Gately and Joelle talk veil and U.H.I.D.
‘It was down at the far end of the table at supper. He was telling Ken and me how he had a counselor when he was in Juvenile in Jamaica Plain, he had this counselor he said she had this condition where each leg was shorter than the other.’ […] ‘He was having us on. He said the point was an AA point, that it defied sense and explaining and you just had to accept it on faith. That creepy Randy guy with the white wig was backing him up with a very straight face. McDade said she walked like a metronome. He was making fun of us, but I still thought it was funny.’
Context
Joelle retails McDade's supper-table gag at 0450h in the front office: an impossible disability (each leg shorter than the other) as a parody AA koan. It's the veil dialogue's actual on-ramp — Gately's very next move is 'Maybe tell me about this veil of yours, then, Joelle, if we're talking about defied sense.' Disability enters the scene as joke and leaves it as doctrine.