The Convocation
- The Interlude is set inside a fancy hotel in a room called the Washington Room.
- About a hundred men, of many different skin tones and nationalities, and all wearing black suits, are gathered together in the Washington Room, finishing up their dinners.
- One of these black-suited guys is standing at a podium describing the different “Good Deeds Done” (Interlude.3) by the men (who must belong to some kind of club).
- Jack is sitting at one of the dining tables next to a man with silver hair.
- The man tells Jack that time is running out.
- Jack brings up something that happened in San Francisco, California, four years ago, but readers aren’t given any details about it.
- (If Bod is still about ten years old, as he was in Chapter 5, then he would have been six when something happened with Jack in San Francisco. Hey, didn’t Silas give Bod a model of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in Chapter 3? Hmm.)
- The man with the silver hair isn’t interested in talking about San Francisco. He’s interested in Jack finishing the job he started – which was to kill Bod’s family and to kill Bod.
- He reminds Jack that ten years have passed since he was supposed to have killed Bod.
- Jack tells the man with the silver hair, whose name is Mr. Dandy (maybe Jack Dandy?), that there is still plenty of time for him to kill Bod.
- Mr. Dandy says, “You had time. Now, you just have a deadline. […] We can’t cut you any slack, not any more. Sick of waiting, we are, every man Jack of us” (Interlude.11).
- (A-ha! This must be a gathering of men named Jack.)
- Jack says he has some ideas about where to find Bod and that it’s related to what happened in San Francisco.
- Apparently, Jack brought this up to the man at the podium describing Good Deeds Done, but the man just wants Jack to finish his job.
- Mr. Dandy says that all of them are ready for Jack to finish his job.