He started the cab and was just putting it in gear when the dispatcher’s voice broke through the silence. “One forty—where are you, one forty? One forty, we need your goddamn car back.”

No way, he thought. He didn’t have time to drop off the cab and catch up with her. St. Patrick’s would be the next stop, and by the time he checked out of work, she’d be done at the church.

“One forty? Goddamn you—”

He curled up a fist, prepared to punch the radio into silence and it was hard to tame his temper. Always had been. But he reminded himself that he would have to return the taxi at some point, and busted equipment meant he’d have to deal with the dispatcher.

He had to avoid conflicts because they never ended well for him or the other person. That much he’d learned.

And he had big plans.

“Coming in now,” he said into the receiver.

He’d just have to see her at the club, even though he felt cheated because he’d miss her at St. Pat’s.

Marie-Terese sat in the basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a plastic chair that made her butt hurt. To her left was a mother of five who always cradled her Bible in the crook of her arm like it was a baby. To her right was a guy who must have been a mechanic: His palms were clean, but there was always a black line beneath each of his fingernails.

There were twelve other people in the circle and one empty chair, and she knew everybody in the room as well as the person who was missing tonight. After having listened to them all go on about their lives for the past couple of months, she could recite the names of their husbands and wives and children, if they had them, knew the critical events that had shaped their pasts, and had insight into the darkest corners of their inner closets.

She’d been going to the prayer group since September, and she’d found out about it from a notice posted on the church bulletin board: The Bible in Daily Life, Tuesdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.

Tonight’s discussion was on the book of Job, and the extrapolations were obvious: Everyone was talking about the vast struggles they were dealing with, and how they were certain that their faith would be rewarded and God would see them through to a prosperous future—as long as they kept believing.

Marie-Terese didn’t say anything. She never did.

Unlike when she went to confession, down here in the basement she was looking to do something other than talk. The thing was, there was no other place in her life where she could be around normal-ish people. She certainly wasn’t finding them at the club, and outside of work, she had no friends, no family, no anyone.