Joelle at the CA biscuits-Bottom meeting
Plus there’s the row of standing men—there’s a certain hard-faced type of male in Boston fellowships who refuses ever to sit for meetings—standing behind the back row, legs set wide and arms crossed and talking to each other out the sides of their mouths, and she can tell the standing men are looking at her bare knees over her shoulder, making little comments about the knees and the veil.
Context
Joelle in Denial Aisle at a CA meeting two floors down from Gately's Trauma Wing bed. The public arithmetic of the veil hasn't changed since the last-walk gauntlet (058): the exposed parts get appraised, the covered part gets commented on — "the knees and the veil," exactly the undeformed-thigh/veiled-face split of the Nuck fight (120). She registers it and stays.