“This is my lesbian friend, Angela.”
That’s how she was introduced to Elizabeth by her sort-of friend Jack. Jack was that kind of person: he would introduce you by stating your name and then inserting some sort of qualifier, trying to be politically correct but accomplishing quite the opposite. Angela considered Jack a sort-of friend because she only sort-of liked him. Most of the time she found him irritating, self-absorbed, and inappropriate. Still, they worked together and drank together, and he always recommended good movies.
The exterior view of Angela’s life at twenty-nine was enviable. Having achieved much of what she set out to do in her early twenties, she found herself in a comfortable home with an adoring partner, a host of friends, minimal debt, a recently acquired degree, an
