White Flag raffle-break: the AA-jargon complaint; drawn to the veiled Joelle

texture · 8 Nov YDAU, evening

• When: 8 Nov YDAU, evening (the White Flag Group meeting at the Provident Nursing Home; Interdependence Day)
• What: At the White Flag meeting's raffle-break, Erdedy complains to Gately about Boston AA's off-putting jargon — "a psychobabbly dialect that's damn near impossible to follow at first" — recounting how after his first-ever share, at the Wednesday St. Elizabeth's meeting, somebody told him "I'm right where I'm supposed to be," which he "found a bit patronizing"; "Miracle" is another Boston term he and the brand-new veiled resident complain they find hard to stomach. He listens to Gately's riff on "It was good to hear you" with the intent, head-cocked attention of a man used to attending to billing clients — narrowing his eyes "to make his listening-look terribly intense," a look that "doesn't communicate what he thinks his audience wants it to" — while being conspicuously pulled toward the new veiled resident Joelle van Dyne, both by her downplayed body and by curiosity about what's under the veil: "sloppy sexiness pulls Erdedy in like a well-groomed moth to a lit window."