On the first night of the conference, Elena took the elevator down alone because her husband had called to ask where the insurance folder was. She found it for him over the phone, hung up, and caught her reflection in the brass elevator doors: black dress, bare shoulders, lipstick she almost never wore at home.

In the lobby, two men looked up from the bar and then tried not to look like they had. She did not walk toward them. She did not want a scene. She wanted the ten seconds before the scene, the little confirmation that the version of her in the mirror was not imaginary. The next story is worse because the man doing the noticing already knew what he was seeing.