness, which create uncertainty: “Or perhaps it’s all just a fume trick.”

Jen asks Eric “What’s the one thing you’d most want someone to know about you”

Eric quotes Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener with the main character’s catch phrase: “I would prefer not to.”

Herman Melville 1860 on Wikimedia

Jen tells Eric that she’s starting to get creeped out by Straka’s world. “Got home last night, when I turned on the light, I saw myself in the mirror. Jumped out of my skin. Totally thought someone else was there.”

This acts as a foreshadow for later, when she actually is being followed and has reasons to be scared.