“Well, she wouldn’t have been managing editor, then. At that level they only tolerate horsy women, matron mamas, bucket-face bags. Semi-fatties do well too. Face it: a brainy woman of any beauty is dead meat in the Room. It’s the Jamesian effect.”

Stanley was trying to get over the word “fatties.” His eyes were unblinking. “Jamesian effect?” he finally got out.

“Anyone worthy of being a Victorian heroine is unworthy of success in any male pecking order. For one, their wives would flip: Here I am, staying home raising your kids, and you’re promoting her! For two, they’d be too distracted and tempted to do the conforming to one another’s ideas they expend so much energy doing. For three, they’re all a little afraid of being risible, like Lev and—who’s that intern he married—Meg. It’s a category: husbands with intellectually embarrassing wives who are too pretty to be unobtrusive.

“No, the dirty little secret is these liberal men, these anti-sexual-harassment, pro–women’s-rights lip-service providers, they all opt for wives as wallpaper. They’re more in love with ambition than love. So poor Martina. Yeah. She never had a chance. What’s that great, great, great Madonna line? Could you be a little less. That’s what girls come to know in our enlightened times. Could you be a little less.”

James and Madonna. A range new to him. He thought of Vera—being a little less. His face fell.

“What?” Mabel said. “What?”

“Oh, I have high hopes for a young woman. A night-cops reporter. She’s, she’s—”

“Isabel Archer.”

“Actually, I was dreaming of her being the African-American version of Don.”

“Early Don, you mean.”

“Well, yes. Yes. Not what he does now. She’s religious. Not that that matters. It’s just she has a devotional side, it makes me feel—I don’t know—as if she brings to the mundane something no one in the Room does. Fervor, I guess.”

“Not exactly welcome in a newsroom, fervor. And not exactly like Isabel Archer. ’Course, she never had anywhere to go. But we did. And yet, well, you know how it goes. I don’t need to tell what goes on to a black man who passes.”

He glanced up fast. She knew. They had not once discussed it. He had always assumed she was like everyone else—unaware. But, like Vera, she had known all along.

“I didn’t know you knew,” he said, looking at his shoes.