Then Virginia arrives. When Jim sees her, blond mane breaking light in the hallway, his heart races. He moves to Hana and Angela and disrupts their conversation with some false heartiness, feeling nervous indeed. Virginia is quick to spot them, and she hurries over, smiling a bright smile full of malice. “Well hello, James. I haven’t seen you in a while!”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friend?”

“Oh, yeah. Virginia Novello, this is Hana Steentoft.”

“Hello, Hana.” Virginia extends a hand, and in her direct gaze there is a smiling, straightforward contempt. She’s judged this dowdy newcomer in a single glance, and wants Jim to know it. Angrily, fearfully, Jim looks sideways at Hana; she is gazing past Virginia, at the floor, indifferent to her, waiting for her to go. Virginia has been dismissed. Virginia smiles at Jim with open hostility, walks off without saying anything more.

Afterward, on the way home, Hana refuses to go to Jim’s place. “Let’s go to mine.”

So they do. As they track she says, “That’s one expensively dressed crowd of women you hang out with.”

“Ah, yeah.” Jim isn’t listening, he’s pleased at the whole evening, and at a final small gathering with Abe and Sandy and Angela. “They really go overboard into the whole thing. I’m so glad you don’t care about any of that.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jim.”

“Huh?”

“I said, don’t be stupid.”

“Huh?”

“Of course I care! What do you think I am?”

She’s angry with him, he’s just heard it. “Ah.”

And suddenly he gets it: no one can escape. You can pretend not to care about the image, but that’s as far as the culture will let you get. Inside you have to feel it; you can fight it but it’ll always be there, the contemptuous dismissal of you by the Virginia Novellos of the world.… No doubt Hana saw that look and was perfectly aware of it, all the rest of the evening. And she did look different from the rest of the women there; how could anyone forget that in such a crowd of them? And now he had implied that she was so far out of the norm that she wouldn’t have the common human response, wouldn’t even notice, wouldn’t even care.

He’s a fool, he thinks. Such a fool.… What to say? “Sorry, Hana. I think you’re beau—”

“Quiet, Jim. Just shut up about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

He drives her to her home in an awkward, ominous silence.

Chapter 56

56