Her bedroom was large and flooded with sunlight. The floor was thickly carpeted. The king-size platform bed was unmade, and the black kitten napped on a chintz-covered boudoir chair. Kim drew the curtains, glanced shyly at me, then began to undress.

Ours was a curious passage. Her body was splendid, the stuff of fantasy, and she gave herself with evident abandon. I was surprised by the intensity of my own desire, and yet it was almost wholly physical. My mind remained oddly detached from her body and from my own. I might have been viewing our performance from a distance.

The resolution provided relief and release and precious little pleasure. I drew away from her and felt as though I was in the midst of an infinite wasteland of sand and dry brush. There was a moment of astonishing sadness. Pain throbbed at the back of my throat and I felt myself close to tears.

Then the feeling passed. I don’t know what brought it on or what took it away.

She said, “Well now,” and smiled, and rolled on her side to face me and put a hand on my arm. “That was nice, Matt,” she said.

I got dressed, turned down the offer of another cup of coffee. She took my hand at the doorway, thanked me again, and said she’d let me know her address and phone once she got relocated. I told her to feel free to call anytime for any reason. We didn’t kiss.

In the elevator I remembered something she’d said. “It seems like there ought to be a bonus.” Well, that was as good a word for it as any.

I walked all the way back to the hotel. I stopped a few times along the way, once for coffee and a sandwich, once in a church on Madison Avenue where I was going to put fifty dollars into the poor box until I realized I couldn’t. Kim had paid me in hundreds and I didn’t have enough in smaller bills.

I don’t know why I tithe, or how I got in the habit in the first place. It was one of the things I began doing after I left Anita and the boys and moved into Manhattan. I don’t know what the churches do with the money and I’m sure their need for it is no greater than my own, and of late I’ve tried to break myself of the habit. But whenever some money comes in I find there’s a restlessness that comes with it that I cannot shed until I’ve handed over 10 percent of the sum to one church or another. I suppose it’s superstition. I suppose I think that, having started this, I have to keep it up or something terrible will happen.