Indeed, no one has ever rushed up to me exclaiming in this way. No one has ever burst into a house in which I was living, or into a room in which I’ve been sitting, waiting … Good news! Happy news! You won’t believe this, N__!

Keisha is drinking the vile Coke, which fizzes at its surface as carbolic acid might “fizz.” I see that the fire-engine red lipstick has smeared onto one of her front teeth. I see that the coppery-brown penciled eyebrows are asymmetrical, as if the hand that applied them was shaky. Like her ears, Keisha’s nose is oddly small and oddly pale, nostrils pinched like slits. Her very face seems too small. Does chemotherapy shrink a face? Or—might the treatment have been radiation?

Indeed, has Keisha recovered from this treatment, as I’d assumed? From cancer? Had her illness even been cancer? Had there been an illness? For weeks—months—I’ve assumed that I know the outline of the cashier’s life; it’s something of a shock to realize that I know very little about her. The hair loss might be caused by something else altogether—a thyroid condition, a gastrointestinal disorder.

It soon becomes clear that Keisha has not much to say, apart from expressing a childlike wonderment at her good luck. For, to her, despite the letter she’d received, at which I’d labored more intensely than I labor at most of my prose fiction, she doesn’t really think she might deserve the mystery gifts she has been receiving. To her, as to, perhaps, the class of individuals to which she belongs from birth, there is only good luck and bad luck.

Bad luck would be cancer. Good luck would be mystery gifts of cash out of nowhere.

As if good luck were not the consequence of a (human) agent, in this case. Rather, akin to what is (quaintly) called an Act of God—like weather, earthquakes.

Yes, it is somewhat disappointing to me that Keisha has so little to say to me. My questions encourage her to speak only briefly. I might be a schoolteacher, an authority figure of some vague kind, whose authority is not to be questioned, but whom she would avoid if she could, for she is uncomfortable in his presence; my white dress shirt, dark blue tie, camel’s hair sport coat seem to have intimidated her, which was hardly my intention. Rather, I’d dressed out of respect for her and for the occasion, which is (after all) as remarkable in my life as in hers.

Indeed you are in love. And indeed, it is ridiculous.

Keisha is not a beautiful woman, I see now. No doubt I have been mistaking fragility for beauty. The drawn, melancholy features, the effects of illness. Soft, fine, downy hair, lashless eyes that seem to penetrate mine with a kind of helpless candor. Even Keisha’s (relative) youth has been deceiving—she is not so young as I’d thought, surely in her forties.