Joelle visits Gately, abiding (p. 858)
It was all right; Gately’s own way of keeping it at arm’s length at the start had involved an actual arm. He pictured her laughing as he tells her that, the veil billowing mightily in and out.
Context
Gately, tube down his throat, imagines telling Joelle his arm's-length one-liner — and imagines her laugh as a veil-event, "billowing mightily in and out." Even in fantasy her face registers only as weather moving through cloth.