Molly Notkin's party: Joelle's overdose — "She is the only veiled woman…"
She is the only veiled woman here, […] and she is given a certain wide social berth, allowed to delay and orbit and stand unengaged at the fringes of shifting groups, obliquely glanced at, veil going concave at each inbreath, […] ignoring the foreign academic who wishes to know where she works with that veil, turning from him, rudely, brain heaving in its bone-box, memorizing every detail like collecting empty shells, sipping cloudy juice under neatly lifted corners of veil, now looking at instead of through the translucent cloth, the Improbably Deformed’s equivalent of closing the eyes in concentration on sound, letting the Very Last Party wash over her, passed gracefully by different mingling guests and once or twice almost touched, seeing only inrushing and then billowing white, listening to different mingling voices the way the unveiled young taste wine.
Context
Waiting for the bathroom at what she intends as her Very Last Party, Joelle turns the veil from barrier into instrument — "looking at instead of through the translucent cloth." "The Improbably Deformed" names U.H.I.D. membership as a sensory class with its own equivalent of closing the eyes: the veil here isn't hiding her from the world but tuning the world for her.