The Weight of Gold
But she watched for it anyway, the moment her mother’s eyes landed on him and performed their rapid unconscious audit: origin, bearing, relation to money, whether he knew it, whether he pretended he didn’t, whether he performed his lack of it or inhabited it.
She watched her mother look at Daniel.
She watched Daniel look back.
There was a moment — it lasted perhaps three seconds, which was a long time for a moment — in which neither of them said anything, and the thing passing between them was not a transaction but something more like a recognition: two people who were each, in their respective ways, entirely themselves, identifying this quality in each other with the wary respect of opponen