Of course I understand. I am the wise elder, the gentleman who understands.

“Anyway—the kids are okay. I live for those kids. What God sends to me, I can accept, as long as—you know, the kids are okay. That’s what I pray for.”

Though your husband is a brute. Yes?

Still, that pained look. For Keisha is seriously thinking. The Deserving American award has shone a light upon her, dazzling her.

Confiding in me suddenly, in a lowered voice, that she’d had “bad scares” in her life—twice. First when she was just twenty-six and had to have “cysts” removed, but the second time, last fall, the cancer had “spread farther.” Wiping at her eyes, she tells me that only God saved her.

There’d been surgery: “Mas-teck-nom-y.” Then—“Chemo.”

God, and Jesus, and prayer. Her kids, her family. Why she had to keep going, not give up. Though she’d wanted to, sometimes—just give up. But grateful to be alive. That the treatment hadn’t been worse. Every day, on her knees, giving thanks. Who’d taken it hard, almost harder than she had, was her husband—“It was like he’d been kicked in the gut, he said.”

Keisha is about to say more about the husband, then thinks better of it.

“Well—whoever is giving us these gifts, it’s like they are the answer to my prayers. Because we have been hard hit—financially. Because of course I had to take off from work. There’s no medical benefits at the grocery—of course. There’s not enough ‘margin of profit’—Mr. McGuire says. Lucky just to stay in business. Lucky to have the job. So these gifts, it’s like God is guiding their hands. Knowing how we need the money—my family. They are wonderful people, I guess—Christian people.” Astonishing to hear Keisha speak in such an outburst of warmth and certitude.

She is going to give the money to those leeches. Her family. Of course she is not going to spend it on herself.

Trying to remain calm. Merely noting, “Christian? Really? I don’t recall the letter speaking of—”

“They’d have to be Christian people. Who else would answer prayers like this? Society of Deserving Americans—that wouldn’t be atheists.”

Keisha pronounces atheists with an odd inflection, as if it were a foreign word whose meaning she doesn’t quite know, except that it is repugnant.

“Whoever the ‘Society’ is, they are good people. They are people of God.”

Keisha knows. Keisha is certain. No ambiguity here. No persuading her.

Suddenly boredom suffuses me like ether. A wave of something like vertigo passes over my brain.

My experiment! What a farce. A “plot” set in motion—swerving out of my control.

How badly I’d longed to be close to this person, to have her confide in me as in a friend; such intimacy, such rushes of words, I could not have dared anticipate. And now, facing the woman across a table, scarcely three feet between us, I am overwhelmed with dismay, a wish to excuse myself and depart. The bill has already been paid on my credit card.