  The three-band Emery model is reduced to a single-particle quantum model of
Falicov-Kimball type, by allowing only up-spins to hop, and forbidding double
occupation by projection. It is used to study the effects of geometric
obstruction on mobile fermions in thermodynamic equilibrium. For low hopping
overlap, there appears a plateau in the entropy, due to charge correlations,
and related to real-space disorder. For large overlap, the equilibrium
thermopower susceptibility remains anomalous, with a sign opposite to the one
predicted from the single-particle density of states. The heat capacity and
non-Fermi liquid response are discussed in the context of similar results in
the literature. All results are obtained by evaluation of an effective
single-particle free-energy operator in closed form. The method to obtain this
operator is described in detail.
