Alison said, quietly: how are you doing?
I said: I’m doing fine.
She said: yes you are.
Jennifer came back.
With someone.
I recognized the someone immediately.
Her name was Dana Howell.
Dana had been the specific kind of popular that required an audience and a target.
She had been the primary architect.
She was forty now, and she looked like herself, the way some people look exactly like
themselves at forty that they did at eighteen, the features settled rather than sharpened.
She looked at me.
I watched the same calculation on her face that I had watched on Jennifer’s.
The not recognizing.
The recognizing.
The revision.
She said: Claire.
I said: Dana.
She said: I don’t remember sending you an invitation.
She said it with the specific quality of someone who has decided on an approach and is committing to it.
I said: I know.
